IMPLEMENTACIÓN DE LA METODOLOGÍA EN LA PRÁCTICA EDUCATIVA Y SUS RESULTADOS.

As wig wearing began to gain popularity from the late 1660s, and wig makers began to increase in number, so the barbers began to find their control of the hair trade was no longer dominant. In this new, more competitive market, barbers needed to diversify and to demonstrate flexibility and willingness to learn new skills in

370

Sidney Young, Annals of the Barber-Surgeons of London (London: Blades, East and Blades, 1890) p. 589.

371

Jessie Dobson, and R. Miles Walker, Barbers and Barbers Surgeons on London: A History Of The Barbers’ And Barber-Surgeons’ Companies (Oxford: Osney Mead, 1979) p. 60.

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adopting this new branch of their trade. This is demonstrated in the newspapers and other forms of advertising material, which set out clearly their line of work and the skills they offered. Many styled themselves as both barbers and wig makers and appear to have operated interchangeably in both areas.372 It is likely the precise apportionment of time would have been dictated by customers’ requirements, though without detailed account books or other precise means by which to judge how they spent their time, we cannot know for sure how the work was divided on a daily basis. Edmund Harrold’s diary shows that though he described himself as a barber, wig making was in fact his main occupation, and he was not engaged in other activities more commonly associated with a barber, such as blood-letting and shaving.373 It is likely that this was due to the high levels of competition for those services in his area. In some urban centres there were occurrences of wig makers joining up with other trades, which dealt with the by-products of living creatures. The Incorporated Company of Barber Surgeons, Wax and Tallow Chandlers and Periwig Makers of Newcastle - which might strike as an odd combination - gathered artisans dealing with human and animal bodily excrescences.374 Similar collaborations can be found elsewhere in England, such as the Company of Barber Surgeons and Tallow- Candlers in Chester.375

In London, the largest centre of fashion in England, the need to regulate the trade was perhaps greatest because of high competition. In 1709 the Worshipful

372

See for example, London Gazette, Issue 6398, 14 August 1725; London Daily Post and General Advertiser, Issue 1075, 10 April 1738; London Evening Post, Issue 2094, 11 April 1741.

373

Horner (ed.), Diary, p. xviii. 374

Tyne and Wear Archives, GU.BS, 31 Series, ‘Incorporated Company of Barber Surgeons, Wax and Tallow Chandlers and Periwig Makers, Newcastle’ (1616-1940s).

375

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Company of Barber-Surgeons agreed to allow a petition to go to parliament asking for approval for the wig makers to be incorporated into the Company, an action that would require an Act of Parliament.376 The Company set up a Committee for Managing the Perukemakers Act of Parliament, comprising several members of the Company and two “on the perukemakers side”.377

The Committee sent a petition requesting the act of parliament to be drawn up, based on the understanding that wig making was an “encroachment upon the art of Barbery”, and describing the wig makers as being “of the other end of town”, and therefore to be kept as a distinct occupation.378 The petition asked that those who exercised “the art of Peruke making out of the Liberties of the City of London are not a corporate Body, nor under Order or Regulation… to bring in a Bill, whereby… the Peruke makers, within and without the Liberties of the City of London, may be incorporated with the said Company of Barbers and Surgeons of London”.379

The Company viewed wig making very much as a separate trade to that of barbers, without their long and established history. However, the agreement to go ahead with the petition suggests wig makers were seen as strong competition as they undertook a sufficient amount of business in the hair trade. The minutes of the committee meeting which made the decision to send the petition record a desire that the wig makers “might be brought under some government”.380 Incorporation would have had some benefit to both branches of the trade. Partnership would have formalised the activities that each was allowed to undertake, reducing the tension and

376

Worshipful Company of Barbers, B/1/7, (1707-1731), p. 47. 377

WCB, B/1/7, (1707-1731), p. 47. 378

Young, Annals, p. 151. 379

BPP, Journals of the House of Commons, 16 (16 November 1708-9 October 1711),23 January 1709, Second Parliament of Great Britain: First Session, p. 273.

380

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allowing wig makers to gain the freedom of the City of London. Despite this, however, the Act did not pass a second reading in Parliament.381 The reasons for this are not recorded, though it is likely Parliament did not consider the issue to be of sufficient economic importance to the national economy.

In Edinburgh, another fashionable centre, wig makers and barbers experienced similar difficulties in formalising their relationship and their place in the market. Tensions emerged around which activities each branch of the trade was permitted to undertake. The problems were framed around disagreement over who should maintain the rights to cut hair, and expressed through discussion as to the nature of hair. Ultimately, barbers achieved exclusive rights to cut hair on the basis that it was an extension of beard cutting, and well within their “particular province of the Human Body”.382

As a result, wig makers could be fined £6 each time they were discovered cutting hair.

The wig makers countered the argument by suggesting that the hair o f the head was quite a different substance to the beard, and that customers would not want to visit more than one establishment each time they wanted their hair dressed, or a wig fitted:

[if anyone] was whimsical enough to have a barber to cut his hair, and [a wig maker] to dress it, the consequence would be, that, what with cutting to spoil the dressing, and dressing to shape the cutting the poor patient would ... look like one of the mathematical inhabitants of Laputa [from Jonathan Swift’s

381

BPP, Journals of the House of Commons, 16 (16 November 1708-9 October 1711), p. 273.

382

Hew Dalrymple, Information for Hairdressers in Edinburgh against the Incorporation of Barbers (Edinburgh: Printed for the Author, 1758),p. 1.

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Gulliver’s Travels], with the hair on the one side of his Head three inches shorter than that on the other.383

Barbers and wig makers, though connected through the overall purpose of their work, were very much divided by their understanding of the nature of hair. This tactic of dividing the human body into sections allowed them to assert ownership of these parts through the control of their distinctive occupations. The barbers referred to their customers as ‘patients’ throughout the debate, a notable reference to the holistic aspects of bodily interaction commonly undertaken by barbers. The discussion of the physical substance of hair resonates with the explanations of hair as being a humoural emanation and physical indicator of the internal bodily form, as discussed above. This understanding filtered from medical theory and practice to the corporeal act of cutting hair.

Unlike the barbers, the wig makers were able to organise their activities in close alignment with hair merchants, to the best advantage of each when necess ary. In London, evidence suggests unofficial groups, representing both branches of the trade were organised to examine issues that affected both areas of the trade. There was a need to ensure that good practice was followed in the manner of binding hair for selling, to avoid adding weight through the use of too much thread. A “second general meeting of Hair-Sellers and Perriwig- makers… unanimously agreed that half an Ounce of Thread is sufficient to tye up 20 Ounces of Hair”.384

This shows that partnerships formed when necessary between those operating distinctly as hair merchants, and as wig makers. This is perhaps not surprising considering both were

383

Ibid., p. 6. 384

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part of the same spectrum in the selling and processing hair, and depended on each other for their livelihoods.