A Cultural History of School Uniform

Kate Stephenson

Description

What's a djibbah, how long has the old school tie been around and do yellow petticoats really repel vermin? How have social and educational changes affected the appearance of schoolchildren? This book will provide answers to these questions and more, in an engaging foray into 500 years of British school uniform history from the charity schools of the sixteenth century through the Victorian public schools to the present day.

In this cross-disciplinary work, Kate Stephenson presents the first comprehensive academic study of school uniform development in Britain as well as offering an analysis of the social and institutional contexts in which this development occurred. With recent debates around the cost, necessity and religious implications of school uniform and its (re)introduction and increasingly formal appearance in many schools, this book is a timely reminder that modern ideas associated with school uniform are the result of a long history of communicating (and disguising) identity.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Be Keen!

Introduction

1. The Charity Schools 1552–1900

Early School Clothing

Christ’s Hospital

Other Charity Schools

Traditional Appearances

Viewing Charity Children

2. The Public Schools 1800–1939

Sport and the Introduction of Uniform Clothing

Creation of the Public School Ethos

Uniform Design

Collective Identity

Emulation

Harrow—A Case Study

3. Public Schools for Girls 1850–1939

Early Girls’ Schools and the Feminine Ideal

Sportswear and Uniform

Day Uniforms

Formality and Conformity

4. Education for All 1860–1939

Middle-Class Secondary Education

Elementary Education for the Working Classes

Mixed Classes in Secondary Education

5. Fashion and Fancy Dress 1939–Present

Post-War

Dressing Up

Conclusion

Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Histoire des Arts
• Histoire des Arts
• Histoire des arts visuels
• ART
• History
• General
• 20th century
• Uniform
• General officer
• History of the British Isles
• History of education
• History of fashion design
• 19th century
• EDUCATION

Informations

• Publié par: University of Exeter Press
• Date de parution: 12 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781905816545
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

