The medieval world was a horrible, dirty, unhygenic place! No one kept clean at all,
everything smelled horrible. No one bathed, no one washed their hair—
[record scratch] Oooookay, while that's technically not 100%
wrong, I think we need to have a talk about why this idea belongs over in the naughty
corner with the one about corsets universally being patriarchal torture devices.
Hi, I'm V, and in addition to being a huge historical fashion nerd, I'm also a professional hairdresser!
At work my focus has always been on the science of hair and haircare, rather than styling,
so whenever I hear one of these stories about how historical people's haircare was Just
So Backwards, I want to know what was actually going on, on that level.
First thing : historical people were a lot smarter than we tend to give them credit for.
So many of the weird things we hear about, like only drinking beer or ale instead of
water, actually make perfect sense when you consider what those historical people had
to work with. And when it came to washing things (any things), what medieval people
had to work with was questionably-sanitary water, ammonia, and lye. Those already don't
sound like things you want in your hair, and you're about to want them in your hair even
less. Many of the available water sources (wells, ponds, streams, rivers) were not reliably
clean, and people got sick after drinking from them. They knew that water carried disease,
and in the absence of modern water treatment, they just tried to keep it off their bodies
unless they were sure it was safe, or they were washing off something that would definitely
make them ill, like London's sewage workers swimming in the Thames at the end of the day.
Medieval soap, for those that could get it, was too harsh and strong to be used for cleaning
human beings, it was pretty much only for washing clothes. Laundresses often had what
we'd nowadays call contact dermatitis because the soap made their hands so rough and red.
And for those that couldn't get soap, which was a lot of people since soap cost money
. . . you did your laundry with a combination of lye from wood ash, and ammonia from stale
human urine. Alright, so washing with soap or soap-alternatives
is right out. Then people must have gone around with absolutely disgusting hair, yeah? Hmm,
not really. What we have to realize is that our modern idea of "clean hair" meaning "freshly
washed with something sudsy" is just that : A modern idea. Shampoo itself is a 20th
century invention, but more than that, it's the hairstyle trends of the 20th century that
created a need to wash hair frequently in the first place. Haircare and styling as we
know it, where hair is washed often and worn down as the default, is only about a hundred
years old. In the 1920s and 30s, the default fashionable hairstyle changed from very long
hair pinned up in different ways ways to a shorter shaped haircut, worn down or partially
pinned back. Before that, wearing one's hair down in public was seen as indecent if you
were considered an adult woman rather than a child. Methods of styling changed too, and
the default method of curling hair became a "wet-set" where wet hair is put on rollers
or in pin curls until it dries. Styling products like gels and setting lotions became more
common, but these need to be washed out in order to re-set the hair. The type of cleansing
product we call shampoo was invented in the mid-1930s and the weekly wash cycle was born—
but with pre-1920s hairstyles, freshly-shampooed hair simply wasn't necessary.
Remember how I said updos were the default hairstyle, before the 20s? That is how people
kept their hair clean, surprising as it sounds to our modern ears. There's a practice in
Black haircare called "protective styling", where the ends or lengths of hair are tucked
away, often using braids or twists, and sometimes kept covered with a headwrap, to protect it
from the breakage and dryness that can happen when it's worn loose. This tradition goes
back thousands of years in Black culture, and many familiar protective styles like box
braids are only appropriate for coily hair. However, the principle of styling hair to
insulate it from dirt and damage works on all hair textures, and it’s a huge part
of Medieval European hairstyles too! When hair is up, even in a simple braid or bun,
it's not moving around freely so it's not getting tangled or breaking. It's also safer
from dryness, bad weather, and much of the dirt that might get into it during daily life.
