Children's Lives – in pictures

A young girl on a swing is captured in one of Bill Brandt’s evocative images commissioned by the Bournville Village Trust and taken in Bournville, a suburb of Birmingham, between 1939 and 1943. Photograph: Bill Brandt/Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

Jean Etienne Liotard, Portrait of Matthew Robinson Boulton, Aged Three, 1773, pastel drawing.

The Children's Lives exhibition at the Birmingham Museum offers very different versions of childhood from the 18th century to the present day. Photograph: Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

George Frederic Watts, Little Red Riding Hood. Photograph: Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

Children in Sparkbrook in the 1960s, one of the poorest areas of Birmingham. Photograph: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

One of an extensive series of photographs by Nick Hedges, commissioned by Shelter to document the poor housing conditions suffered by many in the UK in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Photograph: Nick Hedges/Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

Arthur Hughes, The Lost Child, c1866, oil on canvas. Photograph: Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

From the Bill Brandt series of photographs commissioned by the Bournville Village Trust. Photograph: Bill Brandt/Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

A baby's feeding bottle, one of many artefacts collected in the Children's Lives exhibition. Photograph: Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

A pair of finger stocks, used to trap children's hands behind their backs until they could recite their lessons without getting a word wrong. Photograph: Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

A 19th-century Judy glove puppet. Photograph: Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

A family dinner captured by Bill Brandt in his series of photographs commissioned by the Bournville Village Trust. Photograph: Bill Brandt/Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

From the Nick Hedges Shelter series. Photograph: Nick Hedges/Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

Rocking horse. Photograph: Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

Embroidered cotton sampler – a demonstration of needlework skill – made by Margaret Josephine Gaskin, aged seven, in the late 19th century. Photograph: Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

From the Nick Hedges Shelter series. Photograph: Nick Hedges/Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

William Adolphe Bouguereau, Charity, 1865, oil on canvas. Photograph: Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery