Figure 1.-- Here we see the Ecole Privee connected with the Cathedral of St. Front. The name of the saint and cathedral is variusly spelled St. Font or St. Frionto. This photograph was taken School during winter 1947. The school was in Périgueux. a town located in Aquitaine, an important province in southwestern France. Note that despite the cold weather, most of the boys in front are wearing short pants. At least one boy wears Tin-Tin style knickers. This seems the general pattern in France during the 1940s. There might have been a few nore boys wearing knickers in the classes with older boys. otice the little girl at the upper right. She might have been the sister of the boy holding her or perhaps more likely the daughter of one of the teachers.

Knickers were one of the shortened-length pants which appeared in the mid-19th cenntury. Knickers like knee pants proved popular for younger French boys, although most boys wore long pants until the late-19th century. This we see boys wearing knickers to school. We believe they were primarily below-the-knee knickers which continued to be the case in the 20th century. We notice a lot of boys wearing knickers with three-quarter socks at the tutn-of-the 20th century. Unlike America, knee pants were not as dominant. But unlike America, knickers became less common in the 1910s. Most boys wore short pants. We see some teenagers beginning to wear knickers as a kind of transition befofe wearing long pants. There also seems to be a seasonal and regional factor. Knickers were especially common during the colder winter months. We think they were also more common in the northern mountaenous areas of France, but here our information is still limited. Younger boys after World War I rarely wore knickers, but we see some exceptions to this general trend. We do see a few schools where quite a number of boys wore knickers. We believe that here seasonal and/or regionl factors were involved. We note particularly long ski-pants knickers during the 1940s. We see the same style of knickers in Germany, but there they were primarily associated with the winter Hitler Youth uniform. We stull see knickers after the War, but the quickly disppeared by the early-50s.

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Created: 7:15 PM 4/18/2012
Last updated: 7:15 PM 4/18/2012