Only a Woman's Hair...

Excepting the brief mode of the "Titan" hairstyle in the early 1800s, complicated coiffures continued to reign supreme throughout the 1800s into the early 1900s. Large volumes of hair were needed for these styles, and that hair invariably came from peasant women and girls. The styles were exceedingly complex in the 1800s, a woman was unable to achieve these looks on her own.  In the early 1900s hair switches and braids were being sold directly to the consumer, along with "how to" booklets.

A sampling of images of fashionable coiffures and an introductory to the hair trade in the 1800s...

"Only A Woman's Hair."

coiffure of 1875, Le Follet

"Only A Woman's Hair."—This was the motto the ascetic Dean of St. Patrick put upon the one love-token of his ardent youth. Being imperishable love, which deems itself immortal, has attached the utmost sentimental significance to the gift of a lock of hair, which keepsakes and "In Memoriam" relics have been favourites of fashion of this plastic and beautiful adjunct to the loved one's head. In the present rage for hirsute extravagance one fears that all poetry attached to a woman's hair may be lost in those braidings and waivings, crimping and curling, erecting in horns and winding on rolls, in which hair hardly recognises itself as a natural, free, and graceful adornment. Where all this hair comes from is a question as perplexing in its various responses as the oft-vexed query—" What becomes of the pins?" The disappearance of the one is only equalled by the constant influx of the toilette requisite. It has been stated that the hair importations to this country alone amounted in one year to the aggregate of ten tons! Hair by the ton! Adieu to poetry or sentiment!  The hair merchant becomes so export in his investigation of this commodity that he can easily distinguish the nationality of any given tress of hair. Clairvoyants pretend to summon the wraith of an absent patient commended to their occult powers of healing by a lock of hair, and the hair dealer rivals them in suggestive knowledge. The scent and feel of the hair determine their verdict.  French hair weighs less than Italian, and that from the stolid German frau and fraulien outweighs both her more southern sisters.  Irish hair brings with it an odour of peat smoke;  Scotch has it also, with a slight difference in the flavour.  English hair is hard to be obtained, the free-born Britonness having a natural shrinking from sacrificing this peculiarly personal possession. Most of the long English tresses obtainable are procured from the heads of criminals, their enforced shearing forming a valuable perquisite of the warders. In France the peasant girls grow their hair for sale as they would cultivate any other marketable material. They are to be seen at the markets with flowing locks, bargaining and selling to the highest bidder.

Beauty Culture, William A. Woodbury

At the late " Southern Relief Fair" held at Baltimore, a beautiful glossy braid of bonny brown hair " was raffled for. It was the last desperate offering laid upon the altar of natural affection, sent by a lady of Richmond to buy bread for her little ones. Pope says —

"Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare, 

And beauty draws us with a single hair!" 

No wonder, then, that the redundant styles of to-day have so successful attractions for the would-be enslavers of men's hearts.

source: "The Anglo- American Times, Volume II, 1866

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Next day I visited the fair when the crowd was at its height, and explored all the stalls in the meadow and by the roadside in vain search after those shearers of young girls' tresses, respecting whom I felt some curiosity since reading the foregoing passage in Chateaubriand's Memoirs. Arrived at the outskirts of the fair, at the wings of the spectacle in fact, I noticed under a wide-spreading walnut-tree, and partially hidden behind a large crockery stall, as though the spot had been selected as affording a certain degree of privacy, a hooded cart half filled with packages, its shafts resting on the ground, and a lean horse, fastened to one of the spokes of the wheel, grazing beside it. The owner, a little square-built, muscular man, about forty years of age, seemingly half peasant, half horse-dealer, was sitting on one of the shafts close to a parcel of printed cotton goods. One detected something of the rogue in the twinkle of his insolent-looking eye as, unfastening a small packet, he brought forth one by one half a dozen showy-looking handkerchiefs, and expatiated on the particular beauties of each as he produced it to an old peasant woman, who held a barefooted young girl of twelve by the hand, whose "catiolc " had been removed, the better to display theprofusion of beautiful black hair which fell in cascades to her waist. As I approached the group, I noticed that the man suddenly became silent, but I heard the woman say, —

"One handkerchief is not enough for such a quantity of hair."

