Actually that's a pretty fun topic in tech history. You could buy short animations cheaply then, as flipbooks, and there were fancier types: viewed through a spinning cylinder, or projected. There were even 3d animations. See samples on youtube.

Checking my memory just now I learned something interesting: the magic lantern was invented by Huygens in the 1600s, and he probably had a simple animation in mind -- he sketched a sequence of Death removing his own head.