Figure 1.--This American boy in a photograph taken about 1890 wears a kneepants suit with a floppy bow. Note how long, but rather slender the ringlets are. It is a little difficult to tell, but it looks like he only has two ringlets. I'm not sure how the back of his head was styled. One HBC contributor notes that the hair is pulled back from the front is held in place by a bow. It is hard to tell age but I would guess 5 or 6, maybe older. The HBC contributor who spotted this reports, "I always look when hair is pulled back. It must be held back by something."

Some boys appear with very slender-diameter curls. This would be ringlets under about 1 centimeter (cm) in diameter. Some are even more sledener, looking rather scragly. An example here is an unidentified American boy, provably in the 1850s. This may have been the boys with hair that was not very thick or mothers that wanted a greater number of ringlets. HBC has noted, however, that some boys with these slender-diameters ringlets had only a few and not a large number of ringlets. HBC notes that many of these slender diameter riglets were observered in the 1880s and early 1890s, but became less common in the late 1890s. HBC's initial assessment was that one reason for forming slender ringlets was to form a larger number of ringlets. Some images like the one above , however, appear to show boys with only two slender ringlets. A HBC contrinutor believes that his hair is in ringlets in the back as well. As HBC has noted, doting mothers likes to lay these curls over the shoulder rather than having them all fall at the back where they will not be very apparent in the photograph.

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Created: December 3, 1999
Last edited: 10:07 PM 11/9/2006