Bartholomew Baby

The fair in honour of the feast of Saint Bartholomew was held in the grounds of the momastery of St. Bartholomew in london. In the mid 14th century it was granted a charter which allowed it to be held on "the eve, the day and the morrow" of the feast and it was an important source of revenue for the monastery. Over the years, that eve, day and morrow extended to 2 weeks but was by law limited to the original span as it had become an occasion of "great licentiousness" and much cheating of the populace.
Like festivals today, many entertainments were to be had such as plays, wrestling, races and trade stalls. Among the things sold would be crude puppets and toys including dolls. They were about 6 inches tall and they weren't called dolls, they were Bartholomew Babies.
They were sold as crude wooden forms rather like a skittle and little girls would dress them in any scraps of cloth they could find. This one obviously would have been the sort of thing one of the better class of girl would decorate. She has rather fetching auburn hair made of a scrap of wool and is dressed in the manner of perhaps a housekeeper of a big house in the 16th century with a woollen outer garment over a kirtle of linen and with a belt and a key to show that she was a trusted member of the household and was allowed to unlock private doors or chests.
In the 19th century "Bartholomew Baby" came to be used as a reference to someone who was dressed in a tawdry manner rather like the dolls dressed in odd scraps.
Tawdry they may have been but I think they're cute.