Figure 3-1.-- This is a detail from this 1803 Croft family portrait. The younger boy in this detail of the photograph wears a long pants skeleton suit. Skeleton suits by the turn of the 19th century were mostly worn with long pants. |
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One of Sir William Beechey's most charming family portraits was the painting of the four sons of Sir Richard Croft of Croft Castle (figure 3). He painted it in 1803. Francis, aged three, wears a white dress and a lace-edged muslin bonnet trimmed with blue ribbons. Also notice the matching necklace. The oldest boy, Herbert. has a sad expression. His isolated position in relation to his brothers may be due to the fact that this is a posthumous portrait. He died in 1803 while a pupil at Westminster school, a renowned English public school. The brother in front wears a red jacketed skeleton. Beechey's charming family portraits chronicle the emergence of the first dedicated children's clothing. Boys are shown in sailor suits. Before the French Revolution (1789) they were always worn with knee breeches. As the turn of the 19th century apoproched they were increasingly worn with long pants. The different styles of collars are chrociled in his portraits. The increasongly popular tendency to dress boys of different ages destinctly are also clearly seen in his portraits. Beechey's family portraits provide wonnderful examples of all the various clothing styles worn by boys in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Young boys wore dresses just like their sisters. Francis Croft at age 3 wears a dress that has no boyish design features what so ever. It is a white dress, a common color for boys wearing dresses. It is trimmed with blue ribbon. This might be taken as an indication that the child is a boy, but this portrait was painted before modern color conventions were established. Notice that the Oddie girls wear both pink and blue ribbons (figure 1). Not only does Francis wear a dress like any girl would wear, but he also wears a cap that a girl might have worn and a girlish looking necklace.
Henry Oddie in the 1789 wears knee breeches. This was the yeat the French Revolution broke out. Gentlemen still wore knee breeches as did most boys. Some boys by the 1780s were wearing long trousers with their skeleton suits, but before the French Revolution knee breeches were still more common. They were considered uncouth by men of quality. Long pants were for rough laborers. The Duke of Wellington himself was once denied entry to a London club because he was wearing long trousers.
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Long pants became acceptable for boys from good families in the 1790s, one of the many influences of the French Revolution. Note how the boy in the Form family wears a long pants skeleton suit well before the turn of the 19th century. Boys of this age are noted for preferring to dress like their fathers. One winders what boys might have thought about wearing long pants which at the time were employed here as a juvenile style--rather than the knee breeches that their fathers and older brothers would have worn. No adult gentleman at this time, certainly not the boy's father, would have worn long trousers in polite society. By the turn of the 19th century, most boys wore their skeleton suits with long trousers. They also began to be worn by school boys at this time. Gentlemen still, however, continued wearing knee breeches. It was not until the 1820s that they were commonly worn by men in polite society.
Lace trimmed collars were widely worn by boys in the late 18th century. Often they wore comfortable open collars. These styles reflected the writings of Rosseau and other social philosophers of thge day who had argued for specialized styles of clothing for children reflecting their needs. Until the late 18th century, children simply wore scaled down versions of their parent's clothes. Note how the two earlier portarits of the children (1789 and the eraly 1790s) show the boys in elaborate, but comfortable open cillars. After the turn of the 19th century collars become more varied. Open collars were also worn in the 1800s, but less comfortable looking closed collars also appeared--sometines high collars. This fashion trend can be seen with the Croft boy wearing the skeleton suit which was paonted in 1803.
Skeleton suits were the first specialized child's style. Many consider them one of the most stylish boys' suits of all time. They were the principal boys' outfit from the late 19th century through the 1830s and were still worn in the 1840s. They are most associated today with the era of Charles Dickens and Kate Greenway. Notably it was a boys' style. Girls had to wait many more years before specialized clothes were designed for them. The forst skeleton suits were worn with knee breeches, but the classic skeleton suit was worn with long trousers. Buttons were liberally used on both the buttons and blouse/jacket. Notice that the Croft brother has three colums of buttons on his jacket. Also bright colors were often used on these outfits--such as the red jacket. Red appears to have been a particularly popular color for skeleton suits. After the skeleton suit passed out of style, for more than a 100 years, colors for boys clothing became such more muted--with only a few stylistic exceptions such as the Zouave suit of the mid-19th cerntury.
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While I can not be sure, I believe the white blouse, short black jacket, and brown long pants was priobably the clothes he wore at Winchester School--one of Englans's most famous public school. To what extent the school in 1803 set the dress standards or insisted on a uniform, I do not know at this time. The fact that he died at school is one indicator explaining why many wealthy children at the time were educated at home. It was noy until about 1870s that it became common to send almost all children from wealthy families to these schools.
Knee breeches for formal dress were normally worn with white stockings. With long pamts skeleton suits, white ankle socks were commonly worn. While sleleton suits were worn with long trousers, often they ended just at the ankles so that you could see the socks. Note how both boys in long pants sleleton suits wear white socks with black shoes. Given the social class of these children they almost certainly were silk stockings.
Boys in the late 19th century still commonly wore their hair long as does Henry Oddie and the Ford boy (figures 1 and 2). Note the Oddie boy's his hair is worn much like his sisters. Of course in 1789 men wore their hair long also--usually with wigs. By the turn of the 19th century short hair was common and wigs had virtually disappered, except innoccupations such as academia and the law courts. The change was quite abrupt--another impact of the French Revolution. Long hair and wigs was seen as a syle associated with the airistocracy. Interestingly, the short hair style crossed the Channel to England, even though the English supported the French monarchy and after the advent of Napoleon wa at war with France. The short hair was not, however, close cropped. The Croft boys, for example, wear their hair down to their ears (figure 3).
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