A history of… hair products
Don't believe those online ads for curing baldness, you can't do better than the ashes of an ass's genitals…
Having recently written about shampoo I didn’t think I would be doing a hair-related post again quite so soon, but then my friend Dave1 told me about the Duty on Hair Powder Act 1795 and that sent me down a fascinating series of rabbit holes about the history of hair products that I couldn’t help but share!
Humans have been styling their hair for a long time. A very long time. In 1908 a small limestone statue was found in southern Austria that radiocarbon dating has established as being 30,000 years old. The statue, known as ‘The Venus of Willendorf’, is that of a woman with what could be braided hair (if it isn’t braids, then it is some kind of headdress, which similarly suggests that styling one’s head was important).
In ancient Egypt we know that people styled their hair using, well, hair gel, made from a combination of palm oils and animal fats because a number of mummies (the oldest of which dates back 3,500 years) have been found with coiffured locks coated with the stuff. Interestingly a number of these mummies were not the bodies of the rich and noble, prepared for death and left in elaborate tombs. Rather they were people who had been buried in simple desert graves, where the heat and aridity naturally mummified the bodies. Some of the mummies had long hair that had been forced into curls and then gelled, and ancient curling tongs have been found in a number of Egyptian tombs.
Egypt is not the only place where we find evidence for ancient hair gel. Clonycavan Man is the name given to a well-preserved Iron Age bog body found in Clonycavan, Ballivor, County Meath, Ireland in March 2003. The body, which has been dated to between 392 and 201 BCE, has a very distinctive quiff, once again held in place with hair gel. This gel was made from a mixture of plant oils and pine resin which had been imported from either south-western France or northern Spain – yes, the international trade in hair products is well over 2,000 years old!
Hairstyling was incredibly important for the monied classes of Ancient Rome – a ‘natural’ hairstyle was considered literally barbaric and indicated a lack of sophistication (and wealth). For women in particular, one’s hairstyle was expressing personality, style and status. So much time was dedicated to this styling that some people, like the writer Tertullian (c.155–c.220 BCE), got quite annoyed about it:
What service, again, does all the labour spent in arranging the hair render to salvation? Why is no rest allowed to your hair, which must now be bound, now loosed, now cultivated, now thinned out? Some are anxious to force their hair into curls, some to let it hang loose and flying; not with good simplicity: beside which, you affix I know not what enormities of subtle and textile perukes [wigs]; now, after the manner of a helmet of undressed hide, as it were a sheath for the head and a covering for the crown; now, a mass (drawn) backward toward the neck.

Men were at it too, as he goes on to explain:
If it is true, (as it is) that in men, for the sake of women (just as in women for the sake of men), there is implanted, by a defect of nature, the will to please; and if this sex of ours acknowledges to itself deceptive trickeries of form peculiarly its own, (such as) to cut the beard too sharply; to pluck it out here and there; to shave round about (the mouth); to arrange the hair, and disguise its hoariness by dyes.
What kind of dyes? Well, if your hair started to grey, and you wanted to dye it black, Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) had just the thing for you:
Leeches left to putrefy for forty days in red wine stain the hair black. Others, again, recommend one sextarius of leeches to be left to putrefy the same number of days in a leaden vessel, with two sextarii of vinegar, the hair to be well rubbed with the mixture in the sun.
If you were worried about losing your hair, don’t worry, he had a solution for that too:
The ashes, it is thought, of an ass’s genitals, will make the hair grow more thickly, and prevent it from turning grey; the proper method of applying it being to shave the head and to pound the ashes in a leaden mortar with oil. Similar effects are attributed to the genitals of an ass's foal, reduced to ashes and mixed with urine; some lard being added to render the mixture less offensive.2
The constantly changing fashions of Roman hairdos presented an unusual challenge for the nobility. What could you do if that beautiful stone bust you have carved of yourself sports a hairstyle that, in six months’ time, becomes totally passé? The answer is simple – you have it made with a detachable marble wig, so when the fashion changes you simply get a new hairstyle carved!
It wasn’t just the Romans who were concerned about hair loss. For more than a thousand years, right up into the 20th century, one of the most popular remedies was bear grease. As the abbess and medical writer Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) explains:
When a young person begins to lose his hair, take bear fat, a small quantity of ashes from wheat straw or from winter wheat straw, mix this together and anoint the entire head with it, especially those areas on the head where the hair is beginning to fall out. Afterwards, he should not wash this ointment off for a long while.
The hair that has not yet fallen out will be moistened and strengthened by this ointment so that it will not fall out for a long time. Let him repeat this often and not wash his head. For the warmth of bear fat has the property of causing much hair to grow. And the ashes from wheat straw or winter wheat straw strengthen the hair so that it will not readily fall out. When these ingredients are mixed as described, they will hold a person’s hair for a long time so that it does not fall out.
