Figure 1.-Ernest Shepard wears a lace collar with his velvet Fauntleroy party suit in a photograph taken about 1885. His older brother and he wore dresses when younger, but do not appear to have worn kilts. For everyday wear, Ernest usually wore sailor suits.

Some interesting details are available on specific families as well as articles from fashion magazines. We have also added some historical accounts as well as published memoirs. We have also included named portraits, even though there is often little information available. HBC's English readers are encouraged to provide HBC information about their personal experiences or historical accounts with which they are familiar. These personal accounts add greatly to the other informnation HBC has garnered from fashion magazines, catalogs, and available images. Often the personal perspective is not avialable from these other sources. Thus these personal accounts are a very important part of HBC.

HBC has collected details on a number of English boys during the 1880s, including the Allinghams, Shepards, and the Stracheys. Especially the Shepard account provides a wonderful glimse of an English boyhood in the 1880s. Boys wore kilts, Fauntleroy suits and sailor suits. Of course the sailor suit was most preferred. Younger boys wore dresses and some boys wore smocks.

Robinson, Edward and William (1870s and 80s)

Edward and William Robinson were the grandsons of a country pastor. A HBC reader has sent us a wonderful collection of family photographs from the 1870s and 80s. The Victorians loved to create albums. Our reader has found one of the family photograph albums. The photographs not only show how the boy dressed but convey a great deal of information about contemprary life style trends. The collection is especially interesting because the photographs are not just static formal studio portraits, but rather family snap shots from an era when sbap shots were not very common and the term had not even been invented.

The Stracheys

The Stracheys was a well conected Victorian family. the family produced politicans, statesmen, and historical and sociological writers. The Strachey family was photographed by the famed French photographer Nadar, presumably while Sir Richard and his family were in Paris (figure 1). Two older boys are wearing Eton suits. Lytton and his sister Marjorie look quite similarly dressed with long hair, bangs, and Fautleroy-looking outfits. Some of the best known family members, and details (where available) on their childhood and clothing are described here.

The Shepards

One of the most delightful childhood memories of Victorian England is Ernest Shepard's lovely book, Drawn From Memory. Shepard is the artist who illustrated A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh. Shepard grew up in London during the 1880s. He recalls remarkably detailed images of horse-drawn London where a penny was wealth for a child. A warm, delightful view of Victorian England emerges from the book, recollections of the Jubilee, seaside bathing at Eastbourne, hop-picking in Kent, the Drury Lane Pantomine, aunts and illnesses, hansom cabs, hobby horses, park outings, and pea-soup fogs. Shepard details the experiences of he and his brother and describes them through their childhood eyes.

The Allinghams

English watercoloist Helen Allingham was born near Burton on Trent. Her family settling in Birmingham, after the untimely death of her father in 1862. Allingham studied art at the Birmingham School of Design. She is widely recognized as an important English watercolor painter of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Most of her work is exteriors, but a few are of her children, often in formal clothes. This provides a rare insight into play clothes in the late 19th Century as most of the available portraits and photographs show the children in their dress party clothes.

The Hardys

The two boys names are Charles and John (Jack) Hardy, they are the sons of Charles Stewart Hardy and Fanny Alice Hardy of Chilham Castle, Chilham, Kent. The brothers had two sisters Violet and Mabel. At the time of the 1881 census Violet was 9 years old and Charles was 7 years old, Charles was the older boy so I think that dates the photo to around 1885. This portrait is one of a batch of photos. They all came from one large album which has been lost. II total there are 82 photos (42 CDVs and 40 Cabinet Cards). One of the individual portraits has a sliver of a newspaper cutting glued to the front. It reads: "On the 11th July [year not specified] at Westgate on Sea, JOHN, second son of C.S.Hardy of Chilham, Kent, aged 11 years." I'm fairly confident that this is a death notice, I cannot think of any other circumstance in which such words would be used. While best remembered as being worn with Eton jackets, we have noted many boys, especially middle-class and working-class boys, wearing them with other types of suits. Perhaps the most common was the Norfolk suit. These boys, boviously from an affluent familt, look to be wearing their Eton collars with flannel suits. Here we are not sure if this is a school uniform or mother just liked ton dress the boys identically.

Francis Holiday (1880s)

Here we see a CDV portait of Francis Holliday. He wears a sailor suit mafe up of a cap with abnchor pin, middy blouse and trousers. The cap had a cap tlly with a ship name--MS Dun????. He was 6 years, 5 molnths 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.

Percy ????? (1880s)

A HBC reader has a collection of seven photographs of an English boy. His name was Percy ????. The portraits show him at various stages of his life from todler to about age 10 years. It is a fascinating collection showing the clothes worn by a boy at various stages of his boyhood. The early portraits show Percy wearing dresses and his hair done in ringlets. The portraits were taken in the 1880s. Some of the portaits were taken at Proctor of Bolton. Each of the images has his name and the date written of the back. Percy wears dresses and long hair in all of the photo except the last one. None of the dresses appear to be "boy" dresses. I would guess he was breeched at 9 or 10 years of age. In the last dress photo, judging from the height of the post he is standing next to, he looks to be the same age as the last photo, which has him in a knicker suit.

Created: March 9, 1999
Last updated: 4:50 AM 6/27/2010