If we look back at Western hairstyles, there's a huge correlation between how much of the
hair was covered, and how frequently it was washed. Once a month was recommended in the
Edwardian and late Victorian eras when day caps had gone out of fashion. Medieval headwear
covered nearly all of the hair with a cap and/or veil, with the hair braided and pinned
or "taped" to the head with ribbons. Not only does covering hair keep external dirtiness
off of it (and that could include things like coal- or wood-smoke and farm dirt), it also
absorbs excess natural oils and sweat from the hair. Veils and caps and kerchiefs were
changed daily, sometimes more often, so the hair was kept clean by wrapping it in fresh
linen. If you're thinking "well that doesn't sound
like enough", then, you're not wrong. The biggest part of the Medieval haircare routine
was thoroughly brushing or combing the hair out twice a day. Brushing hair from roots
to ends distributes the natural oils throughout the hair, keeping the roots from getting greasy
and the ends from getting dry, so it's cleaning and conditioning at the same time. And brushing
the scalp helps to exfoliate away dead skin and buildup, so all that's getting cleaned
off too. This is where the idea of brushing long hair with a hundred strokes comes from.
The combs we have from the medieval period have very fine teeth, so they could effectively
remove pests— and hundreds of years later, this is still one of the most common methods
of treating head lice. A book from the Elizabethan era gives an example of linen cloths being
used to rub the hair and scalp clean, absorbing excess oil and dirt just like caps and veils
did. Cleaning hair the way we do with water and soap or shampoo wasn't an option, so people
used clean linen and combs and brushes instead. While washing hair wasn't a regular part of
the medieval haircare routine, it's not strictly true that people never washed their hair.
People did bathe, although it was so much work to fill a tub with clean hot water without
plumbing that it was usually in rivers and streams, or in communal bathhouses. Illustrations
of people in bathtubs tend to show them with their headwear still on, suggesting hair wasn't
washed during baths. The Trotula, a 12th century text written by an Italian female healer,
describes a recipe for a hair wash made by boiling water with lye from the ashes of burnt
vines, barley chaff for scrubbing, licorice wood, and cyclamen. However, the text then
says "After the washing, let her leave it to dry by itself, and her hair will be golden
and shimmering", so this might have been used to color hair more than to simply to keep
it clean. If someone doesn't want their hair washed with lye, the 13th century physician
Henri de Mondeville says they should use egg yolks mixed with warm water instead, which
is . . . actually not the worst idea, and is the basis for several Edwardian hair wash
recipes.The Trotula also contains recipes for scented hair conditioners, powders, and perfumes,
most of which are to make the hair smell nice as much as anything else. This was practical
as well as ornamental : cloves can help to repel pests, which is why so many 18th century
hair powders and pomades use them too. It is worth noting that these were expensive
and probably only for the upper classes, but someone of lesser means could make variations
on the recipes using easily-accessible aromatic herbs like rosemary. The Trotula includes
an entire book on just personal care, hygiene, and cosmetics, and publishing a book was quite
a bit of work in the time before printing presses. So I think it's fair to say that
medieval people cared very much about keeping their hair clean and presentable . . . they
just had different standards and methods. So does this mean you should throw away all
your modern haircare? Sure, you could stop washing your hair, wear it up in braids all
the time, and brush it meticulously twice a day, and it might stay cleaner than you'd
think. But, we're not medieval people. We don't live in the medieval world. I, for one,
love my 21st century hair and nothing will make me give it up, even if I might look
more historically accurate without the blue streaks. Medieval people were taking care
of their hair to the best of their ability with the resources and knowledge they had.
Just because we have different standards and better resources now, doesn't mean they were
completely backwards and stupid. And just because they weren't completely backwards
and stupid, doesn't mean the world hasn't moved on. So often we think about the past
and the present as some sort of zero-sum situation, where either the past was totally primitive
and now we do everything right, or the present is too artificial and historical people had
it better. It's just not that simple [laughing]. Nothing about it is mutually exclusive. We
can accept that people throughout history made some really clever choices given what
they had to work with, and at the same time we can be really glad for our 21st century
shampoo and solar power and YouTube videos. And honestly? In six hundred years, if we're
still around . . . I bet people will be saying how the 21st century was so unhygenic, they
knew nothing at all about caring for their hair—
Thank you for watching! If you had fun and learned something, don't forget to leave a
like, and subscribe for more historical fashion myth-busting. If you want to enable my history-nerd
nonsense, go to ko-fi.com/snappydragon and throw a few dollars in the Tea Fund! And,
tell me in the comments if you'd ever try any historical hair-care techniques, because
. . . [whispering] I only wash my hair once a week.