When Charles II was restored to his throne in 1660 he brought with him a French fashion for wigs. Apparently the Merry Monarch’s uncle, Louis XIII, favoured them to hide his baldness and the rest is history. Wigs were rather expensive so an alternative was hair powder. By the eighteenth century if you aspired to be properly turned out you, or your wig, needed to be doused in hair lotion and then scented hair powder which stuck to the pomade.

In 1786, William Pitt the Younger introduced a tax on hair powder, perfumes and other preparations for beautification and fashion. It proved so effective that he introduced a second tax on hair powder in 1795 (The Duty of Hair Powder Act) to help fund Britain’s campaign in Europe against the French. From 5 May 1795, if you wanted to look like an accident in a BeRo factory (other flour brands are available etc) you would have to pay a guinea (21 shillings) at a stamp office for which you would receive a licence to powder your hair. In theory sellers of such cosmetics would not hand over the goods until they clapped eyes on the licence.

Obviously Pitt wasn’t completely unreasonable. A father with two unmarried daughters at home could get a discount on the amount he had to pay and you didn’t have to pay a guinea for each servant – good news for parents with teenagers everywhere as well as for people with footmen! You did not have to pay the fee if you were in service to the Crown, a member of the royal family, a vicar or in the armed services below a certain rank. And clearly if you had the time to wander around with a ton of flour/starch in your hair then you were part of the social elite in any event. If you couldn’t afford the guinea then, quite frankly, in the eyes of some, you shouldn’t be rocking the look anyway.

Unfortunately for Pitt’s calculations, rather than coughing up for their certificate, Britain’s wealthy and fashion conscious opted to stop using hair powder. Those who were caught wearing hair powder without a certificate faced a fine of £20 with an award of half the fine going to snitches who informed on the unlicensed dedicated followers of fashion. Those who did pay up were rather mockingly called ‘guinea pigs’ while proud male refusers of the new tax, ironically often members of the Whig party, had their hair cut short. Although it was sometimes hard to tell whether they objected to the tax or felt some sympathy for the revolutionary French. In either event short hair had arrived to stay. The law was eventually repealed during the nineteenth century.

Of course, if you’re smiling at this particular post, you may want to consider that today we pay VAT on most things and of course, it had its origins in Pitt’s hated stamp duties on every day items including hair powder.

And no, you really don’t want to know why I’ve suddenly and somewhat randomly started posting about a period in history which up until now I have largely avoided.