how did women wash their hair before shampoo?

[Shell]

People (men and women) also oiled their hair a lot and brushed it daily. That went a long way toward upkeep. Perfuming the hair was also quite common (you can guess why this might be so).

[MoonCreature]

Not going that far back but my mom told me that when she and her sisters were young they put cotton in the base of the comb before they combed their hair. The cotton absorbed some of the oil and the dirt got caught in the cotton. They also put talcum powder on their scalp, let it sit for a while and brushed it away thoroughly.

[Presto]

My mother actually made soap from fat and ashes. Floated an egg in it to see when it was done. I think she only made it just once. It was like melty wax in appearance, with tiny bubbles throughout. Milky white color with the occasional fleck of ash still in it. She cut up a pan of it into bars, and I remember it was very hard soap. It worked, but wasn't as slippery or creamy as the Ivory we usually used.
She also kept us in cloth diapers and made our bread.
Oh, and I'm only 30, so this wasn't really all that long ago!
I think she was a hippie, but didn't know it, and never ever got close to the hippie party scene. Just really into DIY stuff.

[Starr]

At least for ancient Japan, while washing and purification were very important (particularly for Shinto rites), people didn't wash their hair often. Well, not the nobility, anyway (the written records don't tell us about other social classes). It was common for the noblewomen to wash their hair 2-4 times a year. Probably the same for the noblemen, too, but I just don't remember; the women's styles were often knee-length or longer hair worn down, while the men's hair wasn't quite so long and worn in topknots most of the time. They used a variety of plant materials, including rice bran, to wash their hair.

This is very true as several Japanese noblewomen during the Heian era had hair much longer than they were tall and hairwashing would often involve a lot of servants and a lot of time (at least an entire day).

[SHADOWSCODE46]

Some old books that I have that take place in Medieval and earlier times make mention of boiling fats (from whatever animal that was slaughtered that day) to make soaps (particularly goose being mentioned more frequently). I think this was also mentioned in a book I read when I was younger called 'The Midwifes Apprentice'. This was done by servants for people that could afford maids, cooks and the sort. The books are fiction but I believe that this scenario may very well be true.

[snowflakegirl]

I was told by my grandmother that my great-grandmother (which was about 100 years ago) would wash her hair with bar soap and rinse with cold water and lemon juice. She said her hair was so shiny afterwards. I don't think I could trust the bar soap or lemon juice on my hair. I'd be too scared of the drying effects.

[Kupferzopf]

You can trust in soap and the lemon juice rinse. That's exactly what I do. But I rinse out the juice afterwards and use 2 drops jojoba oil as leave-in.

[squiggyflop]

Castile soap, mostly.

i washed my hair with kiss my face soap today to see what it was like... i have to say that the results are good... it did take longer to wash my hair because there wasnt much lather coming out of my bar but with a vinagar rinse and some conditioner my hair feels pretty good

[Anje]

Let's not forget that there are quite a few people around here who have gotten quite good results with their hair and bodies washing only with water. I went WO for about 9 months and it worked pretty well for me, but I never got oil to move far enough down my hair and ultimately went back to CO. It's nice to know I could easily go back to that, though, should some strange need for it ever arise.

[ktani]

This is interesting, IMO.

"A formula for soap consisting of water, alkali and cassia oil ... on a Babylonian clay tablet around 2200 BC." See “Early history”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap

But it appears not to be cassia senna.

Biblical Cassia
http://books.google.ca/books?id=42UDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=cassia+o il+babylon&source=web&ots=DkX7imEZU0&sig=5P0FK99Q1 _1BLbNIE3gJHI2wSc0&hl=en#PPA10,M1

Cassia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassia