18th century wigs and wigmakers

The use of wigs began prior to the 18th century, but they were very much in vogue throughout the 18th century and were known as either periwigs or perukes, and remained fashionable until the advent of  hair powder tax which was part of the government’s way to find more ways to increase the empty coffers, at which time their prevalence diminished, and it wouldn’t take many years for au naturel to become the fashion. The terms periwig and peruke appear to have been interchangeable terms and it’s interesting to note the decrease in size of wigs over the decades as we can see here.

Wellcome Collection

To have your wig powdered was a sign of your wealth, affluence and when you read newspapers about missing persons, there was frequently a physical description of the person, but also a reference to the type of wig they were wearing as we can see below with this gentleman who was sporting a curled wig powdered.

Police Gazette 18 March 1774

There were several reasons for wearing wigs, apart from being a fashion accessory, hair loss being the most obvious, but they were also worn to cover scarring caused by illnesses such as syphilis.

Needless to say, wearing a wig became something of  a vicious circle, you may have chosen to wear one to protect against head lice, but equally, wigs were often made from made from animal hair which could cause lice and other scalp conditions which they may not have suffered from prior to wearing it!

Wearing a wig was also a fire hazard due to the use of candles, something I have written about before, so candle light combined with the use of animal fats used for styling wigs, was a recipe for disaster.

A Doleful Disaster, Or Miss Fubby Fatarmin’s Wig Caught Fire. Lewis Walpole Library

Wigmakers and hairdressers not only benefitted from the sale of wigs, but also by selling accessories to ensure their client remained looking and smelling fragrant with the use of soaps, oils, powders and pomatums, as we can see below at Oaks’ Ornamental Hair Manufactory on Vine Street London.

Aris’s Birmingham Gazette 27 May 1799

We may think that grooming is a 21st century ‘thing’ but it was extremely important back in the 18th century too. If you visit a hairdressers, barbers or beauty salon today, secondary selling still takes place. Many adverts claimed that products developed by the wigmaker would not only make your wig look good, but also that their product was better than any others and that it could stop you from getting a headache or other ailments, as it was far superior to other products on the market – of course, no evidence exists to support some of their spurious claims.

Here we can see an example of a trade card for Thomas Ravenscroft, of Serle Street, London, not only did he sell all kinds of wigs, but also perfumes. From his will though, his business doesn’t appear to have been terribly successful, as he left a legacy to his wife in 1807 of just £20.

British Museum

Women rarely wore wigs, as they were very much a male domain, but I have also read that women never wore wigs, however, as we can see from this advert, which appeared in the Hereford Journal, 12 September 1798, Mr Bosley could provide hair services for you having brought with him from London – ‘Ladies’ wigs, fillets, braids and all kinds of false hair’. This was only one of many adverts, so clearly there was a requirement for women’s wigs. In fact the advert above for Oaks’ appears to have been very much aimed at women.

For women the fashion for large and high hair grew during the 1770s and 80s and as we can see here in this caricature below, some were enormous towers. For women who wished to replicate anything similar to this one would probably have used what today we would call hair extensions, which, with an experienced stylist could create some amazingly high hair, but quite how realistic images as we see below were, we can only imagine, as I would have thought taking your hair that high, might actually snap your neck.

Satire on fashion: a French hairdresser mounts a ladder to arrange with tongs the curls of a lady with an enormous coiffure, while another man with a long queue, evidently her husband, holds a sextant to measure the height. 15 July 1771. Matthias Darly. British Museum.

The Hampshire Chronicle 11 August 1798 tells us that apparently men preferred their ladies not to wear wigs (make of this what you will!).

This advert by William Johnston which appeared in the Caledonian Mercury, advises his customers that not only did he sell wigs for men, but also women and children in various sizes and colours. I wasn’t aware of children wearing wigs, so a new one to me.

Caledonian Mercury 25 May 1752

So where did the hair come from? It would appear that there were hair merchants, who would sell the hair either in its natural state or prepared for wig making, such a procedure would probably include dying it. We can see an example of a hair merchant here in this advert in the Northampton Mercury 9 May 1795:

Sadly, I have no context for this next piece which appeared in the Cambridge Intelligencer, 15 September 1798:

The hair merchants first introduced ladies’ wigs, in order to dispose of their over laden market, from the heads of the dead soldiers, during the war. Read this, fair country women, and shudder!

In the 1700s, wig or peruke making was very much a male occupation, with many of them being journeymen who travelled around the country to service their clients.  However, I did come across a few women who were wig makers, mainly having taken over their husband’s business upon his demise. Here we have an advert for Alice Rawlinson, whose husband Matthew,  had died, but rather than selling the business, Alice decided to continue running it.

Manchester Mercury 08 April 1783

And one for Elizabeth Perkins, again continuing to run her late husband’s business, but this woman’s skills knew no bounds, not only peruke making, but bloodletting, ladies ear boring (which presumably means ear piercing), cleaning and teeth drawing.

Leeds Intelligencer 28 August 1787 – Elizabeth Perkins

I’ll finish this article with a snippet from the Hampshire Chronicle of 20 August 1798, about Lady Emma Hamilton’s wigs. True or not, I couldn’t possibly comment, but she was in Naples at this time, so perhaps there is a grain of truth in it.

Update courtesy of Etienne Daly:

Others in the 18th century also grew their own hair and styled it to the fashionable perukes of the time as can be seen here, Admiral Sir John Lockhart Ross (1721-1790).

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