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A reader writes, "I believe the photo is of a boy in the latter half of the 19th century. [HBC would guess about 1870.] Notice the boy's strap shoes. This looks to be a formal version of the two-bar closed toe sandal. There are definitely two bars which appear to be fastened on both sides of each strap (I don't think I've seen this before). There appears to be a faint indication of a center t-strap, or it may be discoloration on the photo--hard to tell." We are not yet entirely sure about the chronology of these multiple strap shoes. We only note single strap shoes in the early 19th century, but in the late 10th century we note many different shoes with multiple straps. They may have appeared in the 1860s, but we are not yet sure. We begin to commonly note multiple-strap shoes in the photographic record by the 1870s. We see tem throughout the late 19th century as well as the early 20th century. They were rarely seen after World war I in the 1920s. They were worn by younger boys and girls of all ages.
A reader writes, "I believe the photo is of a boy in the latter half of the 19th century (figure 1). [HBC would guess about 1870.] Notice the boy's strap shoes. This looks to be a formal version of the two-bar closed toe sandal. There are definitely two bars which appear to be fastened on both sides of each strap (I don't think I've seen this before). There appears to be a faint indication of a center t-strap, or it may be discoloration on the photo--hard to tell."
A good example of a boy wearing strap shoes after the turn-of-the-20th century is an American boy, Hugh James, about 1905-10.
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