CONSUMPTION OF HAIR.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 29, 4 February 1899, Page 5 (Supplement)

CONSUMPTION OF HAIR.

LONDON MERCHANTS SELL FIVE TONS OF HUMAN TRESSES ANNUALLY.

*" All previous records in prices paid for human hair have been broken by the sum just realised for a lock from the head of Edward IV.

Eight guineas was the sum paid for this scrap of hair, and this works out at over £1,000 for the whole hirsute covering of that monarch's head.

As a small portion of the beard of George 111. only fetched £1 15/, it would appear that relics of the victor of Tewkesbury and Barnet are in greater demand than those of the Georgian monarch.

It is recorded that in ages past a certain Countess of Suffolk was forced to sell her beautiful hair for £20 in order to provide a repast wherewith to regale some notable friends; also that an Oxfordshire girl, being unable to raise £50 to provide herself with a dowry, came up to London and sold her hair at £3 an ounce, and returned to her native village bearing £G0 with her, ■ 'with which money she .. - bought a husband.' It is calculated that something like five tons of hair are required annually by London merchants in hair, and although samples arrive from various parts of the world the bulk is chiefly French or Italian growth.

At Limoges the annual hair market Is one Ofthe great events of the year. Then the jioung peasant girls blessed with lengthy locks flock thither for the purpose of selling their wigs to the highest bidder, returning home again with pomatum galore for the purpose of cultivating the following year's crop. On the last occasion the average price was as high as £2 a kilogramme, or about 18/ a pound, but, alas! this is only just about one-half what it was in the palmy days of the

chignon.

Naturally the tresses of novices who take the veil figure largely in the hair harvest. Some little time ago a convent is said to have sold over a ton of human hair for £4000, or 2/3 per ounce, while a single convent near. Tours recently despatched as much as eighty pounds of .hair to a Parisian hairdresser which would be worth almost as many sove-

reigns

As the aforementioned weight represents the locks of 300 novices, which gives each on an average four and a quarter ounces, it is very obvious that the demoiselles of Tours cannot rival the professional hair cultivators of the Haute Vienne, who can sometimes obtain £2 for their locks.

A. recent interview -with a native merchant revealed the fact that £4 10/ was an average price for an English girl's head of hair.

Hair which is worth about a shilling an ounce when it is but eight inches long increases in value as it increases in

length until it rises to as much as 30/ per ounce, providing the original owner is living: For the long hair Which as a rule srrows on corpses fetches but 12/ an

ounce.

At the International Exhibition of 1562 there was shown a specimen of jet black hair measuring the extraordinary length of 71in. Georgo Catlin, one of the first

authorities on the North American Indian, records that a chief of the Crow tribe possesses hair 10ft Tin long.

In Melbourne recently, however, a lecturer quoted the case of a woman whose hair had grown to ISft, and was 'habitually used as a bed quilt by its owner on

winter nights.

This gifted lady could make a. good living in London by advertising the virtues of one of the many hair restorers.