Figure 1.--Victoria and Albert and their young family. The fashions selected by Victoria for their young brood had an enormous and enduring impact on children's fashions for generations. |
The Victorian era resulted in a development of an entirely novel
concept of childhood. The new emphasis on the protection of the
child through the growth of welfare societies, governmental programs
and compulsory education are key developments in the Victorian era.
The changing nature of children's work and their increasing leisure
time is also apparent. Thes developments affected fashion and clothes
in a variety of ways. I am just beginning to sketch out these changes
and have not yet begun to assess the impact on fashion, but hope to do
so in the future. If you have any thoughts or insights, I'd be
very interested in them.
English boys throughout the 19th Century wore
dresses as little boys.
Styles were quite similr to those worn by their sisters in the early
part of the century, but became more plain by the end of the century.
The dresses followed the styles of the day, very long at the beginning
of the century and becoming shorter as the century progressed. Shorter
dresses were worn discreetly with pantalettes.
Dresses were often worn with pinafores
by both boys and girls, but
this became less common for boys by the end of the century. I am
not sure how common smocks were in
England, but hope to acquire some information on this topic.
Figure 2.--. |
A wealth of literature has appeared in the late 1990s about the lives
of children. Victorian childhood in Britain is one of the most popular
topics. These works are adding to a growing
literature that enriches our knowledge of the realities of life for
the young in 19th-century Britain. These social histories, most
notably Anna Davin's Growing Up Poor: Home, School and Street in
London, 1870-1914 and Gretchen Galbraith's Reading Lives:
Reconstructing Childhood, Books and Schools in Britain, 1870-1920,
have focused on the late Victorian period and the role gender and
class played in shaping children's experiences. Much of this literature
has focused on poor urban children, but a growing understandinnis emerging
on Victorian childhood in general.
Poor urban children have been a focus for many modern scholars.
A variety of social and demographic changes were underway in
Britain.. One good disussion of these trends is Pamela
Horn's most recent project, The Victorian Town Child, approaches
the topic from an interesting angle. Her work aims at a synthesis of
secondary and primary sources that explore the transformative power of
urban industrial change on the lives of children from the early Victorian
period to the 1890s. In short, she gives voice the children of
Britain's urban past.
A general overview of the transformation of urban life that
accompanies 19th-Century industrialization in Britain had a profound
impact on children and the childhood experience. One of the impacts of
course were fashion and clothes. Some of the important chanhes that
ocurred are:
Town life: A rich town life that emerged between 1840 and 1900.
Compulsory mass education: Free state education developed more
slowly in England than many Continental countries such as France,
Germany, and the Netherlands. From the begining of compulsory education,
however, there were boys prepared to "mooch off" and take an unauthorized
holiday.
Home life:
Changing work and leisure patterns:
Expanding fashion industry: A variety of developments such as
improving and cheaper mass media publication, new methods for
publishing illustrations
including publication of photographs
for the first time, rising income, mass
production of clothes, and other factors meant that an expanding portion of the publication
had increasing details on fashion and more disposable income to buy clothes
which were falling in real cost.
Youth groups: Organized boys youth groups first appeared in the
late 19th Century, a consequence of the growing earmings of boys and
the less constraing atmosphere of the city. The early organizers tnought
uniforms were important and these uniforms were to have great influence
on 20th Century boys' fashions.
Importance of class:
Appearances: Keeping up appearances was of cource important to the
developing middle class. One way in which this was expressed was
clothing. Middle class parents were especially concerned that their
children dress well. There were, of course, cross-class complexities.
Growth of rescue and welfare agencies: The
work house was the answer to poverty in the early Victorian era.
Gradually more humane approaches emerged, but were still very limited
in England by the end of decade. Even if inadequate, the treatment of
children by the end of the century was a far
cry from earlier treatment of children.
Some helpful sources are:
Davin, Anna. Growing Up Poor: Home, School and Street in London,
1870-1914, London: Rivers Oram, 1997.
Galbraith, Gretchen Reading Lives: Reconstructing Childhood, Books
and Schools in Britain, 1870-1920, New York/London: St. Martin's Press,
1997.
Horne, Pamela. The Victorian Town Child, New York: New York
University Press, 1997.
McLeod, Hugh. Class and Religion in the Late Victorian City,
London: Croom Helm, 1974
Stedman Jones, Gareth. Languages of Class: Studies in Working-Class
History, 1832-1982, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
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