The girl seemed to have no voice in the matter, so she 

contented herself with regarding with covetous eyes the brilliant treasures displayed before her.

"My good soul," replied the dealer, in a coaxing tone, "I really can't give more, or I should lose by it, for I have already got more black hair than I want. It is only light hair that fetches any price nowadays.  Still, as I promised you a handkerchief, you shall have one. I 'll not cry off the bargain. You know where to find me when you have made up your mind."

Ad~ The Woman's mag, 1914

The old woman made no reply, but proceeded to assist the child to do up her hair, rolling it chignon fashion inside her loose "catiole." The pair then walked away, but returned a moment afterwards to accept the dealer's terms, who, without more ado, set to work. Seated upon a three-legged stool, he gripped as it were his victim, her hair all hanging down, between his knees. In his hand was a pan- of large Open shears, which he pressed close to the girl's head.

"Monsieur," cried she, "you are hurting me, pray don't cut it all off; leave me one lock to fasten my comb to."

The dealer, however, was deaf to this sort of entreaty, and with a few snips of his large scissors cropped the child's head almost close. He then rolled up the bunches of hair, and, after securing them with a knot, put them into a bag, while the girl, raising her hands to her head, felt instinctively for one moment for her missing tresses, then hastened to conceal with her catiole the ravages the dealer's shears had made. This done, the old woman selected the gaudiest of the half-dozen handkerchiefs, and hurried off her granddaughter into the crowd. Certain French writers of romance pretend that, in the majority of instances, the young girls of Brittany and Auvergne who sell their hair only do so under pressure of some dire distress. Nothing is further from the truth. In Brittany selling the hair is, as Chateaubriand tells us, as old as the Roman invasion of Gaul, and the custom may now be said to run in the blood. The style of coiffure common there certainly conceals the absence of the customary tresses, but even if it did not, no one would think any the worse of the poor shorn lamb. At Mont-lucon, again, girls who are betrothed sell their hair, with the consent of their future spouses, to provide themselves with the wedding trousseau. And even well-to-do farmers' wives, in a spirit of prudence, will at times part with their hair for a serviceable dress. Breton hair being so highly prized for its fineness, it is not on fair days alone that dealers display their tempting wares and drive hard bargains with the hesitating fair. All the year round, pedlers, with packs of showy cotton prints on their backs, tramp from village to village, trying to tempt the hundreds of girls they meet on the highway, tending pigs and cows, to part with their flaxen or raven locks for glossy looking red and yellow cotton handkerchiefs worth about a franc each.

In the towns, it is the hairdressers who insinuate to all the young girls that they give as much as twenty francs a pound for long back hair, —this is the market price throughout the north of Brittany; but as female labor is better paid in these parts, commanding about a franc a day without board, they do only a moderate amount of business, and this chiefly with girls who have to lose their hair for sanitary reasons, and, when they are forced to sacrifice it, think they may as well get from ten to fifteen francs for it from the hairdresser. The average value of a head of hair , not as it stands, but rather as it grows, is ten francs. The finest crop, reaching far below the waist, hardly ever weighs a pound or commands the coveted golden Napoleon. Years ago, before the era of railways, the hair merchant used to barter, not merely handkerchiefs, but caps, ribbons, little shawls, scarfs, and plated earrings for a head of hair, but nowadays when hair is more in demand, and young girls or their guardians have come to know more of its value, he must be prepared to pay money in the towns if he hopes to reap a handsome crop.

In Auvergne, which is quite out of the ordinary tourist's line of route, and is — as a couple of maiden ladies, whom we met last year travelling in search of the economical, in preference to the picturesque, confidentially assured us — the only part of France not overrun by English, and, consequently, the only part where living is really cheap, — in Auvergne the itinerant dealer in human hair does business in a perfectly public fashion. He makes a point of arriving in the village on market-day or during the annual fete, and might be easily mistaken for the travelling dentist or quack doctor, who extracts teeth or extols the healing quality of his drugs to the gaping peasants assembled in the market-place.

