“THE RAZOR QUEEN"

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 265, 8 November 1937, Page 9

“THE RAZOR QUEEN"

WOMAN BARBER’S RECORD Known at one time as the quickest shaver in Nottingham, Mrs. Sophia Blackshaw, of Wigan, the president of the Wigan and District Hairdressers’ Association, has a strong claim to the title of “the doyen of female hairdressers,” for she began her work when she was seven years of age—and that was 52 years ago. When she was still a very young woman, working in Nottingham, she shaved 150 men in one day. She has seen women’s hair fashions pass through every style from the Jong flowing tresses to lhe extreme Eton crop, from the coy to the bizarre. In the later days of the reign of Queen Victoria, and in the Edwardian days, she told an interviewer, hairaressing styles were ornate and results were as difficult to achieve as they were to maintain, an almost boundless patience being from both hairdresser and client in the adjustment of such styles as the “Merry Widow,” “Gibson Girl,” “Figure Eight,” and the so-called “Jug Handle.” So transient were the results of hard work that often Mrs. Blackshaw had to accompany clients (upon whose coiffures she had already worked for long spells) to balls and there redress their hair between fiances—and some of those balls lasted until six o’clock in the morning. In Mrs. Blackshaw’s family, hairdressing is a general accomplishment, for her grandfather, her father, two of her brothers, and her daughter have all been so engaged. She herself persuaded her father to allow her to help with the work when she was a youngster of seven, and she has continued without a break since then.