Figure 1.--This CDV shows an unidentified Gosport boy. Unfortunately the child is mot identified. He wears a plain belkted tunic with a tartan skirt. Notice the Scottish Gengary he is holding and the pantalettes. The center part oten indicate a girl, but the tunic to us more suggests a girl. We are not sure about nage, but the child lookks to us like school age, perhaps 6-7 years old. A reader writes, "This boy looks older than most in his Glengarry cap. I would guess that the chair height of the seat is 18 inches to 20 inches making the boy about 48 inches tall. I think that would place him around 7 or 8 years old." The portrait is undated, but looks like it was taken in the 1860s, perhaps the early-70s. The CDV had pointed corners. The studio is West in Gosport. Our reader further cooments, "Yes, I was not certain about 8 either. I based that on 1930s US catalog for age size and height of 48 inches. That is so loose, US children may have been shorter (I think in general the same or taller), heights of children vary tremendously etc., but thought it was more likely the child would be close to the clothing scale than so I went with 8."

English boys usually wore pants/trousers with tunics. We note a few images with boys wearing skirted garments rather than trousers. We have not found any American examples, but we have found a few English examoles. The ones we have found so far come from the mid-19th century. We have not found any examples from the late-19th century. It is not entirely clear what was being worn under the tunic. It could be a dress as the tunic covers the bodice, but it could also be a skirt. Because of the tunic, all we can see is the hem of the skirt. We see some tartan pattern, so it may have been an effort to give a skirt a kilt look. We do not have enough examples here to do much in the way of assesing this tunic option yet

Created: 6:17 AM 3/29/2019
Last updated: 12:39 PM 4/1/2019