RAVENSCROFTS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 54, 5 March 1927, Page 3

RAVENSCROFTS

WIGMAKERS FOR 200 YEARS

COVERING BRITISH LEGAL HEADS

In listing the anniversaries of 1920, the second centenary of the Eavenscroft family, the last jf the legal wigmakers, must be included. It was in 1720 that Thomas, first of the Ravenscrofts to make wigs, began making them in a house in Serle street, Lincoln's Inn, and Ernest, the last ot the line, is still at it. Wigs, however, are not now as universally worn as were the frizzed and powdered perukes of 1726 Thomas made wigs for the nobility and gentry in general. Ernest makes" wigs 'for Judges and lawyers only, and twenty years of a family business which has slowly concentrated on the production of the most glorious of all wigs has amassed a rare history of legal' wigmaking \n the workshop of a man who. as far as is known, is t\e only legal wigmaker left in the world.

Legal wigs are a variety of adornment with which American" Courts are unacquainted. They have, of course, nothing, to do with anything as prosaic as baldness. They 'are part of the pageantry of British law in its higlier branches. The majestic full-bottomed wig, which covers the head and falls to the robed shoulders of the Judge and the abbreviated wig of the barrister with the two frizzed tails down the back of the neck, have been essential items iv the panoply of British justice ever since 1070. These false curls arc the only modern survivals of the gentlemen's wigs which were the butt of every eighteenth-century satirist, and 200 years of making them by this family has given the present Bavenscroft a fairly complete knowledge of the sizes and. shapes of the human heads that have administered British law since 1726. FOR WOMEN BARRISTERS. Lest it be assumed that so venerable an institution has fallen on a feeble old age, it ought to be emphasised that in Ernest's able keeping the Eavenscrof t tradition is still' able to rise to the new demands of a new day. There is still life in the legal wig. An outsider might suppose that women barristers with permanent waves of their own would be too difficult a problem for so old an institution to solve, that in the face of rivalry so libheard-of the permanent waves'of the legal wig would lose their place. But. the legal wig has risen to the woman ■ barrister. Ernest makes wigs even for women barristers, although he finds that a little helpfulness in hairdrcssing oii the part of his patron is useful. The little helpfulness has been forthcoming. . Most women barristers are shingled. The legal wig has therefore found no insuperable obstacle in the head of the average woman barrister.

Thomas used to make the thirty different kinds of wigs of his day—the artichoke, bag, barrister's, bishop's, brush, bush, buckle, busby, chain, chancellor, corded Wolf's paw, Count Saxe's, the crutch, the cut bob, the Dutch, tho full, the half-natural, the Jcnseilis* bob, tho Louis, the periwig, the pigeon's wing, the rhinoceros, the rose, the scratch, the she-dragon, the small black, the spinach seed, the staircase, the Welsh, and the wild boar's back. But with the passing of the wig from general use, the family concentrated on the legal wig, and the wealth of relics that have been handed down to Ernest are all concerned with the making of wigs for lawyers, from lord chancellors anj lord chief justices down.

Some of the old wigs in his possession have seen grim scenes in the Courts Ui their day. Ho has the brown wig worn by Lord Bramwell, who stamped out garroting by the liberal use of flogging in his sentences. He has a curious petrified wig worn by Lord Krskinc, thcfnmous lord chancellor, who played a leading part in the trial of Queen Caroline. It looks like a lump of barn and weighs nearly a dozen pounds. The strands of hair in it are still visible, but they are very brittle, and breaii off almost at a touch. Lord- Erskinc asked the well attendant at the mineral spring at Knaresborough to dip his wig into the water, and when it was taken out lie found that it was as hard as stone, and he had to have a wig made. The spring contained carbonate of lime.

Thomas's original idea was to make wigs of human hair, but that had to bo given up. It proved to be too expensive even for a day in which the demand for wigs was all but universa! Heads of human hair used to sell iir Thomas's day for as much as 250 dollars. It is much cheaper to-day. Iv fact, during the early days of bobbing the "combings-made-up" merchants became heavily overstocked and many a lady's maid who had been accustomed to sell her mistress's "combings" was deprived of the source of her pitmoney. But although the world's human hair market is now glutted with supplies, the Eavcnscrofts have mad" their legal wigs from selected horsehair ever since Thomas's day; and they still do so.

Ernest's workshop can produce one of the old-fashioned powdered and pomatumed wigs if it is required, but most of its output is of the pattern designed by Humphrey, the Bavenscmit who reigned about the year ISOO. Moved by Pitt's tax on hair powdtr quite as.much as by the dirtiness of the old-fashioned wig, Humphrey in vented a new wig which needed neither powdering nor frizzing. The old wi<r left grease and powder marks all over the dress, but Humphrey's patent, taken out in IS™, marked the birth of "a forensic wig, the curls whereof are constructed on a principle to supersede the necessity of frizzing or using pomatum and for forming the curls in a way not to be uncurled."

The old wigs, however, have ben soon in recent'years, anil it is not entirely certain that they have complete]v disappeared. Powdered wigs were fairly frequent until the 1880's, anil as recently as ISSS men from the Tempi, used to visit the Courts to prepare the wigs of Judges and lawyers for ecs which usually amounted to about 40 dollars a year. Judges used to bo very particular about their powdered and pomatumed wigs. In Ernest's younger days he used to go to Lord Bramton 's house near Park Lane to get his Lord ship's wig, and it was always carriel mto the hall by his Lordship himself Ao butler was allowed to touch it for fear of disturbing the powder on it Baron Hnddlestono was another who was very touchy about his wig. When he died his family kept his wi<r in ', t glass ease. °

MODEL FOR EVERY HEAD. Two hundred numbered wooden models, embodying almost every con ceivablo .size and shape of head, are part of the equipment of Ernest's show On these the wigs are slowly built, and making them fit right is a more cxan iiir task than making a hat the rig> size. Sometimes no model reproducv tliu shape of the hoad to bo fitted, and nil existing model has to be padded in places. Ernest has a record of the fitting of every barrister in London, but He prefers to refrain from generalisiu,. on the subject of the typical shape of head which enters the practice of law All he says on this subject is that Irish lawyers as a rule have largo heads, that the largest head he has ever fitted wi.s that of Lord Cairns and the smallest that oi Lord Clielmsford. Signed portraits of every famous •Judge and lawyer, including a dozen Lord Chancellors, hang in his oQice. \ hundred years of signatures, represent ing nearly every lawyer who has worn .1 wig in a London Court, occupy sixlargo volumes, and a seventh has recently boon started for the benefit oi women barristers.