Figure 1.--This CDV portrait shows the Clark children. R.W. was 10 years old. Mary Tanner was 8 years old. T.W. wears a vested cut-away jacket suit with knee pants. Mary wears wears a white dress with a plaid waist band and decorarive pantalettes. Both children earwhite long stckings and low-cut shoes. The portrait is undated, but we woud guess was taken in the 1870s. The portrait was taken by the Millard & Robinson Studio in Dublin.

Sailor suits were an English creation commonly worn by English boys. Although Irish fashions commonly followed English fashions, we do not yet have information on the popularity of sailor suits in Ireland. We do see a few portraits of Irish boys wearing sailor suits in the 19th century. The suits we see look just like the ones worn in England. The styles and prevalence, however, is difficult to assess because our Itish archive is limited. We do note Irish boys wearing sailor suits. We suspect that the fashion was limited to middle- and upper-class families and was concentrated in the cities. This is suggested by the few images we have archived, but the number of images are too dmall to provide a relible sample. And many rural znd low-income families could not afford to have portrits taken. Ireland was much less urbanized and induyrialized than England and we suspect that sailor suits were less common in Ireland and Britain. And political issues may also be a factor. We suspect that after World War I than the sailor suit may have had an English look to it and thus not very popular in the new Irish Free State. And at the time, the sailor suit was decclining in popularity in Ireland itself.