“Since we have lost our beards, we have lost our souls” – Spanish proverb

“The moustaches are glorious, glorious. I have cut them shorter, and trimmed them a little at the ends to improve their shape. They are charming, charming. Without them, life would be a blank”. – Charles Dickens in a letter to Daniel Maclise

The Victorians loved a good beard. Darwin, Marx and Watts had great beards, Bazalgette had a wonderful set of mutton chops, Dickens had a goatee, Prince Albert had a moustache, and the great emancipator, Abe Lincoln, was the first president of the USA to sport facial hair. So why did the Victorians love their whiskers so much?

Well, partly it was fashion, of course, but it went much deeper than that. Surely religion couldn’t be involved, could it? In 1847 Reverend William Henry Henslowe published a pamphlet entitled (deep breath)

“Beard Shaving and the Common use of the Razor, an Unnatural, Irrational, Unmanly, Ungodly and Fatal Fashion among Christians”

To cut a long and very dreary story short, Rev’d Henslowe preached that God made man in his own image, and that image included a beard. Shaving off your beard was ‘contrary to His good will and pleasure.’ He also raises a damning finger of complaint against the tools of our trade, saying:

“It is impossible to calculate the amount of suicides, homicides and murders perpetrated during the last thirty years, by means of the disgraceful practice of shaving, and the common use of the razor. Is not the razor, therefore, on this account alone, as much deserving to be deprecated by Christian men and philanthropists, as the sword?”

To try and back up this claim, Henslowe cites the instance of a Prison chaplain who, due to his heavy debts, committed suicide during the night by cutting his own throat with – you guessed it – a razor. Had the razor not been in the room, points out Henslowe, the chaplain would still be alive. In a catchy part of his sermon he warns the youth of the world against the sin of shaving:

Heedless youth, give ear,

Earthly Fashions fear –

Never let come near,

Shaving knife and gear –

Let the young down grow,

On thy lip – below –

Wherever it doth show,

Else thou shalt suffer woe.