*
United States boys clothes: chronology 1890s age grading
United States Age Grading: The 1890s
Figure 1.--Here we see a a cabiner card portrait of a large, unidentified family. It is undated, but the mount looks like it dates to the 1890s. There are 9 children who look to be about 1-14/15 years old and are arranged by height. Mother has very carefully age graded the boys. The two girls are dressed alike, but the boys are all age graded. The three older boys all wear sack suits, but onlt the older boy has long pants. Thev next boy has a collar andtie like his oldeer brother, but with knee pants. Thev next boy has a suit like his older brother, but an Eton collar and floppy bow,. The fourth boy wears a classic Fauntleroy suit with cut-away jacket and ruffled collar blouse. The two younger boys are mot yet nreached. The older boy wears a kilt suit. The younger one wears a dress as does the baby. The photographer was the Benedict studio in Litchfield, Connecticut.
Children's clothing age grading was very common in America during the 1890s. This is not readily apparent bin many photographs, especially individual potraits. which do mot depict children of different ages. Family portraits, however, are a different matter. They show childrn of various ages and how paremts, usually the mothers varied outfits on the basis of age. Sometimes wee see differenvce in children only a year or two separated. We have not found much in writing about these differences, but the photographic record shows the details in considerable detail. There was no definitive rules here. And there were differences between families as well as demographic and social class differences. Even so we casn see mamy general patterns emerging from the photographic record. Some of the most items used for grading included headwear, collars, bows, suit styling, skirts, and trousers. All of this was further complicated by choices with hair styling and breeching. Here we see a mother that has carefully employed many of the standard age grading devices (figure 1).
