the demise of the mans cap

[jacksprat16]

hello, looking at some very old pictures of people leaving work and general street scenes mainly in industrial towns, i have never been able to pick out a man that's not wearing a cap,when did this tradition start to go,what trend set the "no cap" man?

[Lil O'lady]

This went out in my lifetime. As a small child, it was very 'statementy' for a bloke to go out without a hat. Downtown Salford where I lived was not a place to be different unless you were weell hard, so most blokes wore hats, usually flat caps, again so as not to stand out.

Workmen wore hats that were usually linked to their trade - just think of Norman Wisdom in his numerous roles as this illustrates the point well.

In my memory - not a proven established fact - men's hats seemed to go alongside changes in hairstyles, from the brylcreemed side-parted short back n sides, to gradual creeping in of longer lengths and the abandoning of the grease. I would put a date of about 1962-3, guessing, of the tipping point going from hats/ brylcreem to bare heads. Older men held on to the brylcreem longer, but the floppy-haired look for older teens and young men seems to have passed from Aldermaston Lefties to mainstream by ths time.
It must be that this ties in with the explosion of youth culture and spending power. As with all things, you can expect this to be a trend that starts in the affluent south and more slowly spreads 'oop north'. The big exception, and again an undoubted tipping point, was the merseybeat era and especially the arrival of the Beatles.

This is also about the time that expectations about how you 'should' behave as an adult shifted and relaxed - looking back at the fifties and early 60's, people didn't half look old at an early age. Think of the contrast between Ena Sharples and whatever character Babs Windsor plays in 'stenders and you'll see what I mean.

[vulcan]

I suspect this habit of wearing hats started to die out at the end of the second world war.People leaving the service's were given demob suits but as far as I'm aware, not hats.These were quite expensive and other,more important, items were needed.

[jackthehat]

Prior to 1960's mens hair was primarily seen as a secondary head-covering........the 'youth' wanted their tonsorial arrangements to be seen rather than hidden under dull head-gear............

[Strauss]

I agree with Lil O'lady's estimate of around 1962-3. I think another reason was the reluctance of modern people to "know their place". As was shown in an episode of the television sitcom "Grace Brothers", the working classes wore flat caps, foremen wore bowlers, office workers wore trilbys, managers wore homburgs and so on. The requirement to wear hats also applied to women. At around that time, my parents visited a relative who was a police sergeant at a large airport, and he offered to show them around the airport. His wife left the house bareheaded and he said to her "Go and put a hat on. I will not be seen with you if you haven't got a hat on". Unbelieveable now, but nobody thought much of it then.

[sddsddean]

As an aside to this, when I went to see the Dermatology Consultant at our local hospital about my alopecia, she said I would have to be careful about sunburn on my head. She then said that the rate of skin cancer of mens heads had in fact skyrocketed in the last 10-20 years, all because it is now the fashion not to wear a hat. She said even if you have a thick head of hair, this does not give as much protection as a hat.