Figure 1.--This cabinet card mount shows an unidentified vicar and young son. the father looks to be an Anglican vicar and wears clerical garb. He is seated and tenderly holding onto his son for the portrait. The boy looks to be about 5 years old. He wears a blouse with a large collar. We can't see what kind of pants he is wearing, but they are almost certainly knee pants. The portrait is undated but the tan color mount and silver lettering look like the early-20th century to us, but the late-1890s is a possibility. The studio was H & J Rigden in Bowes Park, London.
Queen Victoria died soon after the turn of the 20th century (1901). The 1900s are thus called the Edwardian age after King Edward VII who amomg other things was a real clothes hound. The late-19th century victorian age was known for formality, even for the children, if the parents could afford it. We continue to see many 1890s fashions still worn in the 1900s with perhaps a glimmer of informality, at least for the children. We notice boys wearing peaked school caps, flt caps, sailot headwear, and boaters. One notable change was we see fewer younger boys wearing dresses and other skirted grments. This convention did not disappear, but it declined notably. Another change was Fauntleroy styles declined such as lace collars, but we still see a variety of large collars for younger boys. The gleaming white stiff Eton collar continued to be a hall mark of boys' fashions. Even very young boys wore them They were very notable at school and not just for the privlidged classes. Eton collars were worn with and without neckwear. Suits were commonly worn and there were several styles. We see a lot of sailor suits and Norfolk jackets in the 1890s. Various trousers were worn with suits, including knee pants and knickers were common, usully worn with long stockings. State education was well established by the 1900s and most children attended school until bout 13years of age. Boy commonly began wearing long pants after leaving school at about 13 years of age. Boys from better off families continued school and might wear shortened length pants a little longer.
Vicar and Son (early-1900s)
This cabinet card mount shows an unidentified vicar and young son (figure 1). the father looks to be an Anglican vicar and wears clerical garb. He is seated and tenderly holding onto his son for the portrait. The boy looks to be about 5 years old. He wears a blouse with a large collar. We can't see what kind of pabts he is wearing, but they are almost certainly knee pants. The portrait is undated but the tan color mount and silver lettering look like the early-20th century to us, but the late-1890s is a possibility. The studio was H & J Rigden in Bowes Park, London.
Edward Marshal married Lucy Knight in 1879. He was the vicar of St. Andrew's Church in Sutton. This was a large village about 6 miles from Ely in East Anglia, England. The children were born between 1880 and 1889. There were 9 children in all. The reason we know so much about this family is that the youngest daughter kept all the letters she wrote to her brothers and sisters. It was a correspondence that lasted 60 years and came to an end with her death in 1980. The correspondence began in childhood and these letters tell about the things the children did and the correspondence continued into adulthood. This story is about the beginning of the correspondence in 1900.
A HBC contributor has a collection of photographs of the family of Tory MP George Gibbs the Baron Lord Wraxall and his family. The collection of photographs were mostly taken at Tyntesfield (the family estate), Eton, and this currently unidentified prep school). This would of course be a wealthy Edwardian family. One of the boys in the prep school photo is George Gibbs, but we do not know which boy. He also appears in the Eton photos and some family photos. Their home Tyntesfield is a spectacular Victorian house. Follow the meet the family link for more information on the Gibbs family.
Here we see a cabinet portrait of three unidentified English brothers. The portrait is undated, but looks to have been taken about 1900-05. We are not positive about this, but believe that it is fairly close to the dates. They look to be about 10-18 years of age. The youngest boy looks to be about 10-years old. He wears a single-brested, vested suite with tie and Eton collar. The suit has knicker pants and is worn with long stockings. He is holding a boater hat. This seems fairly standard for the time. We are less sure about the middle brother who looks to be about 13 years old. He is wearing a sailor suit. We do not think that this is a boys' sailor, but an actual uniform. This is both because of the boy's age the fact that the suit is an exact version of a Royal Navy uniform. What we re unsure is if he is a trainee on the naval training ship HMS Lion (1871-1905). A new HMS Lion battle cruiser was launched (1910) and served in World War I. If our dating is correct, he would have been a trainee. The portrait is also interesting because we can see from the background that it is not a studio portrait. There is no studio information on the mount. We suspect thrt the photographer was an itnerant photigrapher than went from house to house offring his ervices. Their older brother also wears a single breasted suit and boater, but with a soft collar.
