Figure 1.--These two unidentified siblings wear identical dresses and pinafores. They look to be about 5-8 years old. he older child is obviusly a girl. We are not sure about the younger child. The CDV portrait is undated, but we would guess it was taken in the late-1860s. The early-70s is also possible. The photographer is T.H. Challis St. Johns Studio in Seven Oakssouth of London.

We only begin to see large numbers of English photographic portrait in the 1860s. Dags, Ambros, and some CDVs were taken in the 1850s, but not in large numbers. The numbers of images were only a fraction of those taken in America. The popularity of the CDV mean that for the first time we have large numbers of portraits in the 1860s. And we see children wearing pinafores in these early portraits. We do not see very many, primarily because mothers wanted the children dressed up in their best clothes for the portraits. Thus the pevalence in the photographic record is not a good indicator of actual prevalence. We think pinafores were virtually universal for girls. For boys it was mostly pre-school ages, although we have no confirmtion of this. The small number of images we have found so far do not iedntify the children. And the younger children are often difficult to identify. We have only noted white pinafores, but our sample is so small that wear mot sure just how common this was.

Created: 7:54 AM 9/12/2017
Last updated: 7:54 AM 9/12/2017