Figure 1.--This undated family CDV card portrait shows the wide-brimmed sailor hats (note the different styles) worn by younger boys and the fancy hat styles worn by girls. The stles look to us like the 1890s in part because the suits are done with traditional styles, following Royal Navy uniforms. The portrait could, however, have easily been taken in the late-80s.

We see a variety of headwear worn but English boys in the 1890s. The styles seem very similar to the 1880s. We still see younger boys wearing tams. Wide-brimmed sailor hats were very popular for younger boys in the 1890s. They were worn with variously outfits. They were of course worn with sailor suits, but we also see them worn with other outfits like Fauntleroy suits. The wide-brimmed sailor hat was made with both flat and rounded vrowns and were worn by both boys and girls. Girls also had a variety of more decorative wide-brimmed styles. Bots commonluy wore peaked caps to school. This was the most popular cap style, but we also notice a variety of other stykes worn by school age boys. We note them at private schools with uniforms as well as state schools without unifirms. The styles were basically the same although the colors varied. We also see boys wearing boaters in the late 19th century. Again this was more common as a school style. We also note boys wearing adult styled headwear as well as headwear styles that we can not yet identify. Most of our images come from studio photography. The wonderful photography of Francis Meadow Sutcliffe from the Yorkshire port town of Whitby shows us that even working-class boys commonly wore a variety of caps.

Created: 6:23 AM 7/29/2009
Last updated: 8:24 PM 12/12/2012