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Historical Girls' Clothing: Countries--England

English girls sailor dresses
Figure 1.--This child and probablyu grandfather are unidentified. The child certainly kooks like a boy, but he seems a little old to still be wearing a drss, perhaps 8 years old or so. The dress is a little unusual. It seems to be a tunic top with a skirted bottom. We also notice a collar ruffle and lacy wrist cuffs. The child has a rather enigmatic, perhaps boyish smile. Notice what looks like a watch fob. That is soime thing you almost never see a girl wearing. The cabinet card portait is undated, perhaps the 1870s, although we are not at all sure. The studio is Swanson in Irvine.

We rely heavily on the photographic record in building our HBC and HGC websites. Mpst of the images we have archived do not identify when or where they were taken or who the subject is and other useful indicators like age. Some do, but most do not. Some of this can be worked out by examining the image to a reasobable level of accyracy. One of the easiest matters to figure out is usually gender. It is usually possible even when the children are not unidentified to work out the gender. We have found a few images for which we are unable not able to work out the gender. We see boys wearing skirted garments and girls with short hair and thus these obvious indicators are far from perfect, esocially in the 19th century when younger boys might wear dresses and other skirted garments. Thus the gender question is complicated, especilly for younger children. Many of the characteristics of men and women are often not yet apprent with younger children. So we welcome reader insights here.

Physical Appearance

The most obvious way of trying to determine gender when it is not specified is the physical appearance of the child. Now while that in most cases will provide the correct answer, it is not accurate enough for our purposes. This is especially true for younger children whose facial characteistics are much more similar than adult men and women. The older the children get, facial features are much more relaiable, but even as adults not fullproof. Here we have a CDV portrait, probably taken un the 1870s. Two of the three children are obvuiusly boy and girl. But one of the children wearing a dress by all objective characteristics. looks like a boy, yet we know she is a girl named Eliza. And these are not very young children. They blook to be about 8-14 years old. We point this out to show how diffuclt it is to identify children in 19th century photography.

Figure 1: Bangs and Dress

This child and probably grandfather are unidentified. The child certainly looks like a boy, but he seems a little old to still be wearing a dress, perhaps 8 years old or so. The dress is a little unusual. It seems to be a tunic top with a skirted bottom. We also notice a collar ruffle and lacy wrist cuffs. The child has a rather enigmatic, perhaps boyish smile. The cabinet card portait is undated. We would guess it was taken in the 1870s, although we are not at all sure. The studio is Swanson in Irvine.

Figure 2: White Dresses

White outfits were very popular at the turn-of-the 20th century in both Englnd and America. We see that in other countrties as well, but it seems especually notable in England and Amerriuca. We see lage numbers of girls wearing white dresses aswell as younger boys. An even for somewhat older oys there were a variety of white ouyfits sych s tunicc suits. And we see countless boys wearing fabncy white bresses. But white dresses stand out as hihely popular at this time. Here we see two unidentified Englisgh children weating white with white long stockings and white shoes. They look to be about 5-8 years old. The older child we think must be a girl, but the younger child we are not so sure about. he looks very boyish to nus, but you can bever be sire with children at this age. Here we need some identificatiin to make any definitivesttement and there is no infomtion on this card. The cabinet card portrait is also undated. The style of the bount suggests to us it was taken at the turn-of-the century, perhps 1905 or so. The studio was Gibson & Sons in Nottongham.








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Created: 3:17 AM 4/6/2014
Last updated: 1:04 PM 8/22/2022