Figure 1.--This tintype photograph shows an actual outdoor scene, not a studio image. Unfortunalely there is no information attached to it. We would guess it was taken in the 1870s at on of the popular beach resports all over the English coast. The boat looks like ot was used for tourists. And the women and two chilren also look like visitors. The children, probably boys, wear identical smocks.

Most 19th century photography was studio photography, meaning indoor images in which people usually dressed up in their best outfits. This is perhaps why there are so few portraits of children wearing smocks in the photographic record. The smpck was a utilitarian garment designed o protect clothing, noy the way in whivh children were dressed up for to have their portraits taken. We have found a few amateur photographs taken outside the studio. While the photographic industry in America was moke widespread than in England, we seem to see more ammateur photographers in England than in America. Amateur photography was both expensive and complicated in the late-19th century. Thus we have found a few images of children wearing smocks in the everyday life away from home and photographic studios. We are not sure how common this was, but it may have been more common than outside the photographic studio images that constitute much of the photographic record. We do not have many such images, ut there are not aot od smock studio images either.

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Created: May 2, 2004
Last updated: 8:13 PM 7/11/2017