Beauty / Grooming / Washing

Gifts for Victorian Lovers

Beauty / Grooming / Washing

Advertisement from "The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine", June 1885. For more like this, see our Historical Images—Health and Beauty page. http://www.thisvictorianlife.com/health-and-beauty-products.html

Get this antique Ivory soap advertisement on a bag, a card or a poster

Image courtesy Estar Hyo-Gyung Choi, Mary Studio.

Marble-topped wash stand (late 19th or early 20th century), with bowl and pitcher (circa 1890's.)

"...I kept up my habit of a thorough washing and scrubbing with a jug of water and a large bowl every morning, interspersed with a long soak in our clawfoot bathtub once or twice a week. With a bit of care and diligence it's easy to stay just as clean this way as by letting 150 gallons of water run down the drain every morning. The bowl and pitcher method of bathing is kinder on both our local aquifer and our water bill. It's also much gentler on my skin and—most importantly, better for household felicity since my husband and I never fight over the bathroom in the morning..."
–Excerpted from This Victorian Life.

Hair care

Image from "The Ladies Home Journal", August, 1891.

Mason Pearson hairbrush

Gabriel gave me my first Mason Pearson hairbrush back when we started dating, sweetly telling me the plastic brush I'd been using just wasn't good enough for my hair. The stalwart little brush lasted fifteen years of hard use before it needed replacing.

The Mason Pearson story, from the company's website:
"MASON PEARSON , founder-engineer-inventor, went from Yorkshire, Northern England to London in the mid 1860's to work at the British Steam Brush Works, in London’s East End, in a partnership later known as Raper Pearson and Gill. The business was in general small-brushmaking. The brushes were made by hand. Mason Pearson invented an automatic brush-boring machine to speed up the whole process of brushmaking in 1885, for which he won a Silver Medal at the International Inventions Exhibition in London in that year. In the same year he invented the "pneumatic" rubber-cushion hairbrush. It took until 1905 to improve his technique, much of which was still required to be done by hand. His widow continued the business on her own for a further 20 years, when the next generation was ready to take its part.

During this period, the decision was made to concentrate on Mason Pearson's rubber-cushion hairbrush. The product design used nowadays is similar to the original 1885 model with the improvements of the fully developed models of the early 1920s. The basic product has not changed since then and some of the model names are still with us : Large Extra, Small Extra, Popular and Junior." - Source: http://www.masonpearson.com/history.html

Castile soap

"Use tepid water and old castile soap." -"The Hair," Good Housekeeping, March 2, 1889, page 202.

I started washing my hair with castile soap a few years ago, and was very pleased at how much easier it became to accomplish period hairstyles. (Modern shampoos leave the hair too slippery.)
I described my early experiences in the chapter
"A Detail As Fine As A Hair" in This Victorian Life. Read my book to find out more!

Here's the Kirk's Castile Soap story, from the company's website:
"Since 1839, Kirk’s Original Coco Castile Soap has given its consumers a high quality, natural soap at an affordable price. Kirk’s Natural believes that everyone should have the opportunity to wash with natural soaps. Instead of charging specialty item prices often found on most natural products, Kirk’s is happy to give their customers the low prices they can trust. It’s founding principles date back to its creator and family man himself, James S. Kirk.
James S. Kirk, founder of Kirk’s Original Coco Castile Soap, was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1818. Kirk was the son of a prominent shipbuilder and civil engineer. His family migrated to the Montreal, Canada when he was only six months old. In his teens, Kirk was introduced to soap and candle manufacturing. At the age of twenty-one, he married his true love and was inspired to create the James S. Kirk & Company in Utica, New York. He produced a brood of seven sons, many of whom were later involved in the family business. The Kirk family lived and worked in South Evanston, Illinois until his death in 1886. It was said that “there never was a resident of Chicago who was more highly respected and esteemed.”" - Source: http://www.kirksnatural.com/about-kirks-natural/

Kirk's castile soap advertisement. For more like this see http://www.thisvictorianlife.com/health-and-beauty-products.html

How I do my hair (a short video):

The hairpins I use everyday—left to right: Regular hairpin (for bun), regular-sized bobby pin (for the curls/twists at the front of my forehead), small bobby pin (for tidying up wisps of hair.)

The boxes my antique hairpins came in.
These boxes—containing huge quantities of hairpins—were originally sold to hairdressers.

I found blonde bobby pins (both regular and mini sized) from Goody: http://www.goody.com/Products/Hair_Accessories/Goody_Colour_Collection_Bobby_Pins

Hairpin advertisement from "Life" magazine, April 2, 1896. For more Victorian health and beauty products scanned from our collection, go to http://www.thisvictorianlife.com/health-and-beauty-products.html

People looking for detailed how-to instructions for Victorian hairstyles should read
Manual of Ladies Hairdressing for Students
By Mons. A. Mallemont.
This excellent manual was written and published in the Victorian era, and has been recently reprinted. I highly recommend it!

For special hairstyles:
Curling iron with alcohol-burner to heat the iron. The stand for this little curling iron holds a tiny reservoir for denatured alcohol, and a small wick. The alcohol burns with a very hot, clean flame —much hotter than a flame of the same size on a lamp. (Our lamps run off of oil, which is less volatile than alcohol.) The flame is so hot and clear, it's virtually invisible in daylight. Between uses the little bit of alcohol in the reservoir evaporates very quickly, so Sarah has to refill the reservoir every time she uses her curling iron.

Advertisement for hair curler (similar to Sarah's) in "The Ladies' Home Journal", August, 1890.

Clothes care

Ivory soap

I use Ivory soap to wash clothes and dishes. Invented in 1879, Ivory soap sold for about 10 cents a bar and was marketed as "a pure white soap that offers its consumers a two-in-one benefit: Ivory is both a high-quality laundry product and a gentle, cleansing bath bar."

"For more than 75 years, P &G [Proctor & Gamble] believed that the floating soap was developed by mistake. One legend suggests that a worker in 1879 accidentally left the soap-mixing machine operating during lunch, resulting in an unusually frothy mixture. The soap was shipped and soon after the company began receiving more requests for "floating soap." Recent research, however, has shown that James N. Gamble may have always intended for Ivory to float." (Source: "Pure Fun: Ivory History," archive of Ivory Soap website, courtesy Internet Archive WayBack Machine project - website below.)

To read about the history of the Ivory soap company, visit these articles: http://web.archive.org/web/20080910045633/http://www.ivory.com/PureFun_History.htm
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ivory-soap-comes-clean-on-floating/

Ivory soap advertisement from "Life" Magazine, April 2, 1896. For more like this, see http://www.thisvictorianlife.com/health-and-beauty-products.html

Perfection brand clothes dryer

We have two of these hanging dryers for clothes. One is in the downstairs bathroom arranged so that freshly washed clothes can drip into the tub. The other is in our spare room upstairs; we use that one for airing clothes to freshen them.