Figure 1.-- This unidentified English boy with his father looks to be about 6 years old. The portrait has a white border postcard back photograph. The portrait looks like it was taken in the early-1920s. There is a plain white dickey. The suit does not have the traditional three-stripe detailing, but the material has an unusual pin stripe pattern.

We see a lot of 5-6 year old boys wearing sailor suits in the late-19th century. A good example is the Knowle Board School in 1898 wearing sailor suits. A board school was by this time a free state school so clothing at these schools are a good example of what ordinary English children were wearing, both the working-class and lower middle-class children. We are not sure about mid-century because we have so few English Dags and Ambros. But with the appearance of the CDV, we have a very good idea. We do not see many sailor suits in the 1860s, but by the 1870s it had clearly become a major style. And by the end of the century, most middle-class boys had sailor suits. A good example is Douglas Purdy in Maidendtone during 1895. We are assessing how common it was for younger primary boys to wear sailor suits to school. We note them wearing both sailor caps at the turn-of-the century included both broad-brimmed hats and boaters. We note 6-year olds continuing to wear sailor suits after the turn of the 20th century, but not so much after World War (1920s). What we do not see after the mid-19th century is older boys wearing sailor suits as was the case on the Continent. We are not entirely sure why that was given the immense popularity of the Royal Navy in Britain. We think the primary reason was the development of the preparatory school in Britain. Boys from upper-class and well-established middle-class families attended these schools beginning about age 7-8 years. They wore school uniforms and not sailor suits. We think this affected the general popularity of the sailor suit, even for the larger group of boys that did not attend private schools. Thus boys 6-7 years old became the oldest cohort if British boys that commonly wore sailor suits.

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Created: 1:32 PM 8/20/2024
Last updated: 1:32 PM 8/20/2024