Figure 1.-- This is a group of children in North Newbald near Hull in Yorkshire. We know it is not a school group becuse the girls are wearing hugh fancy hats rather than tams--except for one girl with a gigantic tam. The boys are wearing the same caps they wear to school. Also notice all the Eton collars. We would guess that this a church group. The photograph is undated. We would guess it was taken in the earky 1910s, although the late-1900s is possible. Our dating is primarily because the peaked school cap is clearly becoming dominant. We still see flat caps, but the peaked school cap is clearly more prevalent.

Headwear continued to be widly worn by both adults and children. We see large groups of children with everyone or nearly everyone wearing headwear. It continued to be nearly universal and this included children. The most common group photos were school portraits, but here the children were often posed withhout their headwear. Other groups posed outside almost always show the children sporting headwear. This was especially the case in the early part of the decade, but was common even during the war years (1914-18). The basic change by the the 1910s was the shift to the school cap. The boys mostly wore what would become an iconic item--the peaked school caps. The diversity of caps seen in the 1900s changed in the 1910s. School caps were becoming almost uniersal for the boys. This was not a uniform matter. Boys at private schools did wear unifiorms, but not at the state primaries which most boys attended. Here boys mostly wore school caps even though it was not required by the school as was the case in the private schools. The caps most boys wore were plain. And the boys not only wore these caps to school, but everywhere else, even while playing after school. The girls also continued to commonly wear headwear, but the styles could not be more different than that of the boys. Rather than the simple school cap the boys wore, the girls like their mothers wore enormous flouncy creations when dressing up. We also see a few bonnets. When going to school, tams were more common for the girls. But whatever the style, girls almost always wore headwear.

Created: 1:52 PM 9/2/2020
Last updated: 1:52 PM 9/2/2020