Link to long aricle on history of hair for geeks like me

[share801]

I was browsing around and came across this link that talks about the evolution of hair care from 1800 - on. Its hard to believe people were acutally KILLED from washing their hair (sewer gas explosions) or fires restulting from washing with petrol. Hair geeks may find it interesting.

http://www.cheshiretrichology.co.uk/essay.htm

[Aer]

That was a awesome article! I love reading about hair history and methods that were used to achieve then current hair styles. I'm also going to check out the references at the bottom of the page of the essay, I saw some very intriguing books and articles listed. I can't believe some of the stuff they put in their hair! And I never really thought about how bad lice was back then. Although a lot of this history is in Britain, I'm sure America went through similar trends and products. Thank you very much for the link, I'm sure I'll be returning to it occasionally.

[Pumpkin]

Thanks for the link...very interesting read.

[Konstifik]

Fascinating article! Though I could just feel my hair shivering in terror while reading it... Thanks for sharing!

[Carolyn]

That was interesting. I'm so glad I didn't live back then :D

[MOrab46019]

Just thinking what gas can do to human skin. Yeah it is great to get grease off your hands but it harsh as hell. I hate to see what it would do to hair.

[Elfe]

Thank you for sharing!

[TammySue]

oooooO thanks! I love articles like this! :)

[florenonite]

This is really interesting. There's one thing with which I disagree, though:


Although henna was the least harmful of these dyes, continuous use could result in brittle hair.

Henna leads to brittle hair? Really? I can't quite get my head around that one.

[Melisande]

And the 100 brush strokes may frowned upon today, but as mechanical device of removing sebum, it might have been very useful.

The writer is of the shampoo-twice-a-day-vigorously, it seems.


Henna was quick to stain the skin around the hairline, so Vaseline was applied to client's forehead and tips of ears as prevention.

And Vaseline was invented, according to Wikipedia, in 1872 in the USA. I don't know how widespread its use in Victorian England was... And I have my doubts about the henna, too. Ginger hair is unpopular in Britain, as members here told us, too. I don't remember one "good" heroine from British literature with orange-red hair.... so I'm not certain that the henna color was at all desirable.

Not geeky enough for me. I'd like to have proper footnotes in order to find out where which information comes from. The literature list is very useful, though ;-)

And yes, reading it made my hair stand up a bit, too....

You see that the historical novels (Philippa Gregory's heroines take baths all the time and brush their clean hair happily) and movies (Suzannah Harker as Jane Bennet, washing her hair...) fake a bit. Who knows how Anne Boleyn's hair looked under her hood?

[Shimmy]

This is really interesting. There's one thing with which I disagree, though:



Henna leads to brittle hair? Really? I can't quite get my head around that one.


Maybe they were mixing it with other things or using it much too often?

[Igor]

Thank you for posting this! :flowers:

[hmmm]

That is one really shocking article. I had my mouth open while reading most of it, I'm sure that the rest of the world never went through things like that! The western world is certainly something else.

[elianne]

You see that the historical novels (Philippa Gregory's heroines take baths all the time and brush their clean hair happily) and movies (Suzannah Harker as Jane Bennet, washing her hair...) fake a bit. Who knows how Anne Boleyn's hair looked under her hood?

Haha, when I read "The Other Boleyn Girl" that was one of my very first thoughts!

Super interesting article... I love learning about all aspects of daily life in other time periods. Pretty crazy practices!

[Fractalsofhair]

I do find it odd how they note the booming soap business. Soap has been used for far longer than just 200 or so years! The average woman would have probably used soap in the past, and only the nobles would have had the crazy hair of the late 1700s. If you were poor, a wig would have been out of the budget,or all but the most simple wig. And prior to that, people washed their hair about as often as they bathed. Ie, every few months/2-3 times a year.

[Melisande]

For fairness' sake we have to add some facts. Western history did not start 200 years ago.

The Romans had huge public baths for those who could not afford running water in their houses (yes, rich people had running water!). Bathing was free. Every Roman went to the bath house once a day.

