Figure 1.--We know virtually nothing about this portrait, but it is clearly English. The outfits the boys are wearing suggest the tirn of the 20th century. We would guess the 1890s, but the early-1900s is possible. s the 1900s, pro. The boys are wearing both straight-leg knee pants and knickers. The knickers seem more common. All the boys are wearing long stockings. Norfolk suits seem popular, but we notice other styles as well. Many of the boys wear Eton collars. We are not sure what the 7 stood for, perhaps the 7th year class.

English schoolboys also wore Knee pants in the 19th and early-20th century. Unfortunately we have only limited information at this time. We hope to develop more information on this. We have not noted a lot of images of English school boys wearing knee pants, but our 19th century archive is very limited. They were very common in America. We are not yet sure how common they were in England. We are not sure abour the mid-19th centurty, but believe that they think that they were widely worn in the late-19th. Long pants seem dominant until after the 1870s. We also notice boys wearing knee pants to school in the early-20th century. What we are not yet sure about is to what extent boys wore knee pants rather than knickers. Our initial assessment is that boys wore knickers more in the late-19th century, but after the turn of the century, knee pants became more common. This seems almost the opposite of trebnds in America. We think that boys commonly wore knee pants to state primary schools. More information, however, is needed on this. We note many images of boys wearing knickers at private boardung schools. We note some images of boys wearing both knee pants and knickers in some school portraits. The boys wore lon sockings with knee pants, but they do not seem a long as the long stockings that American boys wore.

Created: 2:09 AM 1/23/2013
Last updated: 2:09 AM 1/23/2013