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The wrong moustache in the Battle of Hastings
What's going on with the facial hair in King and Conqueror, have we been suckered in by an overly literal understanding of the Bayeux Tapestry, and what did a Viking beard really look like?
How and why did they get the facial hair so wrong in the new BBC 1066 drama King and Conqueror, and what did an actual Viking look like on the hair and beard front? Find out in my in-depth analysis of moustache-gate, framed, as is my wont, in the context of the Bayeux Tapestry. The new 1066 drama King and Conqueror has been accused by numerous commentators of playing fast and loose with the historical narrative of the Norman Conquest. That’s a reasonable criticism, but on my assessment of the critiques of the series, the deepest opprobrium has been reserved for the facial hair fantasy. Dad tache or bad tache? The problem is that Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, as Duke William of Normandy, sports a bristling tache (memorably described by Lucy Mangan in the Guardian as a ‘1970s dad tache’ and in the Daily Mail as an Asterix look), while the upper lip of James Norton’s Harold Godwinson is unequivocally hairless. That, as many experts have pointed out, is directly at odds with the Bayeux Tapestry. The famous 11th-century embroidery, which provides the earliest visual representation of the 1066 story, quite clearly shows a moustachioed Harold and a clean-shaven William. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/528361-7b9d210.jpg" width="6224" height="4672" alt="A man with shaggy hair and a moustache stands on a beach, dressed in a dark cloak and holding a sword. Behind him, a small group of people gather around a wooden boat on the shoreline" title="William bosses the beach with his 1970s dad tache in King and Conqueror (Image by BBC/CBS Studios)" /> Harold’s facial hair in the Tapestry is in line with that of his Anglo-Saxon compatriots: they tend to (but don’t always) boast moustaches, some of which are thin and straggly, while others are impressive handlebar efforts. The Normans, on the other hand, lack upper lip action. The embroiderers were clearly following a style guide to try to offer a visual prompt to the viewer about which side the respective figures were on. Menacing reverse mullet It wasn’t just moustaches in the Tapestry that helped viewers to know who was on which team – the haircuts also offered a clue. The Normans often had curious shaved necks, which, in the words of the great Tapestry scholar Professor Gale Owen-Crocker were ‘sometimes accompanied by a menacing lock of hair at the forehead’, or a ‘reverse mullet’ as Dr Thomas Williams has fabulously described it. The English generally had a decidedly less scary bowl-cut bob sort of look going on. This was significant because one of the things with the Bayeux Tapestry is that it doesn’t give you very much information in the captions to describe what’s occurring and who is doing what, so you needed these visual hints to keep up with the story. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-moustach-Harold815687404-ddc875b.jpg" width="3543" height="2753" alt="A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry depicts a group of men sitting at a high table under a red, yellow and green canopy. Around them, there are animals" title="Anglo-Saxons feasting and drinking with their big Bayeux Tapestry taches (Image by Getty Images)" /> Read more | Shakespeare didn't do the Norman Conquest, but the Bayeux Tapestry did, so where does that leave the BBC's King and Conqueror? Aside from the moustache debacle, King and Conqueror doesn’t, for my money, capture the spirit of the Bayeux Tapestry with the barnets either. Norton’s haircut isn’t quite dorky enough, and Coster-Waldau’s isn’t really as shavenly intimidating as it ought to be. Maybe Luther Ford’s Tostig Godwinson gets closest to a Tapestry look with his bowl-cut (though Tostig himself does not specifically appear in the embroidery, so I’m generalising about the Anglo-Saxon vibe). I haven’t seen any explanation in the crew interviews for the TV series for this obvious diversion from the historical facial hair facts. However, I do note that Norton had originally hoped to play William. His plan, apparently, was scuppered by a contractual obligation with HBO that he could only appear in King and Conqueror if his character died. That legal stipulation ruled out the option of him appearing as the Norman Duke, who does not die at Hastings, and left him little choice but to take on the ill-fated Harold instead, who famously does. So maybe they just forgot who was supposed to grow the tache after that. Manly strength, modernity and bravery I do understand this level of moustache anxiety, particularly in these days of hipster facial hair. I’m reminded of a great HistoryExtra article from the eminent beard historian Dr Alun Withey on moustache matters. He said, “Like many other facial hair styles, the moustache has a long and complicated history. In some periods it has symbolised manly strength, modernity and bravery; in others it was decried as an affectation of fey young men. It’s easy to write facial hair off as something that is quirky or irrelevant, but it often