When I first visited the Museum of Childhood in Edinburgh, this doll stood out for me more than any other exhibit.

The fact that it was found in an Edwardian London slum, and is made from the heel of a man’s shoe, a black sock and some scraps of household fabric, makes it at once the most heartbreaking and marvellous of toys.

Given the care that was taken to give it a lace trim around the neck and mob cap, I like to think it was treasured by its owner.

The exhibit sits alongside a worn animal bone in a dress serving as a doll and other makeshift toys belonging to poor children from around the same period.

It was saved for posterity by collector and folklorist Edward Lovett (1852 – 1933).

I like many things about this earnest shoe doll, but beyond any emotional reaction she may spark, I am mostly taken with the ideas of reinvention and possibility she embodies.

Let’s take a look at her face and the way she carries herself. She looks like she’d be quite an amenable doll — do her slumping shoulders suggest she’s receptive to a bit of leadership from her owner? Or is she in fact frowning and a little grumpy?

Whoever made her didn’t just draw on her features, and indeed thought has been put into every detail. She is partly made from a stuffed sock — why not simply use the sock and the fabric scraps, and do away with the hard heel? But perhaps a little weight was required to make it feel more like a “proper doll”.  

I like to imagine her in context — at some point she’s likely to have come into contact with a Mary, a Florence, an Annie or an Edith (some of the most common girls’ names of the period).

I wonder whether she was one of those dolls that got dragged around everywhere by a leg, like Winnie the Pooh. Her hard head, obedient and resigned, going bump bump bump on some narrow, rickety stairs. I also wonder whether her owner would answer for her aloud, or whether she’d give her some time to reply, waiting silently.

What do you imagine she is saying right now?