A Cultural History of School Uniform
A Cultural History of School Uniform
KATE STEPHENSON
First published in 2021 by University of Exeter Press Reed Hall, Streatham Drive Exeter EX4 4QR UK
www.exeterpress.co.uk
© Kate Stephenson 2021
The right of Kate Stephenson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-905816-53-8 Hardback ISBN 978-1-905816-54-5 ePub ISBN 978-1-905816-55-2 PDF
Front cover: Schoolgirl’s Own Annual , 1935 Copyright © Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Set in Perpetua by BBR Design, Sheffield
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Be Keen!
Introduction
1. The Charity Schools 1552–1900
Early School Clothing
Christ’s Hospital
Other Charity Schools
Traditional Appearances
Viewing Charity Children
2. The Public Schools 1800–1939
Sport and the Introduction of Uniform Clothing
Creation of the Public School Ethos
Uniform Design
Collective Identity
Emulation
Harrow—A Case Study
3. Public Schools for Girls 1850–1939
Early Girls’ Schools and the Feminine Ideal
Sportswear and Uniform
Day Uniforms
Formality and Conformity
4. Education for All 1860–1939
Middle-Class Secondary Education
Elementary Education for the Working Classes
Mixed Classes in Secondary Education
5. Fashion and Fancy Dress 1939–Present
Post-War
Dressing Up
Conclusion
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Chapter One
1.1 Winchester College, c .1462
1.2 Detail from Christ’s Hospital Easter Anthem, 1709
1.3 Charity statues, St Mary Rotherhithe, c .1742
1.4 Illustration of Christ’s Hospital boys from London Town , 1883
Chapter Two
2.1 Malvern College Football Team, 1868
2.2 Malvern College Football Team, 1888
2.3 Junior boys from Pocklington School wearing uniform shorts, c .late 1940s
2.4 Chas. Baker & Co. advertisement, 1892
2.5 A selection of School Arms cigarette cards, produced by Wills’s Cigarettes, 1906
Chapter Three
3.1 Cheltenham Ladies’ College House Group, 1890
3.2 Illustration from The New Gymnastics for Men, Women and Children (1862), showing the Dio Lewis gymnastic suit
3.3 St Leonards House Cricket Team, c .1891, showing the second tunic design
3.4 Girl wearing a gymslip with a very low girdle, 1929
3.5 Wycombe Abbey House Group, 1898
3.6 Roedean pupil Netta Lewis with her mother, c .1928
3.7 Downe House School photograph, 1909
Chapter Four
4.1 Tunbridge Wells County School for Girls pupils wearing drill costume, 1913
4.2 The Arrival of Bessie Bunter, 1919
4.3 St William’s RC Girls’ School, 1922
Chapter Five
5.1 Aysgarth Prep School, 1944
5.2 Pupils from St Mary’s Gate School, c .1961–65
Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks to Prof. Lawrence Black, Dr Hannah Greig and Prof. Elizabeth Buettner for their help and advice; my parents for endless support, encouragement and the provision of dogs when it all got too much. Also, Not Cricket for enthusiasm, theatre and gin and the staff and regulars of the Deramore Arms c .2013–16 for suggestions, pictures, tea, excellent chips and slightly risqué jokes.
Abbreviations
GDS Girls’ Day School (Trust)
NLCS North London Collegiate School
SPCK Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
TWGGS Tunbridge Wells Girls’ Grammar School
Be Keen!
Take lessons from the colonies
Be patriotic, keen;
Uphold your school with might and main
As they uphold the Queen.
Shake off your bonds, unloose your chains,
Ye hopes of future glory!
By sloth your fathers never won
Their deeds of deathless glory
Support your school, its games, its work,
Its institutions too;
Disloyalty erase, for he
Serves all who dares be true
Rise up like men from slumber deep
And let your school be queen
For Wilberforce and Dolman cry:
“Be keen, my sons, be keen!” 1
Introduction
As iconic as baked beans for breakfast, builders’ tea and the Chelsea Flower Show, the image of the schoolboy or schoolgirl clad in blazer, shirt and tie is a widely identifiable and understood symbol of the British education system. This is unsurprising given that the classic modern outfit originated in the United Kingdom and was spread, initially, through colonialism, and later through cultural exchange. This book examines how the current situation emerged, charting British school uniform from its origins in sixteenth-century charity schools through to the modern day, looking at the implementation, development and spread of school uniform and school-uniform styles. Uniform development did not, however, exist in a vacuum. Interpreting the motivation behind its introduction and various design iterations helps us to understand the larger forces at play and, where possible, alterations have been situated within the bigger historical picture. In many ways, this is a work of social and educational history viewed through the tangible dimension of the school garment.
The styles of clothing worn by an individual reflect and communicate identity and uniforms fulfil this same role in a more clearly defined manner, recording a pupil’s place in society and their relation to other individuals and institutions. The type of identity projected by an establishment is replicated and reinforced by the design of the uniform worn, whether it is imposed upon children by those in power or develops internally as part of a school’s culture and ethos. Whilst uniforms met many important practical requirements, they were also consistently tied to the existing and idealized identities of a school population. Most notably, uniforms tended to reflect the gender and class norms (and sometimes aspirations) of pupils in any given period, but they were also influenced by religious beliefs and, at times, nationalism. Reinforcement of these idealized identities through clothing control and the imitation and emulation of the identity of other institutions were the most important driving factors in uniform adoption and diffusion, and these ideas will be revisited throughout the text.
Beyond contemporary issues surrounding the effectiveness of school uniform in improving behaviour and concerns regarding adapting it for increasingly multicultural school environments, there is a distinct lack of research into the history of school uniform, particularly in Britain, and there is currently no comprehensive academic study. This deficit has allowed common misconceptions to develop and these have been repeated and propagated through numerous sources. Perhaps most prominent amongst these is the ‘fact’ that Eton adopted its uniforms in 1820 in mourning for the death of George III, which, as it turns out, is extremely unlikely. When discovered, these errors have been addressed and corrected within the pages ahead.
As a subject with widely popular appeal and one on which the majority of the British population have first-hand experience, the topic’s academic neglect to date is surprising. The question of why it has been overlooked is a complex one and can, in part, be attributed to the lack of interdisciplinary scholarship in the field of dress history in general. It is still a relatively new discipline: it has been fully accepted into the academic canon only in the past few decades and the field continues to develop theoretical and practical approaches at a rapid pace. 1 School uniform is clearly a subject to which this new breed of analytically rigorous dress history is yet to be applied and its broad temporal span and cross-disciplinary nature, along with a lack of original garments (school uniforms tended to be worn out completely or passed onto siblings) might have discouraged other researchers. In addition, the public view of school uniform has been influenced by the modern tendency to associate it with dressing up, drinking and, in the case of girls’ school uniforms, titillation. Consequently, it may have been written off as a subject without serious historical or academic merit.
This book seeks to rectify this situation to some extent, offering a broad perspective on the subject. With such a wide-ranging topic, there are, of course, some areas in which detail has been sacrificed, for instance, the majority of examples used are English, alongside a number drawn from pioneering schools in Scotland. A more thorough exploration of the subject in Ireland and Wales would be beneficial in the future. In addition, there is simply not the space to present a close analysis of individual schools or garments, unless they are particularly influential.
The majority of the historical narrative has been drawn from original sources, and whilst this has opened up a huge amount of material for potential consultation, it also had its problems. In the words of Susan Vincent:
Typically, commentary about clothing is dispersed widely through a range of records whose main subject is almost always something other than dress. Thus sources … are littered with brief mentions of apparel. Very few, however, offer sustained commentary. 2
This was particularly true with regard to the earliest phase of school-uniform development in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when information had to be drawn from numerous and diverse sources. In later centuries, the archives of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge—which was heavily influential in the spread of charity schools—proved invaluable, notably the suggested clothing lists and the collated reports on individual schools.
From the Victorian period onwards, school archives (and umbrella organisations such as the Girls’ Day School Trust) offered the most complete body of evidence available, with many establishments retaining their archives on site. Whilst older and larger schools such as Eton, Harrow and North London Collegiate School employ arch