Figure 1.--This is a Carte de visite (CVD) of an unidentified English boy. He wears a short jacket with wide lapel and knee pants. The bow and jacket suggest the 1870s, bit the short knee pnts seem more like the 80s. He is posed for a studio portrait with walking stick in hand and his bowler hat on a serpentine chest. The image was taken by G. Brammer, Artist & Photographer, Trentham Rd. Longton.

We know whenb bowler hats first appeared --1849. Thus we know thsat they are a hat which was not worn until the second half of thge 19th century. We are not sure when boys began wearing them. We do not have any images from the 1850s and our archive from the 1860s is still limited. We do not know how rapidly the bowler developed as a popular hat style. Nor doi we know if boys wotre them from the beginning. Surely there were boys wearing them in the 1870s. We are just beginning to acquire a few images of English boys wearing bowlers. We do not have ny actual images until the 1880s. We suspect tht they were more common with teenagers than pre-teens, but we do notice quite a number of pre-teens wearing them. And we know they were worn in the 1890s. We see boys wearing bowlers in the early-20th century. We no longer see boys wearing them after World War I (1914-18).

Created: 7:37 AM 10/3/2011
Last updated: 7:37 AM 10/3/2011