The building that now houses the Amsterdam Historic Museum was home to the civic orphanage, or Burgerweeshuis, from 1579 to 1960. The room which you are now standing served as the ‘older girls refectory’. These cap brooches where used by the orphan girls to secure the little caps they wore on their heads. Cap brooches were part of the traditional black and red uniform worn by orphans living at the Burgerweeshuis. “We had magnificent uniforms” the former orphan-resident Cornelia Bolderhey told a journalist in 1975. “It was half red, half black, with white shawls and caps. We wore it in the house but also at school and in town. I never felt I was looked down on by people because I was an orphan – we laughed ourselves silly when doctor Sajet from the local council argued for the abolishment of the uniform.” Ultimately, both the uniforms and the cap brooches were definitively abolished in 1919.