tells us a very great deal about individual men across time, as well as shifting attitudes towards masculinity and the male body.” Having established the importance of facial hair, I’m surprised that not many people have been exercised by the chin of Eddie Marsan’s Edward the Confessor in King and Conqueror. Marsan’s simpering mother-beaten monarch is very different from the Bayeux Tapestry version, because the embroidered king wears a long flowing beard. I know Marsan can grow facial hair because he was bearded in his depiction of noted canoe conman John Darwin in an ITV drama a few years ago, so again, the King and Conqueror team have apparently made a deliberate decision to ignore the evidential pogonotrophy of the Bayeux Tapestry. I can only assume that they figured Marsan with a beard wouldn’t look as weak-willed as they wanted his King Edward to be. Someone who is clearly tooled up to look intimidating in King and Conqueror is the Norwegian King Harald Hardrada, played by Sveinn Ólafur Gunnarsson. He is resplendent with a big brash beard that Brian Blessed would be proud of. Hardrada’s invasion, accompanied by King Harold’s disaffected brother Tostig, is the preliminary story to the Norman Conquest (and if you want the full story, watch my chat with Marc Morris all about it on the HistoryExtra YouTube channel). Harold’s victory over his brother and the mighty Hardrada at the battle of Stamford Bridge would have been the stuff of legend if it wasn’t overshadowed by his own defeat and death a few days later at the hands of William and the Normans at Hastings. The Tapestry devotes zero attention to the Hardrada story so we cannot say whether the King and Conqueror depiction of a big beardy Viking is accurate. Actual Viking facial hair evidence However, and this is breaking news, an archaeologist at the National Museum of Denmark, Peter Pentz, has just published some research on a remarkable Viking period figurine, which gives us a very rare glimpse of what a Viking hair style actually looked like. Granted it’s from the 10th century rather than the 11th, and obviously sartorial trends can move fast, but nevertheless, it’s a good insight. The little figurine, currently on display in the Viking Sorceress exhibition at the museum in Copenhagen, has a middle parting with a side wave that leaves the ear visible, while the hair has been cropped at the back. Plus he’s got a large moustache, a long, braided goatee and sideburns. It’s some look, and according to Peter Pentz, it’s quite a find: “Hitherto, we haven’t had any detailed knowledge about Viking hairstyles, but here, we get all the details – even the little curl above the ear is marked. This is the first time we see a figure of a male Viking with his hair visible from all angles. It’s unique”. Hardrada, in King and Conqueror, isn’t quite aligned with this Viking look, given that he has a full beard rather than tache, goatee and sideburns, but this research has only just come to light, so we can let the producers of the series off on that one at least. Read more | How historically accurate is King and Conqueror? Here’s the real history that should have happened What’s interesting, I think, is to dwell briefly on whether we are reading far too much into these Bayeux Tapestry haircuts and moustache designs. Might perhaps we better assume that the designer and embroiders were simply trying to remind the viewers about who was English and who was Norman, as I mentioned above, and not really be attempting to represent the hairy reality of the day? As the noted scholar of Old English Dr Thijs Porck pointed out in this excellent blog post a few years ago, the early 11th-century Anglo-Saxon religious writer, Ælfric of Eynsham, had cause to write a letter of complaint, admonishing his fellow monks for adorning themselves ‘in Danish fashion, with bared neck and blinded eyes’. That shaved back of neck and hair flopping over the eyes sounds quite a lot like the Norman look in the Bayeux Tapestry, and not dissimilar to what we can see in the Viking figurine. So maybe both the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans were trying to look scarily Viking in the 11th century, and the Tapestry has slipped us a red herring by making out that the two groups adopted different hair styles. Maybe moustache-gate is simply an overly-literal reading of the embroidery. As Marc Morris has noted, however, there is other documentary evidence besides the Tapestry to suggest that there were stylistic differences in hair and face between Normans and English. William of Poitiers recorded how the French and Normans 'looked with curiosity' at the long-haired English hostages that the Conqueror brought home with him in 1067, and other sources do point to the Normans being clean-shaven and the English wearing facial hair. One final point on faces, moustaches and hair is this: quoting Professor Owen-Crocker once more, ‘No-one ever looks happy in the Bayeux Tapestry’. The range of facial expressions in the embroidery are limited, though Harold does look notably downtrodden when he’s making his famous oath in the presence of Duke William in Bayeux. So, if we’re being picky about facial hair and divergence from the Tapestry, we ought also to criticise King and Conqueror for