Children’s Clothing Talk at Otis House, 13 June

On Thursday, 13 June, Historic New England will host a talk by Associate Curator Laura Johnson on “Skirts, Stays, and Skeleton Suits: Clothing Children in New England.” The lecture description says:

When did children wear corsets? When did boys stop wearing skirts and girls begin wearing pants? Learn about the surprising ways we clothed our children from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries at this illustrated lecture by Associate Curator Laura Johnson, using images of many interesting and rare items from Historic New England’s collection of children’s clothing and portraits.

Registration is required. Admission is $5 for Historic New England members, $10 for others. Johnson will start speaking at 6:00 P.M., and the venue is the society’s Otis House at 141 Cambridge Street in Boston.

And as long as this event is in one of Harrison Gray Otis’s houses, I’ll quote what his descendant Samuel Eliot Morison wrote about the clothing Harry wore as a boy in the 1770s:

Every year, on Guy Fawkes’ day, a new pair of leather breeches was given him, and reserved for “best” so long as the breeches of the previous vintage held out.

That November date seems to have been an Otis family tradition, not a general one. Joshua Green, Harry’s classmate at the South Latin School, recorded receiving a pair of leather breeches on 16 Mar 1773.