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In this portrait, the hat and jacket belonging to these children show that they are boys. Boys wore skirts until the age of about six in Victorian times. They are poor country children, and the clothes of the child on the left are particularly ragged. He is perhaps just starting school, and is being comforted by his friend. The school in the background is a dame school, run by an elderly woman. The artist Robinson Elliott spent most of his life in South Shields.
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