allowing its characters to smile on occasion, because that really isn’t in the spirit of the embroidery. If you want to know more about the Bayeux Tapestry, feel free to have a scan of <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Bayeux-Tapestry-Unravelling-Conquest/dp/0500297657/ref=sr_1_1?crid=36VNPUZVD7AT0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.MMpoBk9Uovbmr3TEL7v4h5yCcHHB7TibT_bIrEGBOBxY2Pe3qyULcF9azzUe6FSS77dBGNHt1jXTxYq4ZklhYwbTl0vPLrwYXklZE3_uXH7g1YMSgVfU06y_VHZZkn57MW1kw48WMMOmwhS-d_wuHIBjqgzxJOdyiDL2g6zJrYe7mf3Joj6Mhuu-i1x8EDFrhQ6EEihQAOCndaf5Z0YMQXFMhbJ8bz6lOmHeW7nnRG8.LiqZZPaTMKhqXNti1OiwZBLnizdALx5kanimdfEvyVM&dib_tag=se&keywords=story+of+the+bayeux+tapestry&qid=1756389351&s=books&sprefix=story+of+the+bayeux+tapestry%2Cstripbooks%2C68&sr=1-1&tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-288879" rel="sponsored" target="_blank">The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry, by myself and Professor Michael Lewis. This article is part of HistoryExtra's new Life Lessons from History Substack newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter for more articles and podcasts exploring the ways in which history can help us live better, happier, healthier or more productive lives.
Designs for life: the lasting impact of Art Deco
In the interwar era, artists and designers embraced a sleek modern style that embodied the optimism and elegance of the age. On the centenary of the Paris expo that launched Art Deco on the international stage, Emma Bastin explores its origins and lasting impacts
On a cold, wintry December day in 1935, the Duke and Duchess of York arrived in Bexhill-on-Sea to open a new public venue. Lining the route were well-wishers of all ages, from Brownies and Cubs to war veterans wearing campaign medals. By the time the royal couple reached their destination, the crowd numbered in their thousands; no doubt the duke and duchess found it difficult to fully appreciate the building. With its unadorned cream walls, acres of glass and sleek lines, the De La Warr Pavilion did not so much proclaim its modernity but shout it out loud. The stylish façade hid a welded steel frame, the first of its kind in Britain. Inside were an auditorium seating 1,300, a restaurant and a library, all for “the common enjoyment of the people”. Quickly dubbed ‘The People’s Palace’, it was – and still is – an iconic embodiment of Art Deco style. Art Deco – a shortened, anglicised version of arts décoratifs – was never referred to as such in its heyday in the 1920s and 30s. Like most art movements, it gained its name long after its popularity had waned. The first use of the term as we use it now was by art historian Bevis Hillier in 1968. Facade of the Folies Bergère, Paris Maurice Pico, 1926 The dancer Lila Nikolska was the model for the gold bas-relief facade of the most famous cabaret in Paris – the Folies Bergère. Dancers were important to Art Deco sculptors, their bodies epitomising fluidity and strength. Here, movement is emphasised by the sequences of lines that surround the model, which also suggest that strident, modern music is playing. As with many other forms of art and design before and since, Art Deco was a response to the social, cultural and economic climate in which it emerged. It drew inspiration from a diverse range of sources, from ancient Egypt to the avant-garde, incorporating motifs from nature as well as concepts of mass-production using artificial materials. As a result, defining Art Deco is notoriously difficult. Some art historians have proposed that, rather than seeing it as a style, we should view Art Deco as a celebration of the imagination and creativity of the interwar years. Yet there is something distinctive and recognisable about its character. The form of an Art Deco object is usually simplified, often incorporating geometric shapes; functionality is important. Decorative features are stripped back to the essentials, but popular motifs include chevrons, sunrays, plants and human figures. Century of style By the time the De La Warr Pavilion was opened, the style had been growing in prominence for more than a decade. For many historians and enthusiasts, 2025 is being celebrated as the centenary year of Art Deco. That was the year when L’Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (usually loosely translated as the International Exhibition of Decorative and Industrial Arts) was held in Paris. The organisers had declared that exhibits must show “modern inspiration and a real originality”, and the expo brought together the best in contemporary design from around the world. Vogue cover Pierre Mourgue, 1930 As the foremost fashion magazine in the US, Britain and France, Vogue led the way with stylish, avant-garde cover illustrations produced by a talented roster of artists. Pierre Mourgue, one of several artists Condé Nast discovered in France, relocated to the US where he produced several covers for Vogue. This example from 1930 exudes elegance, shows off the latest fashions, and references the modern skyscrapers springing up in New York City in that era. However, the roots of Art Deco date from as early as the 1910s, when French artists began to move away from the intricate detailing of Art Nouveau and towards a simpler