Natal Rickshaw with female passengers ca 1900

This photo is fairly early. From the costume of the female passengers it dates to about 1900 - the straw hat and mannish tie on the older lady and the young girl wearing black stockings and a floppy sunhat with her white cotton dress: all typical.

 

The rickshaw puller is not wearing the 'kitchen boy's suit' as generally seen,  but an outfit closer resembling the uniform of the Zululand Police (see yesterday's blogpost) or just black knee-breeches and a jacket, with a solar topee (pith helmet) type hat - though not the accepted style there were many variations on this theme worn in Natal.

 

The light-coloured 'hood' on the rickshaw is unusual. The set-up, including the puller's costume, leads me to think this may be a 'private' vehicle perhaps kept for family use.

  

At the bottom edge of the postcard is 'Jinricksha Natal' - a word not used for long in the Colony which also indicates an early date 1895 to 1900.

 

No photographic studio mark appears.

Advertisement showing various types of

solar topee/pith helmet