Figure 1.--Some company in England in the early 20th cebntyry went around Britain taking photographs in cities and villages for sale as postcards. This is one of these photographs taken in Burton Leonard, a village in Yorkshire. Notice that virtually all the girls wear white pinafores. We at first thought that the photograph was taken outside the village church. We thought it was done simply because it was the most impressive building in the village. We believe that if they were attending church, the girls would not have worn their pinafores. A British reader expalins our confusion. Thus is the village school, a rather imopressive one, but a school never-the-less. The churcg can be seen at the far right in the background. Click on the image for a fuller explanation.

The pinafore is commonly associated with girls. And indeed large numbers of English girls wore them. They were not a paricularly English garment. The pinafore was widely worn in Europe and America. We have found numerous images in the photographic record showing English girls wearing imaculate white pinnies. Much larger numbers of girls wore pinafores than is suggested by studio photograophy. The pinafore was commonly worn at home, but for a formal photographic portrait the girls usually dressed up and did not wear their pinafores. This makes it difficult to assess the chronology and prevalence from studio photography. Thanks to school photography we see large numbers of English girls wearing pinafores in the 19th and early-20 centuries. Dresses were for many years commonly worn with pinafores. Pinafores were so common that we often do not get to see the dresses ans skirts that the girls were wearing underneath. This was the case in the 19th and early-20th century. Unfortunately we do not get large numberss of school images until the late-19th century. We think pinafores were common before that, but have only limited information. But by the late-19th century we do have images and we see large numbers of girls wearing pinafores. We see countless school portaits in which virtually all the girls are wearing white pinafores. It was virtually a uniform, but noit required by the school. It was just what English girls wore at the time. They seem to have been a standard part of everyday dress. Not only for school, but also after school as well. We believe that pinafores were common into the early-20th century until ad=fter World War I. They seem to have disappeared in the 1920s. We are not sure just why. It was a garment that had been worn for dedcades, but then suddenly disappeared.

Created: 5:15 AM 9/9/2020
Last updated: 5:16 AM 9/9/2020