style. Luxury French fashion magazines like Gazette du Bon Ton and Femina commissioned artists including Paul Iribe and Georges Lepape to illustrate the latest avant-garde fashions by couturiers such as Paul Poiret. Outside of France, there were moves towards simplified architecture by Austrian Josef Hoffmann and Scot Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Styles of modern art that developed in the years before the First World War, such as Cubism, Vorticism and Futurism also influenced Art Deco style. Unsurprisingly, advances in art and design were temporarily halted during the war but quickly leapt forward in the following years, driven largely by the desire to forget – to make a break with what had gone before – and for modernity. Read more | Michelangelo: the Renaissance polymath who transformed Western art Seven years after the end of the war, the 1925 Paris expo established Art Deco as a mainstream style. Some 16 million visitors passed through its doors in the seven months it was open – importantly, that included tastemakers, buyers, designers and journalists from around the world. Articles in the press raved about the “dream city” that had been created with temporary pavilions. The impermanent nature of these buildings, along with the expectation that the style should emphasise the modern, inspired architects to produce groundbreaking designs. Postcards and photographs showed off the astonishing assembly of buildings to a global audience. For those present, elaborate arrangements of searchlights illuminated the pavilions and grounds at night, and extraordinary sights – such as a 15-metre-tall crystal fountain by jewellery designer René Lalique – enhanced this vision of modernity. Ekco A76 radio c1934 In the 1930s, Ekco radios combined innovative design with the latest technology; today, they’re highly sought after by collectors. Radio ownership boomed in the interwar years, when the use of Bakelite (an early plastic) allowed Ekco to create alternatives to earlier square wooden cases. Well-known architects and designers such as Serge Chermayeff and Wells Coates were commissioned to create new ranges, introducing Art Deco design into homes across the nation. Conspicuous consumption The Paris expo hosted 15,000 exhibitors, many of which were businesses promoting themselves and selling their wares. The organisers wanted to showcase design not just in terms of production but also consumption. Large department stores such as Galeries Lafayette occupied their own pavilions, and luxury boutiques lined the Pont Alexandre III across the Seine. The French wanted to highlight the skills of their artists, and a model French embassy was created in which sumptuous interiors and furnishings were displayed. This was Art Deco for the elite, not the masses, designed to appeal to those with deep pockets. But in an age when trends percolated down, many of the designers fully expected that the style they had developed would be taken up by the lower classes, albeit at a later date and in more economical forms. Mass consumerism, faster communications and new technologies enabled Art Deco to spread both widely and rapidly. Thanks to the variety of ways in which this style could be applied, it appeared in myriad forms – one of the most imposing and widely visible being architecture. London Underground poster Edward McKnight Kauffer, 1931 Inspired by Futurism, this ultra-modern poster was seen by hundreds of thousands of travellers in the early 1930s, when such a combination of image and text was still a novelty. One of the boldest artists commissioned by London Transport, McKnight Kauffer – who used an airbrush to create the 3D effect on the numbers 6 and 12 – was also one of the most prolific, producing nearly 100 posters. Businesses keen to show their inventiveness employed forward-looking architects to create factories and headquarters in the most modern style. Along the Great West Road in London, an array of cutting-edge buildings sprang up, among them modern factories for Firestone, Gillette and Coty cosmetics. The Hoover Building was erected in Perivale, and the Oxo Tower on the south bank of the Thames in central London. Outside the capital, Littlewoods built a vast modern headquarters in Liverpool, and Scotland welcomed Art Deco buildings such as India of Inchinnan, and Luma Tower in Glasgow. Retailers also realised the commercial potential of Art Deco: the simple lines and large areas of glazing allowed their products to shine. Burton and Marks and Spencer both favoured an Art Deco-inspired neoclassicism, with grand pillars and repeated motifs. Their buildings can still be seen today on high streets in towns and cities such as London, York, Halifax and Swansea. Read more | Michael Wood on the New Angel | "Few works of 20th-century art have such a distinguished list of past owners" The streamlined style of Art Deco was perfect for railway stations and airports, too, its sleek lines evoking speed and efficiency, and its wide open spaces accommodating large numbers of passengers. Dozens of Art Deco tube stations built in suburban London in the 1920s and 1930s were designed by Charles Holden, who enjoyed an excellent working relationship with Frank Pick, the man who modernised and united the