“He grew moustachios, and he took his tub,
And he paid a guinea to a toilet club.”
(W. S. Gilbert, ‘Princess Ida’)
This started out as a simple task…
One of the volunteers working on Bristol Central Library’s ‘Pictorial Survey’ Collection, was trying to pinpoint the viewpoint in the picture of Victorian Baldwin Street, below left.
Courtesy, Bristol Central Library, Pictorial Survey Collection
Looking more closely, she spotted the sign on the building in the distance (above right) for ‘Alexander’s Toilet Club’.
These establishments were common throughout Victorian England and were essentially up-market hairdressers. The Oxford English Dictionary records the earliest use of the term in 1850. Many barbers operated Toilet Clubs which meant that the customer could have his own shaving mug, brush and soap rather than the general one used for all customers. The members of the toilet club paid a couple of shillings a week, or in one case in Clifton, as much as one Guinea a year, which entitled them to regular shaves and haircuts. It meant that they could take advantage of specialist attention without the need for wielding the open bladed ‘cut-throat’ razors themselves.
The Central Toilet Club in Croft House, located at the top end of Stokes Croft was described as ‘one of the most elegant and recherche in the city’. The owner, Mr. Fred Chave, was a man of many years’ practical experience and known for his
‘spirited enterprise, genial courtesy and considerable attention to the requirements of his customers’
and provided
‘a perfect palace of luxury and comfort’.
Originally a large private house, it was transformed with the front of the building having a large and handsome plate-glass bay window, “which is most tastefully dressed, and never fails to command admiring attention”. The interior was styled with elegant show-cases, stands etc.
The lighting was also a special feature. There were three specially constructed lamps by J. Mason, of Birmingham and was the only establishment in Bristol fitted with such a system. “the opal reflectors producing an illumination quite equal to the electric light” (presumably a form of gas lighting).
Hairdressing was not the only part of the business, in common with many other such clubs,
“This department of the establishment is well and completely stocked with ladies’ and gentlemen’s hosiery, gloves, ties, scarfs, umbrellas, and all articles requisite to the bath and toilet. These goods are all of exceptional quality, tastefully displayed and admirably arranged for inspection.”
Beyond the shop was the toilet-room,
“undoubtedly one of the most elegantly furnished apartments of its kind in the West of England”.
“Marble washbasins, skilfully arranged mirrors, elegant lounges, rotary brushing machinery, and, in fact, everything that science can dictate or experience suggest finds a place in this elegantly appointed establishment”.
This was not a mere utilitarian business; hair-cutting, shaving, shampooing, singeing, etc. were
“carried out in the most artistic and fashionable styles…. and the scale of charges in every instance is based on the strictest moderation.”
“Mr. Fred Chave personally superintends the business in all its branches. He is well known and popular in Bristol, and by his spirited enterprise, genial courtesy, and considerate attention to the requirements of his customers has secured the confidence and support of a very extensive and high-class patronage. ”
Some establishments extended their services to Ladies Hairdressing and even ‘Special attention paid to Children’s Hair’.
‘Situation Vacant’ adverts regularly appeared in the press for hairdressers and shavers. Apprenticeships were also offered for the career minded and you could start as a ‘Lather Boy’ applying the shaving foam to the customer ready for the attentions of the skilled Barber.
Throughout the nineteenth century, a gentleman’s grooming, especially of facial hair, was seen as important part of his social status. Edwin Creer’s Popular Treatise on the Hair argued that men risked their health if they neglected cleanliness of their beards, since facial hair
“collects dirt, smoke and dust from the atmosphere…and were it not that the beard intercepts those particles, they might otherwise find their way to some internal organ”.
Such was the popularity of these Toilet Clubs that in 1896, an enterprising young lady named Mrs. Nugent, opened a fashionable club for dogs at 120 New Bond Street in London. It was called the Dogs’ Toilet Club and offered many services for the pampered pets of the wealthy and well to do, including grooming, pet sitting, veterinary care, and dentistry. For those who wished to dress their dogs in the latest fashions, there was even a dogs’ tailoress who worked tirelessly to produce the finest in 19th century canine couture.
Brushing one’s hair might seem a mundane activity, but the 1860s brought an exciting new twist to this daily ritual. Hair-brushing machines promising efficiency and luxury became a sensation at a time when the mechanisation of everyday activity spoke of prosperity, progress and improvement to the human condition. Fred Chave’s establishment included “…rotary brushing machinery, and, in fact, everything that science can dictate…”
This began in 1862, when 35-year-old Bristol hairdresser Edwin Gillard Camp received a patent for a rotary hair brush that could be set in motion mechanically and guided around the customer’s head by a skilled operator.