The rationale behind this solution was fairly straightforward – bears are hairy, so there must be some inherent property in their fat that made hair grow. The bear fat was usually mixed with beef marrow and a selection of herbs in order to obscure its stench (though this wasn’t a hugely successful). As the European bear populations declined due to hunting during the 18th and 19th centuries bear fat became an increasingly expensive ingredient. Some canny manufacturers realised that, given that the product didn’t actually work, there was no need for them to use actual bear fat in it. This approach became so prevalent that John G. Wood wrote in his 1855 book Animal Traits & Characteristics, or Sketches & Anecdotes of Animal Life:
For example, ninety-nine of every hundred pots of bear's grease are obtained exclusively from the pig, and have had no connection whatever with the bear. Bears are not quite plentiful enough, or so easily killed, as to supply all the vast amount of “bear’s grease” which is annually consumed even in this metropolis; and much less would their bodies be capable of affording as much as is consumed in the whole of England. The fact is, that bear’s grease may be described as lard, plus perfume; that is all. Lard is purified, scented, put into pots, decorated with coloured labels, called bear’s grease, sold at a high price, and has the double advantage of bringing in a very large percentage to the seller, and doing quite as much good to the buyer as if it were the genuine fat of the bear. Some years ago, it was the custom for perfumers and hairdressers to keep bears on their premises, and to poke them up when there was any indication of a crowd, in order to show that they had the real thing. Every now and then, the carcass of a bear was seen hung up at their shopdoors, and the attention of the spectators drawn to it by enormous placards, gorgeous in all the colours of the rainbow.
Not everyone, of course, was slathering their hair in bear’s grease. Some were instead coating their hair with powder. The person most associated with popularising hair powder was King Henry IV of France (1553–1610). He was sufficiently concerned about his greying hair that he used a brown powder to make it look younger. His courtiers, wanting to curry favour, soon aped this custom whether they needed to or not. In addition to darkening the hair, this power had an added benefit: it soaked up the grease from the seldom-washed locks. Henry’s son Louis XIII (1601–1643) had a slightly different problem – he started to go bald at a very young age and began wearing long wigs to disguise the fact. Once again, obsequious courtiers copied this behaviour which spread to England and became hugely fashionable when his cousin, Charles II (1630–1685), took it up.3
The most expensive wigs of the era were white, and in order to maintain their brilliance (in an exceptionally dirty world) white powders, made from flours and starches, were applied to them. Not all powders were white, and not all were applied to wigs. Some people applied the powders directly to their hair and some women employed fashionable pastel shades. Wigs were expensive: a basic one would cost more than one pound (a month’s wages for a labourer) and the upper classes could easily spend £40–50 a year on their larger, more elaborate wigs (incidentally this is the origin of the expression bigwig, as only the rich and powerful could sport massive rugs).
To apply powder to one’s hair it was first necessary to coat the hair with a lotion known as pomatum and then apply the powder. Often a lot of powder as Mary Frampton records in her journal of 1791:
The ladies wore the hair flowing down their backs and high in front, with much pomatum and powder put on with different kinds of puffs. The finishing powder had a brown hue and a strong perfumed smell, and was called ‘Maréchale’ powder. This powder was applied at a distance that every hair might be frosted with it. One pound, and even two pounds, of powder were sometimes put into the hair or wasted in the room in one dressing.
Because, as Frampton describes, the powder tended to get everywhere, houses had special small rooms specifically designed for its application. The expression was later expanded to include small bathrooms and yup, you guessed it, that is why some people refer to them as powder rooms to this day.
William Pitt the Younger, keen to boost the government coffers, saw hair powder as an easy target for taxation. After all, it was the preserve of the rich and fashionable who could afford to pay.4 Initially he taxed the products, but in 1795, with the introduction of Duty on Hair Powder Act 1795 he started taxing the users instead. Anyone who wanted to powder their hair had to pay the sum of one guinea (a pound and a shilling, a month’s wages for a labour, so perhaps £2,000 ($2,500) in today’s terms) each year for the privilege. This was an incredibly formal process, as the Act lays out:
That every Person who shall use or wear any Powder commonly called Hair Powder, of whatever Materials the same shall be made, shall previously enter his or her Name and Place of Abode, and annually take out a Certificate thereof, in the Manner herein mentioned; and that upon every Piece of Vellum or Parchment, or Sheet or Piece of Paper, upon which any Certificate issued to any such Person shall be ingrossed, written, or printed, there shall be charged a Stamp Duty of one Pound and one Shilling.
Sadly for Pitt this didn’t turn out to be the money-spinner that he had hoped it would be. Fashions had already started trending to more natural hairstyles and this only accelerated as people bridled at this new tax. Which is a pity. I kinda wonder what I would look like with lilac hair powder. But not enough to go and dye some flour to find out…
This might have made is less offensive, but I am willing to bet that it was still pretty offensive.
Interestingly prematurely greying hair can be a symptom of syphilis, which might have been why Charles started wearing wigs.
We would probably term this a “progressive tax” today.