London Transport network. Together they created a unified look for stations and their interiors across the network. Often beacons of modernity in a land of mock-Tudor semis, their stations welcomed hundreds of thousands of passengers every day in places such as Acton Town, Cockfosters and East Finchley, which is still guarded by Eric Aumonier’s Art Deco Archer statue. Group of Four Nudes Tamara de Lempicka, 1925 This Polish-born artist’s work is instantly recognisable, pushing boundaries of style and subject. This painting blends Cubism with the traditional: bodies are drawn in strong, angular lines, but beautifully toned shading and colours give a sense of depth. Intensely erotic, it was deemed shocking at the time. Picture palaces Cinema proved to be a potent force in the spread of Art Deco. The explosion in movie-going fuelled demand for a large number of new venues, many of which were built in the latest style. From their gleaming white exteriors to their modern foyers and plush interiors, cinemas allowed the audience to lose themselves in fantasy for a few hours. It was not only the cinema buildings that were Art Deco: the films themselves were also heavily influenced by the movement. From the 1920s, the industry led the way in fusing modernity and glamour. Hollywood art director Cedric Gibbons, who visited the 1925 expo, became the master of Art Deco styling in films. The MGM movies on which he worked in the interwar period showcased his vision of heightened luxury and elegance, particularly his interior sets, such as those in Our Dancing Daughters (1928) and Grand Hotel (1932). In the 1930s, musicals developed the ‘Gibbons look’, and vast Art Deco sets with high ceilings, repeated motifs and sweeping lines were created for films like Top Hat (1935). Hollywood shared this glossy style with a global audience of around 80 million people each week, helping to create consumers with aspirations to live like their favourite movie stars. Eltham Palace entrance hall Rolf Engströmer, 1936 When Stephen and Virginia Courtauld added an Art Deco extension to the existing medieval hall of Eltham Palace, south-east London, Swedish designer Rolf Engströmer was commissioned to create the circular entrance hall. Natural light floods through the domed glass roof to illuminate exquisite marquetry walls, modern furniture and a rug designed by textile artist Marion Dorn. Modernity prevailed throughout the new section of the house, which boasted underfloor heating, multi-room sound systems and a centralised vacuum cleaner. Need for speed Beyond the cinema, Art Deco adorned advertising boards, magazines and newspapers. Graphic designers embraced the new style, recognising that simplicity and ease of reading were essential for capturing the public’s attention; French poster designer Paul Colin noted that the best advertising “must be readable at 100km an hour”. The intricate drawings and acres of text found in Victorian and Edwardian adverts were swept away, replaced with striking, pared-back visuals creating an efficient and dynamic look. Frank Pick at London Transport advocated this modern look, commissioning commercial artists such as Edward McKnight Kauffer, André Édouard Marty and Dora M Batty to create posters displayed across the transport network. Like movies, these posters had a huge audience, and the public soon became familiar with this modern style – consciously or not. Seeing the success of the London Transport posters, other businesses began to use Art Deco in their own marketing material. Railway companies and shipping lines produced some of the most iconic advertising, but this new form of graphic design was also used to market clothing, make-up, cars, food – almost anything, in fact. Manufacturers quickly realised that Art Deco was a style that could easily be reproduced en masse. Its simplicity of form and design allowed objects such as radios, telephones, mirrors, china and printed fabrics to be created easily, often using mass-production techniques. There was a ready market for these goods, too – the number of people with disposable incomes was growing, and products that offered a sense of modernity along with ease of living were in demand. Cartier brooch c1925 Art Deco jewellery was dazzling – and no one created dazzle quite like Cartier. This brooch has a jadeite background showcasing diamonds and sapphires set in a geometric design. Jade had long been used in the far east, and this brooch demonstrates how inspiration from other cultures was mixed with modernity to create a brand new style. In Britain, geometric clocks and photo frames appeared on mantlepieces, as did brightly coloured ornaments. Potteries employed forward-thinking artists such as Clarice Cliff to decorate their tableware, and furniture became more streamlined. Even those on limited incomes could buy into the look: Littlewoods offered Art Deco tea sets, electric light pendants and dressing-table trinkets for as little as 10 shillings, payable in instalments. Read more | Beauty before durability: the interwar beginnings of fast fashion Reclaiming the past The heyday of Art Deco ended with the outbreak of the Second World War. Quickly, utility and practicality replaced consumerism and design. The style was largely relegated to the