Figure 12.--HBC believes that this family was probably photograpghed in the 1900s. While the two younger children with their hairbows look like girls to the modern reader, there are reasons to believe that the older child on the left may be a boy.

Reader Assessment

An HBC contributor reports, "The child with the ringlets looks like a boy to me. I don't think "he" is wearing a dress and whatever he is wearing it much plainer the his little sister. If it is a girl why would Mom go to so much trouble with the hair and then put her in such a plain outfit. Why not a more feminine dress dress like her sister."

Appearance

HBC concurs. Your assessment raises some very good points. The older child on the left certinly looks like a boy, but then again, mother is not ravashing beauty. A HBC contributor notes the child under discussion looks just like his father and the younger child and older brother look like the Mother. Also notice the large age gap between the older brother and the younger children. Before birth control this would be quite unusual and may have lead to the child, when it was finally born, to be babied and dress up and shown off.

Clothing

The outfit is indistinct, but it appears to be some kind of front buttoning affair. HBC rather agrees with the reader. We concur that it seems a bit incongruent to go to such lengths to do ringlets and then choose a very plain dress.

A HBC contributor notes that he has found few Victorian girls on eBay with dresses that button up the front. They button on the left, however, and usually have a bow or some other decoration at the bottom of the buttons and the waist. I found one image that had both boys and girls in button up the front dresses. The boys were easy to reconize because of their age and short hair. The buttons on their dresses were also different and the girls had bobs at the waist.

Hair Style

Another question is why the hair done so differently. Wouldn't the younger child be more likely to be done in ringlets than the older child. Even a younger boys's hair would not be done like the child on the right. In contrast, ringlet curls was an accepted child for a boy or girl. A HBC contributor details with HBC's point about the ringlets. Most of the images of boys with long have it done up in ringlets where as girls exhibit a wide variety of hair styles including ringlets.

Chronology

A factor which has to be considered is the date of the inage. The image looks to be like the 1900s. We know that European boys still wore dresses and hairbows in the 1900s, however, it was becoming les common--especially for an older boy.

Age

The older child on the left looks 10 or 11 to me. It's hard, however, to assess age. A HBC contributor guesss younger than 10 -11.

Country

This image looks European to HBC, primarily because of the father's beard. The image was, howeverm being offered for sale in Chicago so it likely European. A HBC contributor doesn't know if it is European or not but doubts it. Very few images on eBay are European--unless the seller is also European.

Comments

I agree that the child appears to be a boy due to the front buttoning blouse/dress/jacket, ringlet curls, nonwhite and plain appearance. The obvious girl on the right has a fancier blouse, hair not in ringlets and is in white. I think 10 looks about right, but I am pretty bad at this.