"Le Follet", 1875

At Ambert, St. Anthemc, Arlant, Olliargues, and Riom, their cabriolets and booths, surmounted by little tricolor flags, are huddled together in the midst of the egg and butter stalls; and grouped around them will be peasant girls with baskets of fruit and vegetables, accompanied by their parents or their husbands, and all ready to sacrifice their locks to the highest bidder. At Issingeaux, on market-days, the sight is exceedingly picturesque. The hair-merchant takes his stand on a low platform or wine-cask turned on end in front of a booth formed of canvas, and a few planks, and with his shirt-sleeves rolled up to his shoulders, invites the women, in a loud voice, to step up and show their hair. Around him are a crowd of men and women in sabots from the surrounding country, come to sell cither a cow, a pig, or a couple of fowls, the women dressed in a short serge petticoat and cotton apron, with a cap or a colored handkerchief bound round their head in winter, and in summer wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat; the men in short apple-green cloth jackets and large felt hats, similar to those worn by the privileged porters at the Paris market.

One by one the girls will mount platform or winecask, and throwing aside their caps, will loosen their tresses and

"Shower their  ringlets to the knee."

The hair-dealer makes a rigid examination, followed by an offer, and as soon as a bargain is struck, the girl steps inside the booth, and in five minutes the dealer's assistant will have cropped her close, when off she will run amidst the laughter and jeers of the crowd, which, however, does not prevent the remainder of the girls in the village from following her example.

It sometimes happens, however, that the young men of the place, who look upon the hair-merchant with no kindly eye, will commence assailing him before he has succeeded in packing up his traps and decamping. He then has to trust to his horse to carry him beyond the reach of the enraged swains. Mud, stones, rotten eggs, and every kind of filth at hand fall in showers upon the hood of his shabby cabriolet; but being tolerably accustomed to this sort of tiling, he takes care to be provided with an excellent horse, which soon places him beyond the reach of the mob, and next day he will sustain the principal part in much the same scene in some adjoining village.

In Normandy most of the girls have their hair cut very short with the exception of the chignon, over which they coquettishly arrange their high caps, which, like the Brittany coiffure, so completely covers the head that they appear to have lost or rather sold nothing at all.

"Beauty Culture", Woodbury

When the hair-merchant has finished his tour in the provinces, he takes his merchandise to Paris or some other large town, where he sells it, at prices varying from twenty to a hundred francs the pound, to dealers who, after preparing it, make it up into chignons, curls, bandeaux, nattes, etc. On visiting one of the largest of these establishments, we found the four walls of the sale-room lined round with shelves, reaching from the floor to the ceiling, on which were piled up chignons upon chignons of all qualities and all shades of color, from raven black to the most delicate blond, done up in packets of six, the smallest number sold by the house, which does no retail trade. Half a dozen assistants were executing orders which customers gave in person, or which had been received that morning by post from the travellers of the firm.

"Beauty Culture", William A. Woodbury

 In an adjoining warehouse the raw material was lying in heaps upon the floor beside scores of young women, who were sorting and weighing out the chignons of the future, allowing so many grammes for one sort and so many for another. The place, in fact, was redolent of hair. There was hair in all the drawers, hair in cardboard boxes, hair hanging from the ceiling and clinging to the walls, hair upon the counters, upon the chairs, and in the very inkstand; there was even hair in the air itself, moving aBrmt as it were in clouds, which when you agitated them disagreeably caressed you.

"Beauty Culture"' Woodbury 

Most of the hair, we learned, reaches the establishment in bulk, in cargo sacks, each holding about a couple of hundred weight. It is first of all subjected to a thorough washing in boiling water, to remove all the grease and other impurities, alter which it is placed in a bath of potash and then thoroughly dried. The various tresses are now sorted roughly according to their length and shade, then what is called in technical language the eveinage takes place. This consists in separating the principal locks of the same tress that do not resemble each other closely in shade. Then comes the recarrafe or equalizing of the upper ends of each tress, after which a second and more careful sorting ensues, and the hair is arranged in bundles weighing from ten to twelve pounds each, to undergo a new series of operations.

