Figure 1.--Here we see a group of five children, four boys and a girl. They are not identified, but members of the Princehorn/Hedges family. The younger boy wears a tunic suit and looks to be about 3 years old. The girl weas a dress and looks to be about 4 years old. The boys are probaly 5-7 yearspold, but most lool like thaey are about 6 years old. The children are probably mostly siblingd, but because of their ages, one or even two of the older boys have to be cousins or friends. All three older boys wear blouses. The snapshot is undated, but looks like the 1910s, probably the early-10s. Knickers had become stadard by the 1910s, but some younger boys still wore knee pants. All we know for sureis that the snapshot was taken in Mansfield, Ohio.

Boys commonly wore blouses as soon as they were breeched in the 19th century. This is the case of 6-year olds as well as older boys. Our information is limited on the early-19th century, but we see blouses from the earliest phptographic record (mid-19th century). It is often difficult to assess blouses and other shirt-like garments because most surviving photographic images were studiomportaiys. And noys commonly wore suit jackets for these portraits. This continued to be the case in the (early-20th century). Here it is much easier to assess because it was more common for boys to just wear blouses during the summer without suit jackets. With increasing informality and the appearance of the snapshot, we see much more about blouses in the early-20th century. And 6-years old boys very commomnly wore them, more so than girls. There werw no informal collarless sgirt typoes until well into the 20th century. We so not see shirts beginning to replace blouses until after World War I into the 1920s. T-shirts do not become popular until the 1930s. Blouses do not entirely disappear for 6 year old. We stull see some blouses fot very yoing boys available from botique outlets. Thedy were done for formal occassions. But they were not widely worn to any signiicant extent after the 1920s. Th principal exceptioin was shirt-like blouses without tails worn with junior Eton suits. They oftn jad Eton or Peter Pan collars.

Created: 12:21 AM 9/17/20193
Last updated: 12:21 AM 9/17/2019