Figure 1.--This Irish family in 1905 dresses much as a middle-class English family. Notice the one boy still wearing a pinafore.

HBC at this time has only limited information on the garments worn by Irish boys. Yonger boys commonly wre dresses, but even some older boys also wore them in rural areas. Kilts have been reported in Ireland, but in modern times they do not appear to have been very common. The caps, suits, shirts, pants, and hosiery worn in Ireland appears to have been very similar to English fashions. Ireland has only a small population and as part of the United Kingdom, the Irish Republic was created in the 1920s, it is understandable that English fashions would have been so influential. Even after independence, people in Ireland and England maintained close ties. Many Irish immigrated to or worked in England.

Caps

HBC knows of no difference between the caps worn by English and Irish boys.

Dresses

Irish boys were commonly outfitted in dresses until they were 12 or 13 years old. This practice was most common in rural areas, but it was not unknown in towns. Folk lore warned mothers to hide their boys from the "faries," so they were dressed as girls, usually in long flannel dresses. I have little information on these flannel dresses. Much of the nformation described below is derived solely from an examination of the available photographic images. Please let me know if you have any additional information or note anything in the photographs.

Smocks

HBC has no information about smocks in Ireland.

Pinafores

HBC has little information about pinafores in Ireland. We believe that as in England they were very commonly worn by girls before World War I. We have less information about boys. We believe that some younger boys also wore them in the 19th century as shown by the image here (figure 1).

Kilts

HBC has little real historical information on Irish kilts, as oposed to Scottish kilts which appears to have been much, more extensively covered in the historical literature. I plan to pursue historical information, but if visitors to this site have some historical information, I would greatly appreciate any insights you could share. One source suggests considerable similarity between the kilts worn by the Galeic people of Ireland and Scotland until the 16th century. The kilts worn by Irish pipers and dancers appear to have little relationship to the actual kilts worn by the Gaelic people of Ireland. The current Irish kilt appears to be a copy of the short kilt fashioned by an Englishman in the 18th century and embraced by a generation of romantic poets and authors and even Queen Victoria herself. Unlike Scotland there appears to have been no real revival of kilt wearing in Ireland beyond ceremonial occasiins or ethnic events. The British Army did adopt a kilt uniform for some Irish units.

Fauntleroy Suits

Sailor Suits

Sailor suits were commonly worn by English boys, although Irish fashions commonly followed English fashions, we do not yet have information on the popularity of sailor suits in Ireland.

Suits

Suit styles in general closely followed English fashions.

Shirts

Eton Collars

Eton collars were very commonly worn in Ireland. The fashion is nearly identical to that in England as English fashions were adopted in Ireland as until the 1920s the entire island was part of the United Kingdom. We are unsure when Eton collars began to be worn in Ireland, but suspect that it was about the sane time as England. We have few actual images at this time, but one 1889 drawing shows that the Eton collar was a part of smart boys' attire in the 1880s. The only signicant difference in Ireland was probably that the poverty thaere probably prevented many boys from wearing Eton collars and other fashionable clothes.

Sweaters

Pants

Hosiery

Footwear

We habe not yet done any work on Irish footwear, but we do have an Irish barefoot page.