"le Follet"' 1875

First of all the hair is taken in small handfuls by the workmen, who powder it thoroughly with flour; it then receives a vigorous combing upon iron carders, after which a second carder comes to the assistance of the first and holds the hair tightly while it is pulled out in lengths, of which the longest are separated first. The final operation to which it is subjected is styled the (klentage, and consists simply in again combing it upon carders of extreme fineness. False tresses are now formed by mixing together, in certain proportions, hair of the same tint and slightly varying in length. To arrange a grand chignon the hair-worker will at times employ the spoils derived from the heads of no less than thirty women.

Our hair-dealer was careful to assure us that all the stories told about hair cut from dead bodies being worked up into chignons were devoid of truth.

"Hair thus obtained," he said, "is too brittle to *be ;d or twisted into proper form; and as for *'grejnes,' these may exist," he observed, "in Russia chignons made from hair procured from the dirty *<rdwine and Burlake peasant women, but I never

ard a duly authenticated instance of their being detected in French chignons.

 *(text undecipherable in blue portions of above paragraph)

"Le Follet", 1875

Not a lock of Russian hair comes to France except on Muscovite heads. We get, by way of Marseilles, a large quantity of hair from Italy, chiefly from Sicily, Naples, and the Papal States,—you remember about the young Roman girl who sold her hair to buy tho pope a Zouave, — and a moderate quantity from Austria, Bohemia, Belgium, and Spain, across the frontiers, but our principal supplies are home ones, and chiefly come from Brittany, Auvergne, Artois, and Normandy, and in a less degree from Langnedoc, Limousin, Poitou, and Bourbonnais. We count the Breton hair the most valuable of all by reason of its extreme fineness, and from its having been covered up in the large caps the peasants wear during its most active period of growth, from its never having been previously curled, but simply rolled up in bands, and finally because it has rarely even been combed!

"The Miller and Dressmaker"' 1875

 Auvergnat hair our merchant pronounced to be too coarse to use alone, though it worked up very well mixed with other kinds. Spanish hair, good enough in itself was too decidedly black, too sombre, to suit ordinary complexions; it was therefore requisite to mix this also, to soften it, in fact, with hair of a more delicate shade; the same with the tow-like tint of the Flemish hair, which had to be made more sunny-looking bv the addition of German hair of a richer blond.

Neapolitan hair, we were informed, was but little esteemed in the trade, a circumstance at which we were surprised, as the hair of the Caprian peasant women, which is dark, lustrous, long, and massively rippled, is among the finest in the world. The particular German hair from which the chignons of the tender shade termed angel's blond are made, commands, it seems, the highest price of all.

The long hair pulled out of ladies' heads by the comb, and which in Paris is thrown every morning on the rubbish-heaps of the city, is carefully picked up again by the chiffonnievs and sold by them for making what is called tetes-et-pointei, that is, the cheap curl or tuft of hair, the roots of the individual hairs composing which are not all at one end. Nothing in the way of hair would appear to be wasted; that of a bad shade of color is dyed, generally black, and even the clippings, which the hairdressers can turn to no other account, are sold by them to be manufactured into perukes and chignons for the more expensive class of wax dolls.

One lias spoken of chignons at 1,500 francs, but this is of course a purely exceptional price, arising first of all from the peculiar color of the hair, namely, a bright gold shade; secondly, from its great length, — nearly three and a half feet, — and thirdly, from its bulk and its extreme fineness, to combine all which necessitates a single chignon being carefully selected from an immense stock of hair, several hundredweight, in fact.

"Le Follet"' 1875

When this golden-tinted hair was the rage in Paris, and women, in despair of otherwise acquiring it, powdered their heads with gold, a hairdresser of the Rue Vivienne exhibited in his window a chignon formed entirely of the finest gold thread, and the price of which was 1,000 francs; but whether he ever manufactured more than this sample

aureate chignon, or persuaded a single fair one to parade these veritable golden locks, we are unable to say. At the present time about 250 francs appears to be the average Paris price for a superior chignon of an ordinary tint, and from twelve to seventy francs for the commoner article...

source: "Every Saturday,  A Journal of Choice Reading", 1869

Godey's Lady's Magazine, Volume 92, 1876

source: NYPL Digital Library