Illustrations in the Rat-a-Tat Mystery

[Eysteinn]

Has anybody wondered at the original illustrations in The Rat-a-Tat Mystery?

We are told it is extremely cold outside, the lake is frozen over, and everything
is covered in snow. The children go out to play, and repeatedly stay out all day,
sledding, snow-fighting, skating, and what have you.

Have you seen how they are dressed in the illustrations? The boys are wearing
short trousers, and the girls are wearing skirts! They all have bare legs!

This is simply not possible. They wouldn't last out there for more than 10 minutes.
They would simply freeze to death, or at the very least suffer from frostbite and
be extremely ill at the end of the day. Their legs would be bleeding from contact
with sharp edges of ice, and they would catch severe colds, and ultimately pneumonia.

The man who drew these illustrations can't ever have spent much time in snow
and sub-zero temperatures. I played outside a lot in such conditions when I was
a child, but I was dressed as an eskimo or I wouldn't have survived.

More recent illustrations are more realistic (long trousers, scarves, mittens, etc)

Shudder,
Eysteinn (from Iceland)

[Daisy]

That is an interesting observation Eysteinn, but actually the illustrator is portraying correctly how children dressed on the 1940s and '50s. Boys would be in short trousers until they were 13 or thereabouts. If you look at the dustwrapper of Rat-a-tat you will see that Barney has long trousers on - he was older than the others.
With thick coats, scarves and wellington boots which came up to the knees, I assure you we children of that era did not feel cold! Yes, the bare knees were vulnerable, (plasters and the scabs which followed were a frequent sight) but there wasn't that much bare flesh and we certainly never caught chills or worse from rushing round in the snow. In fact it was a very warming exercise! As for the girls, the wearing of trousers was completely unknown until the 60s as far as I remember. I never possessed a pair until much later than that! Skirts keep you warmer than trousers. Scotsmen in their kilts don't seem to suffer or they wouldn't wear them all year round!

[Moonraker]

I never wore long trousers until I was 14 - children didn't, as Daisy says, in the 50s. You cannot catch a cold from exposure to the elements, either - it is a viral infection, and you need to be in contact with the germ to catch it! We do get sub-zero temperatures in the UK, but thankfully (in England and Wales especially) nothing cold enough to give you frostbite - unless you led outside naked all night!

[Julie2owlsdene]

I agree with what Daisy and Moonraker have to say Eysteinn. I never wore trousers until the late 60's, only ever skirts and long socks. In the winter girls would not only wear a vest, but something on top of that called a libberty bodice. And we'd keep that on until the Spring came.

The cold never bothered me as a child. You got used to it. Even inside my bedroom window during the cold winter months they'd be ice. No central heating in our house!! Just one fire downstairs!!

Happy days.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Even inside my bedroom window during the cold winter months they'd be ice. No central heating in our house!! Just one fire downstairs!!

It was the same for me in the 1970s-80s, though the custom of boys wearing shorts all year round had gone out of fashion by that time.

[Katharine]

I think liberty bodices had disappeared by my childhood, but I know my mother used to wear one as a girl back in the 1950s. From what I can recall many (if not most) children wore vests, woolly ones in winter and cotton ones in summer. A lot of girls also wore full length petticoats too. I too grew up in a house without central heating, and my poor brother used to have frost patterns on the inside of his window. My father made a wooden frame with polythene attached which he used to fit in the window space to try and make the room warmer. (Early double glazing).

Admittedly I hated the cold, I was a real Gwendoline Mary and would much rather huddle in front of the coal fire than take a bracing walk in the snow.

I seem to recall my father saying that boys usually wore short trousers until they left secondary school at about 15 years old. As a mother of a son I wish they still did. Scuffed knees from lunch time football games are much cheaper than replacing trousers with a hole in the knee