Figure 1.--Most of the children wearing pinafores to school were girls. These English girls ttended a school in Barnstable, probasbly during the 1890s. Click on the image to see more about this school. Image courtesy of the MD collection.

We note pinafores being worn primarily from the late 19th to the early 20th century. We believe that pinafores were worn also commonly worn in the mid-19th century, but have much less injformation on this period. Many girls did not attend school in the early 19th century and we have only limited information on how they were dressed. We are not sure how common pinafores were and precisely when they became so common for girls. Also we have no information on gender concentions for pinafores in the early 19th century. We believe that some younger boys were dressed in pinafores during the early 19th century. We do not know, however, how common this was. It probably varied from country to country. It seems pinafores were more common for boys in the early period, but we have very limited information about schoolwear. Er have no information about how common pinafores were in the early and mid-19yth century, in part because photography was not a commercial technology until about 1840. There are, however, relatively few images availavle for the 1840s and 50s. Only in the 1860s do large number of photographic images become available. By this time we note that

Created: March 27, 2003
Last updated: March 27, 2003