Figure 1.-- This portrait shows King George's oldest children, probably in 1905. (The post card was mailed in 1906). Princess Mary did wear sailor suits, but she did not wear them virtually all the time like her brothers. Notice Prince George here wears short pants with stripes while his older brother hsave long bell bottom trousers.

King George before and after the boys were breeched appears to have been particularly partial to sailor suits, first with kilt skirts and then as the boys got older, knee pants. At a fairly young age, about 7 or 8 years they were wearing their sailor suits with long pants. Although age was not the only factor. As younger boys they mostly wore sailor suits. I am not sure if Queen Mary shared the King's passion for sailor suits--at least in such a single-headed fashion. As in all matters, however, she dutifully deferred to her husband's judgement on all such matter. Note that the boys wore white sailor suits with a strip on the sleeve. I do not note this stripe on the sleeves of the two oldest boys when they wore sailor suits, bit it does appear on the suits of the three youngest boys. We see princes Henry and Geoorge wearing these strips. Later Prince John wore sailor suits with a similar strip. We are not sure what that stripe meant, but we note the older boy seems to wear the stripe on his right arm and the younger on his left arm. An English reader familiar with portraits of royals writes, "Amazing, I had not spotted this and have no idea of the reason behind it. Looking through the rest of my postcards of these children in sailor suits I notice that there does not seem to be a fiixed pattern for this, there are images of the boys with and without these stripes. Even their navy sailor suits have stripes on the sleeve Prince Edward on the right, Prince Albert on the left."

Created: 2:37 AM 5/6/2007
Last Updated: 2:37 AM 5/6/2007