The Peruke Wig
The periwig, in colonial days, was a distinguishing badge of gentle folks. An anonymous traveler of the 1740s observed that in Maryland:
“Tis an odd Sight, that except some of the very elevated Sort, few Persons wear Perukes, so that you would imagine they were all sick, or going to bed: Common People wear Woollen and Yarn Caps, but the better ones wear white Holland or Cotton: Thus they travel fifty Miles from Home. It may be cooler, for ought I know; but, methinks, ’tis very ridiculous.”
Perhaps on the frontier men allowed their beards to go unshorn. In the settled areas and towns, however, only a clean-shaven face was acceptable to a fashionable style that also demanded false hair on the head. Most men probably shaved, and a goodly number visited Edward Charlton’s shop almost daily and paid him an annual fee for “shaving and dressing.” The term “dressing” generally referred to the care of the wig.
The Case of Richard Gamble, peruke maker
The shop that Richard Gamble entrusted to his new partner in 1752 stood next door to the Raleigh Tavern, in what was sometimes called the most public part of the city. Certainly, no better location in Williamsburg could have been found for a barber shop than on the Duke of Gloucester Street in the block nearest the Capitol.
Richard Gamble, barber and peruke maker of Williamsburg in the middle years of the eighteenth century, appears to have remained a bachelor all his life. Other than this he seems to have been no more improvident than the average craftsman of his time. Except that he was brought into court with startling frequency in an endless round of suits to collect unpaid debts.
But Gamble was in good company. Going to the law was part of the colonial way of life in Virginia, and everyone from a town seemed to engage in it. In fact, suing and being sued had some of the aspects of a game: the plaintiff in one case might shortly be a defendant in another and witness in a third, and keep right on doing business with the other parties in all three cases!
Court records abound with evidence that Williamsburg wigmakers were just as impecunious and as contentious as any of the rest. Mr. Gamble, however, had an additional distinction of a sort. While most debt cases reached a settlement out of court or ended in judgment for the plaintiff, Gamble actually went to jail for debt. In the Virginia Gazette of May 8, 1752, appeared this announcement to the public:
“BEING prevented carrying on my Business as usual by an Arrest for a Debt not justly my own. I hereby give Notice, That I have taken into Partnership with me Edward Charlton, late from London, who will carry on the Business, at my Shop, next Door to the Raleigh Tavern, in Williamsburg. Gentlemen, who please to favor us with their Orders for Wigs, &c. may depend on being well and expeditiously served and oblige.”
Whether or not this type of advertisement helped business is presumed to have done so, as the Virginia Gazette was full of such ads!
The Ladies wore curls!
Alexander Finnie, co-defendant with Richard Gamble in at least one large suit for the debt—perhaps the one that led to Gamble’s “Arrest”—was himself a wigmaker who had abandoned the craft for the arduous pleasures of innkeeping. He was the proprietor at the time of the Raleigh Tavern, Williamsburg’s largest and most famous hostelry.
When Gamble died, Edward Charlton, late from London, succeeded in the business and became in time Williamsburg’s leading barber and wigmaker. His livelihood—as perhaps he foresaw—was already doomed when he retired from business shortly before the Revolution: the wig fashion was on the way out in England and would soon be dropped in America. And in any case, his former clientele would vanish from the streets of Williamsburg when the capital of Virginia was moved to Richmond in 1780.
Charlton, Gamble, and Finnie were only three of some thirty men concerned with barbering and wig making in eighteenth-century Williamsburg. Once or twice between 1700 and 1780 the town apparently had to struggle along for short periods with but a single active practitioner of the craft. Usually, there were at least two or three, and for a time in 1769, as many as eight plied their trade in the little capital city.
Edward Charlton
An archaeological sketch of the Charlton shop after digging.
Edward Charlton at one time had four apprentices and journeymen, and one of his contemporaries, Robert Lyon, in the space of two years had five known bond servants, at least three identified as barber-wigmakers. A few of the Williamsburg barbers and peruke makers advertised their readiness to dress ladies’ hair, and Charlton regularly made curls for the wive of his customers. But most seem to have confined themselves wholly, or almost, to barbering and bewigging male clients. Some among Charlton’s regular customers for shaving and dressing, however, never bought a wig from him. Either they imported their own directly from a maker or else they wore no wig. To defy fashion in this second manner must have taken some courage, for the wig was an important badge of social rank, particularly among the upper and would-be upper classes. Even the servants of rich planters wore white wigs. Except in the lesser ranks craftsmen, indentured servants, and apprentices sometimes did and sometimes did not wear wigs.
On the other hand, such a well-to-do and fashion-conscious man as George Washington seems to have been judging from his portraits and other records, to have worn no wig at all, though he kept his own hair well powdered and curled.
George Washington, when in Williamsburg, often lodged at the tavern of Richard Charlton, but was not among Edward Charlton’s customers for any barbering service. Peyton Randolph, however, the speaker of the House of Burgesses, was an excellent patron. He bought two brown dress bob wigs every year, and each December paid for a year of shaving and dressing. John Randolph, the attorney general, was another regular customer, who paid nothing for several years, then settled his large bill partly in cash.