The Dundee Courier gives a detailed explanation of how it worked:
“The party whose hair is to be tittivated sits beneath an india-rubber endless band revolving on a wheel attached to a shaft, which is driven by a large fly wheel in an adjoining room. The brush is circular and hollow, and is placed on a short shaft having two handles, and fitted with a grooved wheel at one end. This wheel is placed on the band, and revolves with a slow and steady motion. The brush is then gently carried all over the head, thoroughly cleansing the scalp, and imparting an agreeable feeling.”
The original machine was aimed at men due to the likelihood of its brushes getting tangled in women’s longer hair, but this problem was solved in 1865 by Neat & Co of Southampton, who added another pulley on the floor, allowing the brush to be drawn downwards in one long sweep. Neat & Co advertised the machine’s capacity to alleviate headaches as well as improve one’s appearance.
Camp’s American patent was issued two years after the British one. He did not insist on any particular type of power source, but in 1868, a Punch cartoon passed comment on the likely reality – child labour. Steam power, however, was another option, or a turbine water engine such as that installed by Sturrock and Sons in Glasgow. Clements and Shipwright of Tichborne Street, London, used a half-horsepower Lenoir Gas Engine in 1865, a necessity since they claimed to be brushing 1,000 heads of hair a week.
These hairdressers were among a purported 2,000 who applied to Camp for a license to use the machine between 1862 and 1864. Purchasing one and adapting the shop could cost around £45, so it was not something to be tried out on a whim. After installation, the hairdresser was also required to pay a royalty of £1 11s 6d every six months to Camp during the lifetime of the patent. Advertisements announced the arrival of the machine to salons all over the country, emphasising its novelty and its superiority over old methods.
‘A new sensation. Everybody is delighted,’ announced D. M. Allan of Dundee, while James Scott of Newcastle-upon-Tyne said it ‘is unmistakeably the greatest Luxury of the day, and is acknowledged by thousands as the desideratum of the Age.’
Chambers’s Journal in 1863 puts the experience in a pleasurable, indeed sensual, light:
“When I went in to get my hair brushed, had sat down before the glass, and been tucked in as usual, with bib and dressing-gown, the hair-dresser took up one of his circular brushes and hitched it to the revolving band over my head. In a moment I felt a silent fanning, as if some monstrous butterfly were hovering over me; this was the air of the twirling brush, which caught my hair up and laid it down, and travelled all over my head with incessant gentle penetration. It crept down my whiskers and searched my beard with the same tender and decided effect. There was no scratching, not even of the neck and ears, but the skin of cheeks and chin was reached and swept. It was a new sensation. I felt as if I should like to be brushed continuously for a month.“
The feelings of wellbeing, however, did not necessarily extend to the person doing the brushing. As the purpose of brushing was to clean the hair rather than simply untangle it, the brush removed ‘extraneous matter’ from the scalp. This had to go somewhere, and in a lecture in 1876 Dr B W Richardson reported his friend Dr Cholmeley’s hypothesis that the dust was responsible for respiratory disease in hairdressers.
According to J T Arlidge in The Hygiene and Mortality of Occupations (1892), however, the new machine was not to blame for the ill health of its operators – that was more likely to be attributable to their ‘loose habits of life’ and the ‘effeminate nature of their occupation’.
Other inventions followed; in 1888 the first hair dryer was invented by French stylist Alexandre Godefroy His invention was a large, seated version that consisted of a bonnet that attached to the chimney pipe of a gas stove.
The dawn of the 20th century saw a shift towards more subdued grooming styles. The two World Wars and the rise of industrialisation made practicality and simplicity more appealing. Soldiers needed clean-shaven faces for gas masks to ensure their safety in the trenches, a trend that carried over into civilian life. Grooming returned more to the home than to Toilet Clubs.
“While a man, however well behaved,
At best is only a monkey shaved!”
(W. S. Gilbert, ‘Princess Ida’)
References
- OED ‘toilet club’
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/toilet-club_n?tab=meaning_and_use - Mimi Matthews. The Dogs’ Toilet Club: Bond Street Luxury for Victorian Canines
https://www.mimimatthews.com/2016/08/05/the-dogs-toilet-club-bond-street-luxury-for-victorian-canines/ - Ports of the Bristol Channel gazetteer
http://messybeast.com/1892-bristol-channel/1892-bristol-channel.htm - Rance, Caroline. Turning heads: the Victorian fashion for mechanical hair-brushing. The Quack Doctor Blog. 2024
https://thequackdoctor.substack.com/p/turning-heads-the-victorian-fashion - Dr Alun Withey. “The ‘Toilet Arts’: Men’s Personal Grooming and Advice Literature in the 19th Century.”
https://dralun.wordpress.com/2020/04/15/the-toilet-arts-mens-personal-grooming-and-advice-literature-in-the-19th-century/ - The gentleman’s companion to the toilet, or a treatise on shaving … / By a London hair-dresser.,1844
https://wellcomecollection.org/works/k8gj6v3t/items?canvas=5