In the Middle Ages, the bath houses stayed popular. Every village had one, and people bathed regularly. It was only the outbreak of the plague and other infectuous diseases that made Europeans fear water. They did not understand how infection worked but they became afraid of public bath houses. And there were few means to bathe in the house.

The Dutch in the 17th century were famous for their cleanliness of house and person. France, Britan and Germany were much dirtier. But people knew and used soap. Many Dutch paintings show women searching lice on their children's heads. Without modern treatments, it was a constant struggle to keep clean, so these paintings show us not how filthy people were, but how important the battle against lice and dirt was.

The 18th century marked the lowest point in the history of hygiene - the aforementioned wigs and lard and lice and eau de toilette instead of water washing. Already in the early 19th century, people rediscovered river bathing, sea bathing and also personal hygiene. Famously, it was the British Princess Royal who married the Prussian crown prince and had runnig water installed in all Prussian palaces. Before that, the Emperor had bathed once a week. Now it became easier to bathe daily.

Water was scarce (as it is today - we should all save water and think of the resources!). People couldn't splurge with water they took in from the well, heated over fire (they had to light the fire and get the firewood before) and dragged to the bedroom bucket by bucket. Even if you had servants who did the hard work for you - it's not an act people took lightly.

It is perfectly possible to keep hair quite clean with WO, people on these boards tried it a year or two ago (the WO rage seems to be over, though ... where is Boucle?). If the head is used to gentle mechanical cleansing, it may well produce less sebum then our heads who have been trained with hard water and detergents since babyhood to produce copious amounts of the good stuff.

People will have smelled - their teeth were rotting, no dental medicine, they had old infections and sores but no antibiotics, they had no deodorants and had no laundry machines.

But I'm not certain that our current Western hygienic hysteria is normal for humans. Every hair, every imperfection of the skin, every fold and every wrinkle have to be eliminated. Body odor is a huge no-no.

But still, we are nose animals, and we are attracted to the odor of our sexual partner (hopefully). We still use our noses to sort out unattractive (evolutionary unsuitable) partners. There are enough studies that prove these facts.

So I think the text is too drastic. I collect household and parenting manuals, including beauty books, from the 19th century, and they recommend nowhere to clean hair with petrol. Maybe some people did it, but most people were well aware of the dangers. The books I own recommend cleaning the hair by brushing, and using rain or well water to wash hair, with egg yolk and rum or other home recipes. Nothing that should shock LHCers....

[Kimberly]

Hmmm. The article claimed, "After the initial expense of a permanent wave, women were reluctant to brush or comb their hair, in case they ruined the effect. Unfortunately this led to an infestation of head lice."

I never before read that brushing or combing has anything to do with avoiding lice (unless we're talking about using a specialized nit comb), and I really don't believe it does, so I don't trust the article much. Fun reading, though!

[QueenAnne'sLace]

This is absolutely fascinating!!!
A+!! :thumbsup:

[QueenAnne'sLace]

For fairness' sake we have to add some facts. Western history did not start 200 years ago.

An excellent point. I might also add that the person who wrote the essay failed to make the distinction between social classes and location. During most of the filthy, lice-infested, poor sewage system paragraphs, most rural farmers lived relatively well, by today's standards.
Many of the extremes that were undertaken as described in the article were done by the urban rich and urban middle class. Urban settings in this period were incredibly cramped and inadequately set up for the volume of people.
Once again, the rural farmers would have had an advantage in the sense that they were less likely to feel the need to keep up with the extreme styles of the cities and thus opted for simpler, classic styles.
That could also probably tell you something about today's rural people!

[KaasKnot]

It is perfectly possible to keep hair quite clean with WO, people on these boards tried it a year or two ago (the WO rage seems to be over, though ... where is Boucle?). If the head is used to gentle mechanical cleansing, it may well produce less sebum then our heads who have been trained with hard water and detergents since babyhood to produce copious amounts of the good stuff.

The WO movement is still going strong. :) I actually do NW/SO, which is where we use no water or shampoo at all, and we clean our hair by brushing it out. There is no stink, I don't have lice, and my hair has never looked better.