The cash receipts that Charlton entered in his accounts may in rare instances have included clinking money. But the colonies were forbidden to mint their own, and coin of the realm was exceedingly scarce. So Charlton’s income was largely paper currency of one kind or another: perhaps Virginia currency printed by William Hunter at the printing office on Duke of Gloucester Street years before, bills of exchange on a London merchant, or warehouse receipts for varying amounts of stored tobacco, these being a form of legal tender universally acceptable in the tobacco colonies.
Robert Carter Nicholas, treasurer of the colony, Thomas Everard, mayor of Williamsburg, George Mason of Gunston Hall, author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, George Wythe, professor of law at the College, and Wythe’s former student, the youthful Thomas Jefferson, all visited the shop of Charlton more or less faithfully. Jefferson, experimenting as usual, first bought a brown dress queue wig and then a brown tie wig before he settled on the brown dress bob that was the prevailing style.
Another of the famous patrons of Charlton was Mr. Patrick Henry who purchased only one peruke of him in the half-dozen years of the account book and brought it back for alteration, but never for dressing. Perhaps this was the brown wig that one contemporary remembered exhibited no indication of great care in the dressing. Another acquaintance, however, recalled that Henry always appeared at the bar of the General Court in a full suit of black cloth or velvet, and a tye wig, which was dressed and powdered in the highest style.
About some of these thirty or more men, we know nothing today except their names. About others, quite a few facts survive in one place or another, chiefly the records of the York County Court and the columns of the Virginia Gazette. In addition, Edward Charlton’s account book of sales made and payments received during the years 1769 to about 1775 (there are some later entries) was found in the attic of a Williamsburg home only a few years ago. It helps immensely to round out our knowledge of his craft and clientele and makes him almost inevitably the representative of his fellows in this account.
WIG SHOPS IN WILLIAMSBURG
The broad main street of Williamsburg, muddy or dusty as the season decreed, stretched westward from the Capitol nearly a mile to the College of William and Mary. During most of the year, it saw only the normal activity of a small colonial town. But several times each year, perhaps when the courts and the Assembly met, the town’s population doubled or tripled. These “Publick Times” were almost field days of litigation, commercial negotiation, and merrymaking. Then it was that innkeepers and craftsmen lucky enough to have been located in that first block knew how fortunate they were.
John Peter Wagnon
One small shop also near the Raleigh Inn had been a barbering and wig-making establishment at least since John Peter Wagnon purchased it in 1734. It remained so through the long ownership of Wagnon’s one-time apprentice, Andrew Anderson, and the short occupancy of two successor barbers and wigmakers, William Peake of Yorktown and James Currie. Across the street from the Raleigh had stood the shop of Jean Pasteur, one of Williamsburg’s first known wigmakers. Somewhere nearby Alexander Finnie made wigs before moving to the Raleigh itself, and Anthony Geohegan did so later—perhaps in the same shop.
A little farther uptown William Peake briefly set up business as a barber in Mr. Dunn’s Crown Tavern, opposite the printing office. James Nichols first opened his shop in the corner room of the brick house where Mrs. Singleton lives, now better known as the Brick House Tavern. And somewhere along the same crowded street was the shop of Richard Charlton, probably related to Edward Charlton.
The Journeymen were craftsmen who had finished their apprentice training but had not yet gone into business as their own masters). They were in good demand and supply. Alexander Finnie</strong> gave notice in a 1745 issue of the Virginia Gazette that he was in want of Two or Three Journeymen, that understand the Business of a Barber and Peruke-maker, and promised any who applied “good Encouragement.” The response to this ad was prompt, for the very next issue of the Gazette contained this notice by the master barber and wigmaker whose shop was direct across the street from Finnie’s:
“Whereas my honest Neighhour, that has advertised for Two or Three Journeymen, has lately seduced One from my Service, in a clandestine and undermining Manner; which I am well persuaded, that no Man but one of his Principles would have done: Therefore it’s to be hoped, that one of the Number he has advertised for, will come into my Service, in Lieu of him who has been so villainously cajoled as above, who may depend on having good Encouragement, from Andrew Anderson.”
Whether Anderson lured anyone into his employ by this ad does not appear. But Finnie a year later announced that he had just imported from London a shipment of wig-making materials and also some exceeding good Workmen. With what has the ring of smug satisfaction he concluded: “As I have a great many good Workmen, Gentlemen and others may depend on being speedily and faithfully served, in the best manner.:
The mention by Finnie of imported materials was typical. Time and again the announcements of Williamsburg wigmakers contain phrases such as “Just arrived, a choice Parcel of Hairs, prepared by the best Hands in London,” or “A Fresh Cargo of live human Hairs, already curled and well prepared”; By far the larger portion of hair used in Williamsburg-made wigs was imported from England, either by the peruke maker himself or by colonial hair merchants.
Where did the hair-to-make wigs come from?
According to Diderot’s Encyclopedia, hair came from regions such as Flanders, where beer and cider, common beverages, made superior wigs; women’s hair was better than men’s; country women’s better than city women’s; and chestnut was the most desirable color, except that white wigs should be made of hair that once had been black. Furthermore, avowed the same authority. “In general, the hair of persons not given to excesses lasts a long time, while that of men who live in sexual debauchery, or of women who give themselves to the uses of men, has less sap, dries out, and loses its quality.”
Source: The Wigmaker in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg: An Account of his Barbering, Hair-dressing, & Peruke-Making Services, & some Remarks on Wigs of Various Styles by Thomas K. Bullock and Maurise B. Tonkin