Flat Caps for Work & Play - Sepia Saturday

Two men in flat caps enjoying a game of darts feature on this week's Sepia Saturday prompt photograph.  I have never thrown a dart in my life, but have thrown many a dice as a child, as parent and grandparent, playing such games as Snakes & Ladders, Ludo , Beetle and Monopoly and hoping to win so me points by throwiNg the elusive Six.  

                        

                    

     

       Photographs courtesy of pixabay.com 

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Likewise I have never worn a flat cap  but,  for many  men,  a flat cap was the popular style - as below.  *

 In Britain flat caps were generally associated with workers in the north of England.   Think of old photographs and newsreels  of men streaming from the mills, or cheering from the football terraces or enlisting for the First World War. 

I think of them too as worn by coster-mongers in London - think of Eliza Doolittle's father in the film of "My Fair Lady";  or Del Boy in the TV comedy  "Only Fools  and Horses". 

     

Photographs courtesy of pixabay.com 

My first family photograph on the theme has a poignancy about it.  For here  c.1903 in the group of schoolboys is my great uncle George Danson  - on the left sporting a flat cap.   George was killed in the  First World War at the Battle of the Somme in 1916,  a week after his 22nd birthday.  I wonder how many of the other  boys and their master survived that carnage.

 

 A photograph of my grandfather William Danson, a labourer,  seated with a group of workers at the ICI factory at Thornton, near Fleetwood, Lancashire.  Was this some special occasion with Grandad given the pride of place, seated  at the front?  It is difficult to assess the date - 1930's?   

 

My husband is aged about one, here with his  maternal grandparents Matthew Iley White (a boilermaker)  and Alice Armitage of South Shields, County Durham.  c. 1938.

 

 

Stepping out oblivious of the camera is Grandfather Donaldson, a signwriter and painter, again in South Shields, County Durham.  His  son and one of his grandsons followed him in his trade

 From my cousin's collection are photographs of the Oldham family business of carters and coalmen in Blackpool. Lancashire, overseen by three generations - Joseph Prince Oldham (1855-1921), his son John William Oldham (1880-1939) and his daughter Elsie Smith, nee Oldham (1906-1989)

  

The business was founded around 1890, steadily became prosperous and in 1905 moved to near North Station, Blackpool in a house with a large yard, hay loft, tack room. and stabling for seven horses.  

 

Below young Gloria (Elsie's daughter) atop one of the carthorses, under the careful eye of a worker - in a flat cap.

 

 

Time moved on and the first Oldham road vehicle was bought in 1921 to replace the horses  - but the flat caps remained the fashion. 

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At the other end of the social scale,  the Duke of Windsor as Edward Prince of Wales, in the 1920s and 30s  was photographed wearing a flat cap as part of a golfing outfit.  Nowadays finer versions are still popular rural wear at farming events, countryside fairs, horse race meetings etc. 

And if you have the youth  and looks to get away with it, flat caps are  being worn  as fashion statements by "celebrities" - men and women. 

 

My own father would not be seen dead in a flat cap - 

He much preferred a trilby as headgear.

Now the baseball cap has become the headgear for all ages.  

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