Figure 1.--The boys on this farm wore immaculate white pinafores to work with cows. Note the belt worn by the younger boy and the ruffles worn by the older boy. I'm not sure about the date of this photograph, but would guess England after the turn of the century.

Pinafores were essentially abbreviated smocks worn over other clothes for meals and play. I'm not positive when the pinafore originated. It appears to have appeared in the alate 18th Century or early 19th Century. There may have been a variety of different styles, but by the mid-19th Century back buttoning pinafores seem to have been most common. Pinafore lengths seemed to have been largely determined by the lengths of the dresses in style during any given period. After the turn of the 20th Century pinafores were not commonly worn by boys, although they were worn by French boys after the style had passed out of fashion for boys in England. Pinafores for girls in the 20th Century became very fancy, stylish garments and not the utilitarian garments of the 19th Century.

Utility

Pinafores were widely used in the late 19th and early 20th century to protect clothes. Formal clothing was much more common at the time. People did not wear casual clothes as is now common. Nor did ordinary people have many changes of clothing. In addition clothing was much more expensive in real terms. Given the cost--very important to protect. This was especially true at work.

Image

While we tend to think of pinafores today as fancy adornments for prissy girls' dresses, the pinafores origins as we have seen were much more humble. Women workers in mills, shops, and other places commonly wore pinafores. Boys were often employed in jobs that were so dirty that pinafores were inappropriate, plus the loosely fitting garment would prove cumbersome or might interfere with the work. This was not the case in all instances and in some instances working boys like girls were outfitted in pinafores

Figure 1

The image above show two boys in two different pinafores. Although difficult to tell, they must be boys as they appear to be wearing peaked school caps. Girls would have never worn boys' school caps. Both are the back fastening type which had evolved by the mid-19th Century. Both are white which had become the standard color for pinafores. The younger boys wears a smock-like pinafore covering most of his clothes, except for the sleeves. The older boys wears his pinafore without a belt. The low cut collar showing clothes underneath and is fringed with ruffles, not precisely a utilitarian pinny that you would associate with farm work.

The photograph leads us to several questions, especially as nothing is known about the photograph.
Country: The source of the photograph was the United States, but it looks more English, or perhaps Irish to me. A British contributor mentions that he has seen old photos of that breed of cow.
Date: Outdoor photograph was complicated, but not unknown until the 1890s. Thus the photograph is likely to have been taken around the turn of the Century, probably between 1895-1910. I would guess it would have been about 1910.
Circumstances: It is possible the boys are working on the family farm and had a very fastidious mom. One HBC contributor suggests that it was possibly a prize beast so the kids got dolled up to pose with it. Their pinnas seem to fine for everyday farm work. Another possibility is that the boys are in an English workhouse or orphanage. Especially workhouses had farms attached to raise food and the boys could have had chores there. Work houses were still functioning in England as late as the early 1920s. At such institutions the children were required to be very careful with their clothes. But again the pinafores may be just to fine for workhouse wear.
Clothes: It is impossible to tell what the boys are wearing under their pinnies. It is probably a jacket, kneepants, and long stockings. However the fact that no details of a collar show at the boys' neck suggests that they may not be wearing a jacket and shirt. It is possible that they may be wearing smocks or dresses as these garments came without distinct collars. We know, for example, that workhouse and orphanage boys were sometimes dressed in dresses or more commonly smocks .

Note: This has proven a difficult image to assess. Do let me know if you have any thoughts.

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Created: December 1, 1998
Spell checked: August 2, 1999
Last updated: August 2, 1999