This looks to us like a prosperous middle-class family on vacation. Unfortunately we have no information on the family other than it has a postcard back showing that it was English and taken some time in the eary-20th centurty. It looks like the 1900s to us, but the early-1910s is possible. We think the the family is on vacation, because of the donkey and cottage. Donkeys were often found at beach vacation sites, but may have been available at other resort areas. We are not sure if the donkey her is a real or studio stuffed donkey prop. The cottage is a studio backdrop looking like what a family might rent for a vacation stay. We suspect that they had a much grander home. The family had three children. The parents look rather old for such young children. They look to be about 6 months to 5 years old. The baby is done up in a great infant outfit complete with a huge bonnet. The boy wears a jacket with a Fauntleroy collar, short pants, and strap shoes. His tam has a pom, rather like a French navy cap. Their older sister wears a classic broad-brimmed hat with a light-colored summer dress, pantalettes, and black long stockings. She has a hair bow and ringlet curls.
This English cabinet card portrait unfortunantely comes with no information. The porttait is undated, but the mount suggests the 1900s decade. Theearly-1910s is possible. Given the similarity of dress, this is probably a family portrit. The age range vis faesible. They look to be about 2-15 years old. There is woman in the middle surrounded by girls, three of which are wearing bonnets. The child at the lower right may be a boy, but we are not sure. Areader writes, "At first glance, I thought the child in upper left in the sailor suit was a girl with long hair, but the more I look at her/ him the more uncertain I become. To me it is very possible that the child is a boy who has yet to have his hair cut. The girl in the far left bottom row is definitely a girl and she is wearing a ruffled sailor like collar and a bonnet like head covering as well as all the younger children except the two wearing sailor straw hats. I suspect those two are boys and are strategically placed in the picture. The image is not clear enough for me to be 100% certain but it is my guess."
Here we have a fashionable Edwardian mother and her three children about 1-8 years old. Th older boy wears a jacket knee pants sailor suit with a jersey/sweater rather than a dickey. The collar is all white, contrasting with the dark jacket. He has socks rather than long stockings which destinguishes it from an American family. The middle boy wears a tunic suit with a huge fancy ruffled collar. The photograph is a divided-back post-card studio portrait. It is not dated, but was probably taken about 1905-10. England was the first country to introduce divided-back postcards (1902).
This is the family of Sir John Kirk, an important British naturalist, explorer, photopgrapher, and explorer. Sir John was born in Scotland, but because of his diplomatic career became more associated with England. The 1909 portait we have found certainly looks very English, a family you might expect of an important diplomat. An important diplomat would have wanted a home in or near London. Of course Sir John spent most of is diplomatic career in Zanzibar. He is buried in Seven Oaks south of London, not in Scotland. So we suspect that the Kirk family can best be described as an English family. Here the wife can also decide the chsaracter of the fammily. Sir John married Miss Helen Cooke (1867). The problem is that we do not know any thing about her. We suspect she was English, but do not know for sure. This was at an early stage of his diplomatic careeer, so the older children were presumbly raised in Zanzibar. Here we just do not hsave details.
Here we see Princess Daisy with her two oldest sons. It difficuklt to sort out their nationality. Princess Daisy was born British and married a German, making her home in Germany. Hervhusband was a Germnn arusticrat, byt became Pooish. Their two oldest sons fought with Polish bd British fircesc during World War II. There were a lot of impoverished aristocrats in Britain during the Gilded Age. One sollution was to marry rich American debutantes. The Anerican economy by the late-1870s was booming. Fortunes were being made. Edith Warton wrote about this in The Buccaneers set in the 1870s. One product of this Was Winston Churchill. There were also impoverished female aristocrats. One impoverished female aristocrat, the vivacious Mary Theresa Olivia née Cornwallis-West, found a rich German--Hans Heinrich XV von Hochberg. He was a member of one of the wealthiest European noble families controlling large estates and coal mines in Silesia (now part of Poland). Notable witnesses at theur marrige were Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) and his wife Princess Alexandra (1891). And through her husband she became aquainted with Emperor Wilhem II. Sge became known as Princess Daisy after her mnarriage and moved to Silesia (then part of the German Empire) where she lived in great luxury. A photograph of the Princess with her children appeared in an issue of the British magazine Country Life (1910). She was known in German as the Fürstin von Pless. She becamne a social reformer and was a voice for peace. Unfortunztely Kaiser Wilhelm had other inclinations. During World War I she served as a nurse and her husband served in the German Army. After the War he rhusband became a Polish citiizens as his estates were in the new independent Polish state. She divorced him (1922). She published none too discreet diaries. She was lived in gnteel povery during the NAZI era in German Silesia (1943) beforev the arrival of the Red Army. Her two oldest sons identified as British and Polish and fought ith the RAF and Anders Army.