Overall, I agree with what a lot of previous posters said. I think the article, while very interesting, was somewhat exaggerated.

[florenonite]

An excellent point. I might also add that the person who wrote the essay failed to make the distinction between social classes and location. During most of the filthy, lice-infested, poor sewage system paragraphs, most rural farmers lived relatively well, by today's standards.
Many of the extremes that were undertaken as described in the article were done by the urban rich and urban middle class. Urban settings in this period were incredibly cramped and inadequately set up for the volume of people.
Once again, the rural farmers would have had an advantage in the sense that they were less likely to feel the need to keep up with the extreme styles of the cities and thus opted for simpler, classic styles.
That could also probably tell you something about today's rural people!

Agreed. The article talks about the state of London in the late 18th Century, but says nothing else of even the other cities in Britain. Edinburgh, for instance, would have been significantly smaller than London at the time (assuming "London" is the entirety and not just the "City of London"); IIRC Edinburgh had a population between 50 000 and 100 000 in the 18th Century. In fact, Edinburgh actually was very clean, due to the creation of the "New Town" during the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th Century. The Old Town was too cramped, so they build a new one, essentially.

[hmmm]

For fairness' sake we have to add some facts. Western history did not start 200 years ago.

The Romans had huge public baths for those who could not afford running water in their houses (yes, rich people had running water!). Bathing was free. Every Roman went to the bath house once a day.

In the Middle Ages, the bath houses stayed popular. Every village had one, and people bathed regularly. It was only the outbreak of the plague and other infectuous diseases that made Europeans fear water. They did not understand how infection worked but they became afraid of public bath houses. And there were few means to bathe in the house.

The Dutch in the 17th century were famous for their cleanliness of house and person. France, Britan and Germany were much dirtier. But people knew and used soap. Many Dutch paintings show women searching lice on their children's heads. Without modern treatments, it was a constant struggle to keep clean, so these paintings show us not how filthy people were, but how important the battle against lice and dirt was.

The 18th century marked the lowest point in the history of hygiene - the aforementioned wigs and lard and lice and eau de toilette instead of water washing. Already in the early 19th century, people rediscovered river bathing, sea bathing and also personal hygiene. Famously, it was the British Princess Royal who married the Prussian crown prince and had runnig water installed in all Prussian palaces. Before that, the Emperor had bathed once a week. Now it became easier to bathe daily.

Water was scarce (as it is today - we should all save water and think of the resources!). People couldn't splurge with water they took in from the well, heated over fire (they had to light the fire and get the firewood before) and dragged to the bedroom bucket by bucket. Even if you had servants who did the hard work for you - it's not an act people took lightly.

It is perfectly possible to keep hair quite clean with WO, people on these boards tried it a year or two ago (the WO rage seems to be over, though ... where is Boucle?). If the head is used to gentle mechanical cleansing, it may well produce less sebum then our heads who have been trained with hard water and detergents since babyhood to produce copious amounts of the good stuff.

People will have smelled - their teeth were rotting, no dental medicine, they had old infections and sores but no antibiotics, they had no deodorants and had no laundry machines.

But I'm not certain that our current Western hygienic hysteria is normal for humans. Every hair, every imperfection of the skin, every fold and every wrinkle have to be eliminated. Body odor is a huge no-no.

But still, we are nose animals, and we are attracted to the odor of our sexual partner (hopefully). We still use our noses to sort out unattractive (evolutionary unsuitable) partners. There are enough studies that prove these facts.

So I think the text is too drastic. I collect household and parenting manuals, including beauty books, from the 19th century, and they recommend nowhere to clean hair with petrol. Maybe some people did it, but most people were well aware of the dangers. The books I own recommend cleaning the hair by brushing, and using rain or well water to wash hair, with egg yolk and rum or other home recipes. Nothing that should shock LHCers....

Thank you for clearing that up, Melisande! I thought it was a little unbelievable.

[twolunarspring]

Um... doesn't henna do the exact opposite of making the hair brittle?
I have to honest and say I don't trust the accuracy of that article.