Figure 1.--Here are two brothers wearing what looks kike identical collar buttoming suits. They look to be aboutv 5-9 yerats old. Their little brothr looks to be about 3 years old and wears a jacketed dress, suggesting that boys wre breechd at bout 4 years of age. Notice how long the skirt is in contrast to his brothers' knee pants. .

Most but not all boys had been breeched by age 5 years of age. Often nothers chose arange of outfits lile tunics, sailor suits, Fauntleroy suits when a boy was first breeched. Thus we see fewer pre-school boys wearing collar-buttoning jackets than these other alternatives. Even so we see quite a number of 5-year olds wearing these jackets and often without any age gradding differences with older brothers. Clearly much less than half of the 5 -year olds wore these suits. In school portaits we often see more than hlf the school-age boys weating these collar-buttoning suits. The photographi record is so large that we have nany example of 5-year olds earing these suits. Unlike school age boys, we can not use our 19th century chool pages to assess prevalence.

Created: 12:51 AM 8/7/2017
Last updated: 12:51 AM 8/7/2017