Figure 1.--A reader sent us this family portrait. She points out, "Here is dad with Aunt Genevieve in 1916. He wears a white tunc suit with white long stockings and strap shoes." A reader tells us, "Blowing the photograph up with IrfanView, it is clear that the boy is wearing "double-t-bar" sandals (T-bar with two cross straps) , the sort sometimes called 'English sandals', although their use has been far more widespread in the USA than England (the English seemed to prefer classic 'T-bar' school sandal with only one cross bar).

An English reader who sent us the family snapshot here tells us, "Despite the fact this looks like two little girls, it is a picture of my father at about age 6 years (therefore the summer of 1916) and his sister Genevieve (who would have turned 4 that summer). In all his earliest pictures, my father wore what seems now like little girls' clothes. Dad and Aunt Genevieve here wear coordiated white outfits. They both have white sun hats to match their white outfits. He wears a white tunic suit with matching shrts. You cannot see it from here, but his shoes were white and an early version of a Mary Jane. He has white long stockings. Aunt Genevieve wears a white dress with white socks rather than stockings. I'm not sure why their hosiery was different. Dad probably graduated to boys' short pants at age seven when he started school. This was taken in the West End of St. John's, probably near the top of Topsail Road. My father, who died in 1999, traveled widely in his lifetime but Genevieve never traveled further than about 15 miles from the spot where this picture was taken. She died at age 89 in 2001."