May Manton 6599 - Boy's Base Ball Suit

About 1910.

Note the padded pants, a feature that seems to have originated in the 1880s and disappeared around the first World War, as far as I can tell from looking at high school team photos of the period. (1)

The pull-over shirt is a pretty standard outing shirt design, with three sleeve options:  long, short, and convertible. (We've seen these convertible sleeves before, with Pictorial Review 5969)

Consider the amount of work involved in making this uniform:  colored facings are sewn to the shirt; button holes must be worked (by hand) for the convertible sleeves, the shirt, and the fly front of the pants; the pants must have padding sewn into them; the cap is lined.

And because I know you'll ask, here is what the cap pieces look like.

 The three perforated crosses in the brim indicate where it's placed on the fold of the material.  It's interesting to see that the cap sections are shorter toward the fronts, which will give the cap a jaunty set.

"B C", I assume, very cleverly stands for "Ball Club,"  but wouldn't it have been fun if the illustrator had had the imagination to use "M M?"

(1) See the history of baseball uniform pants on the web site for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

May Manton's 8815 - Men's and Youth's Pajamas

At a guess, 1915 to 1920.

Chilly weather is upon us, so new flannel pajamas seem like a good idea.  Though one-piece pajamas are common for children, I was a little surprised to see them offered for men.   The option for short sleeves would indicate that some men wore these in summer.  In this case, they'd be made of a light cotton fabric.

The little chart showing chest measurement and the corresponding neck measurement is helpful to have around, since some shirt patterns at this period give only the neck measurement.

May Manton's 7853 - Bathing Suit

About 1912-1915.

This bloomer-and-dress style was popular from about the 1880s to about 1920. The vaguely empire lines of this model are consistent with dress styles of the mid teens.

The June 6th, 1915, the New York Times included a wonderful article about the season's styles in bathing suits. Which starts off "probably the majority of women who love the surf will bathe this Summer, as in other Summers, in suits of black or blue." But in 1915, brightly colored silks were popular. Bathing shoes came in both high boot styles, such as our model is wearing, and low slipper styles.

My edition of The Women's Institute booklet Miscellaneous Garments, copyright 1917, recommends making bathing suits of "Flannel, serge, alpaca and similar woolen materials..." The author states that a successful bathing suit "should be generously full, though not baggy nor clumsy."

Proper headgear is important. According to the New York Times, rubber bathing caps were decorated with rubber flowers, and in 1914 it became fashionable to wear corsages of these rubber flowers in colors to match or harmonize with one's bathing suit.

According to The Women's Institute, over a snug-fitting rubber cap, one wears "...a cap of lightweight material that harmonizes" [with the bathing suit.] Also "...by observing the instructions given for house or boudoir caps...no difficulty will be encountered in developing them." The cap that our model is wearing is very much in the boudoir cap mode.

The booklet also gives detailed instructions for tying a silk square over one's rubber bathing cap in the newest butterfly or "aeroplane" style

May Manton's 8820 - Work Apron

About 1915.  This is the first pattern I've seen for a front buttoned work apron, making this closer to the smocks that we see in the 1920's than to the back-closing work aprons we've seen up until now.

You can glean some interesting details about May Manton (the nom de plume of  Jessie Swirles Bladworth) in Women's Periodicals in the United States.   May Manton patterns were a sort of spin-off of McCall patterns.   Presumably all the involved parties thought that there was room in the home sewing market for yet another pattern company.  To my eye, May Manton patterns don't have quite the polish of McCall patterns, so perhaps they were aimed at a different sector.  (Some day I do intend to do some price comparisons among the different pattern companies. Some day.)

Once again, we see from the layout that provision has been made for piecing:

Now, if we were to make up this work apron in a grey percale, don't you think it would make a splendid prison uniform?

May Manton's 8904 - Work Apron

The important feature to note here is the cross-over front.  If the company was working through their pattern numbers in roughly sequential order, this one would be about 1915.    I've recently acquired a four page newspaper insert for May Manton patterns dated July 1916 and the pattern numbers are in the very low 9000s.

Notice how similar this pattern is to the uniform being worn by these women. (You'll need to blow up the image a bit to see the cross over fronts, but they are certainly there!)

The same basic cross-over style was used for McCall Pattern 7986, which Past Patterns offers in a blue line copy, and this style will continue to show up into the thirties, when it gets a name of its own.

May Manton 9510 - Comfort Kit

Comfort kits are not all that complicated to make and instructions for them with measured line drawings were published in magazines during WWI, so it's a little unusual to see manufactured pattern for one. Why the Newark (N.J.) chapter of the Red Cross was favored is a mystery.

This pattern appears never to have been used. The insert of suggested items for filling the comfort kit was still enclosed.