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Here we see a CDV portait of Francis Holliday. He wears a sailor suit made up of a cap with an anchor pin, middy blouse and trousers. The cap had a cap tally with a ship name--HMS Dun????. He was 6 years, 5 months old. We know nothing about Francis and his family. The portrait is undated, but we would guess was taken in the 1880s. The studio was Wayland of Blackheath.
A British reader writes, "The ship's name on the boy's cap is clearly HMS Duncan, which makes me doubt the 1880s date. Put 'HMS Duncan' into Wikipedia and you'll see what I mean! The HMS Duncan that existed in the 1880's was old and out of date at a time when battleship design was changing very rapidly. My guess is that the date is actually the early 1900's, when the next HMS Duncan was one of Britain's newest battleships.
I'd have thought that sailor suits were still popular at that date, and there are very few clues in the photo. Do you know anything about the studio? I can't find anything quickly through Google - far too many hits."
Our British reader could be correct. HBC has a lot smaller British than American archive and can not yet effectively estimate the dates of British sailor suit styles. We do note that CDVs portraits in Britain were much less common in the 1900s than the 1880s and 1890s.
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