Figure 1.-This is the last image of Percy still wearing a dress. He looks to be about 6 years old, but perhaps he has not yet quite turned 6. He looks a little older than his previous portrait. He wears a dark dress, but I am not sure of the color. He has a lace collar with the lace repeated at the sleeve cuffs. This is a decoration his mother seems to have liked. Image coutesy of the RG collection.

This is the last image of Percy still wearing a dress. He looks to be about 6 years old, but perhaps he has not yet quite turned 6. He looks a little older than his previous portrait. The portrait was taken in the same location with the same background. The dress is very silimar, but there re differences. Percy wears a dark dress, but I am not sure of the color. He has a lace collar with the lace repeated at the sleeve cuffs. This is a decoration his mother seems to have liked. Its difficult to make out much detail about the dress itself, but we notice button ornamentation. The most striking aspect of this portrait is the bonnet. Many boys wore dresses in the 19th century, although most were breeching by age 5-6 years, many earlier. Some wore dresses longer, but it was much more common. What was not very common was for 5-6 yearold boys to wear girls bonnets at this age. We have archived very few such images. Apparently he was made up to look as if he was on an outing. He is wearing matching dark gloves. Also notice the prop which looks rather like a girl's handbag. Percy's hair is long and parted in the center. While often difficult, children in dresses can often be identified as boys because of their headwear, hair syle, the plain styling of their dress, or props. None of this is possible with Percy. Without knowing that it was him, we would have assumed the child here was a girl.