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Just as English boys usually generally had short hair cuts, English girls commonly had long hair. This was especially true in the 19th century when long styles were especially admired. This changed after World War I in the 1920s when we see many girls with short bobbed hair. Long styles never dusappeared, but we tend to see many monre girls with shorter styles than in the 19th century. Even in the 19th century, however we see shirter styles. And cthere arevimages wuth girls wearing down-right boyish syles. We are not entirely sure why these boyish styles existed. Wesupoose saintary measures or health reasins are possible, but we doubt that there were many exampoles of girlks wearung shirt boyish styles out of their own choice. And not uncommonly we see these boyish cuts with just one of the girls in the familky. Perhaos reader more knowldgeable about 19th century hair styling will have some insights. As many portraits were done individually, we are often not sure how the sisters of the boys depicted in the HBC Website had their hair styled. We note that in most but not a;ll of sibling portraitsd that we have observed, briothers and their sisters udsually had their hair done differently. This was the case even with younger children. This sometimes meant a different style of long hair. In other instances their sisters had their hair cut short. As a result, considerable care has to be exercized in assessing the gender in unidentified old photographs using hir styling as a guide.
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