Dear Miss MacDonald,

I have recently visited your site, and thought you might be interested in my own childhood experiences.

I grew up after the Second World War in a small village - or, rather, on the outskirts of a village. I lived with my mother and my elder sister, Jenny, and, by an odd quirk of fate, I was the only boy in the village, and so the only boy in the village school. In those days, clothes and other items were passed on from one family to another if there was wear left in them, and so our house was stocked with numerous items of girls' clothes - gymslips, blouses, cardigans, raincoats, and so on.

My earliest memories of clothing relate to going to school on the back of Mummy's bike, with Jenny riding her bike at the side. I was wrapped up in a gabardine coat with a hood, and had a scarf round my face to keep out the cold. I wore shorts to school, but at home I always changed into a gymslip or dress, which I found much more comfortable. When I was seven, going into the junior class, I had my own little bike (no cars on the roads then), and wore my hooded gabardine coat, wellingtons, and woolly scarf. In very cold weather, Jenny and I both wore an extra gabardine, which was fully buttoned up and hooded, and came almost to our ankles! We were always warm though.

When we went anywhere at weekends or during school holidays, I always wore my gymslip and blouse, with a cardigan or two in cold weather. As it was always covered with a coat and hood, no-one ever seemed to notice, and I simply accepted that this was the way to be dressed. I also remember my favourite nightwear, which was a soft winceyette nightdress with long sleeves.  It buttoned to the neck, and had a pretty lacy collar, and I loved wearing it to bed. When it wore out, Mummy found me another one, but it was never the same as my old favourite one.

I passed my eleven plus exam, and went to the boys' High School some miles distant. This was a traumatic experience, as I was not allowed to wear blouses and gymslips, but had instead to wear shirts, a tie and trousers. I still managed to change into my beloved gymslips at home for a while, but eventually I grew too big to get them on, and so my petticoat days were over. I loved the old gymslips: you could get lovely and warm sitting in a chair, with feet tucked up underneath, and all covered by the wide skirt. It didn't cut you in half either!

The other thing I missed was the hooded gabardine mac when I went out. Jenny and I always wore our hoods up, and when I couldn't go to school with a hood, I remember crying bitterly. Fortunately, my Auntie Joan lived near the place where I had to catch my school bus, about a ten minute bike ride away.  When she heard that I wanted a hood, she got out one of my cousin Lucy's old hooded macs, which was quite large (Lucy was seventeen, and had left school by then), so her coat was much bigger than mine. I was allowed to wear it over mine, with the hood up, to ride from home to the bus and back. It was lovely - the girls were lucky to have such a lovely garment to wear in those days, though many didn't appreciate the fact. I also liked to keep my face wrapped up, like Jenny and some of her friends did, by wearing a big woolly scarf firmly tied behind my neck. Wellies and woollen mittens completed the outfit, and I dressed this way until I was fourteen, when I had outgrown all my girls' clothes.

Fifty years on, I still like to wear a nightdress or nightshirt rather than pyjamas in bed, and I sometimes look back in great affection at those lovely days. My great worry these days is that the girls I see don't give the boys anything of an example - indeed, I sometimes wonder whether we need to trouser our girls, as the boys are often more kind and gentle than their female counterparts.
I hope you don't mind my sharing my thoughts with you, but they do seem relevant to your site. Do keep up the good work!
My best regards,

J. E.

It's a great pity that those girls' macs with the hood are not manufactured anymore. I get letters about boys being taken out by their mothers wearing girls' party dresses and so on, and with a wig this can be done. However, it is usually not possible. However, in the past it was not uncommon at all for exasperated mothers to dress their sons in a girls' hooded mac and take them down to the girls' department of the local emporium, where the boy could be thoroughly mortified.

In Scotland at least the boy would also be wearing a pleated tartan skirt under the mac. It was the one method of public petticoating which really was prevalent.
Susan