Figure 1.--These unidentified English children look to be photographed in their backyard (back garden). It is an undated postcard-back snapshot. The children look to be about 5-11 years old. We would guess the boy is about 7-yrears old. He wears what looks like a heavy sailor blouse with short pants and knee socks. His sisters wear matching blouses. (The little girl's blouses is washed out for some reason.) Notice the boy's sailor cap and tally. It is for HNC Centurion', a dreadnought battleship. We are not sure if his father was posted on the ship or how these tallies were made available to the public. Could these choose from nany different tallies?

Most of the images we have found of English boys wearing sailor suits do not have the ages of the boys noted. Age is, however, something that can be eestimate to a fair degree of accuracy. And the ages we see are primary school boys. We see a little older girls wearing sailor outfits than boys. Schools portraits are especially helpful as they give an idea pf pprevalencve. We note younger boys wearing sailor suits in state schools. We do not see sailor suits in prep schools, meaning a private school with primary school age children. Most of the examples continue to be younger boys up about 8 years of age. There may be boys up to 10-years old, but most of the imahes we have found are bous up to only about 8 years of age. We do not see the older boys and younger teenagers wearing sailor suits to any extent as as we see on the continent, especially France and Germany. We believe this was because the boys from well to-to-families began private school at about 8 years of age. They began wearing school uniforms and not sailor suits and they played a major role in setting fashion trends. Prep schools generally had programs for boys begginning at about 8 yeras of age, but there was some variance. There were ot yet pre-preps in the peeps schools during the 1910s.

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Created: 10:54 AM 6/21/2019
Last updated: 10:54 AM 6/21/2019