doldrums during the reign of stark Modernism and Brutalism in the 1950s and early 1960s, but by 1965 a tentative revival had begun. The 1920s and 1930s represented a period before the living memory of younger members of society but, in their desire for self-expression, they looked to the interwar era as a golden age of individualism, youth and newly liberated sexuality. This interest was fuelled by the emergence of design studies, and the idea that Art Deco could not be simply dismissed as commercialised and lightweight. Exhibitions were staged, and books and articles were written on the subject. Fashion designers and retailers such as Biba took the glamour of Art Deco and reinterpreted it for a new audience. Postmodernism and pop art borrowed the bright colours, geometrics and fun to break with the austerity of postwar Modernism, and original Art Deco items became sought after by collectors. Chrysler Building, New York City William Van Alen, 1930 When completed, the Chrysler Building was the world’s first supertall skyscraper – the loftiest building in the world, soaring 319 metres into the New York City sky. It’s an Art Deco icon, largely due to its terraced ‘crown’ featuring concentric arches and radiating sunbursts. Typical of the style, ornamentation is exuberant – stylised hub caps, oversized Chrysler hood ornaments and radiator caps all reference the source of the wealth that underwrote this building: making and selling cars. The centenary of the Paris expo has sparked another resurgence of interest, as designers look to the past for inspiration. There are efforts to preserve Art Deco heritage around the world, and celebrations and exhibitions celebrating the innovations it made. Art Deco has proved to be timeless. Its sleek aesthetic transcends shifts in fashions, and the glamour and luxury it epitomises remain desirable. It changed the way we view art and design: no longer the preserve of the rich and urbane, mass produced objects were beautiful, fun and functional, accessible to all. Today, the ideal of Art Deco – melding beauty with utility – remains a guiding principle in design and its consumption. Dr Emma Bastin is a historian of the early 20th century, particularly focusing on the interwar period. She explores material and cultural history, including fashion and retail This article was first published in the August 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Zoot suits, mashers & New Romantics: the evolution of the dandy
Peter Andersson delves into various dandy subcultures that saw men dressing immaculately, from the early 19th century to the 1980s
From zoot suiters and mods, to mashers and Congolese sapeurs, since the early 19th century, fashionable male subcultures have popped up across the globe. Speaking to Ellie Cawthorne, Peter Andersson examines how the idea of the 'dandy' has evolved over time, and argues that the idea of dressing well was not limited to the elites. Peter Andersson is the author of The Dandy: A People's History of Sartorial Splendour (Oxford University Press, 2025) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon <a href="https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?id=489797&clickref=historyextra-288194&awinmid=3787&p=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.waterstones.com%2Fbook%2Fthe-dandy%2Fpeter-k-andersson%2F9780198882435%23%3A%7E%3Atext%3DThe%2520Dandy%253A%2520A%2520People%27s%2520History%2520constitutes%2520the%2520first%2520ever%2520history%2Cstyle%252Dconscious%2520men%2520about%2520town.#:~:text=The%20Dandy%3A%20A%20People's%20History%20constitutes%20the%20first%20ever%20history,style%2Dconscious%20men%20about%20town." rel="sponsored" target="_blank">Buy now on Waterstones
Flower power: how plants transformed the lives of 17th-century women
Few 17th-century women could travel the world. But the world could visit them in their gardens. Susannah Lyon-Whaley reveals how exotic plants – from Chinese rhubarb to South American passionfruit – opened new horizons in fashion, food and science
Anna Buckett had never seen a pineapple. Undeterred, on 12 July 1656, she took the bold move of stitching one. While the fine stitches on her sampler show dexterity, the result is more artistic than realistic. The red pineapple looks a little like a monstrous jelly with beetle legs. Amid Anna’s stitched pinks, pansies and honeysuckles, the pineapple – a native of countries like Brazil and Suriname that would not grow successfully in English gardens until the 1700s – was out of place. She had never seen a pineapple, but Anna may have seen pictures. The first printed depiction of a pineapple in Europe was in black and white in Gonzalo de Oviedo’s Historia General de las Indias (1535). Another herbal text (1641) claimed that the fruit tasted “as if wine, rosewater and sugar were mixed together”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/2HHR700cmyk-ce191d2.jpg" width="1545" height="1030" alt="A detailed and colourful piece of needlework shows a scene with two people, a lion and a horse at the top, with several plants, leaves and red pineapples across the bottom" title="A needlework sampler stitched by Anna Buckett in 1656, including her depiction of a red pineapple, resembling a “monstrous jelly with beetle legs” (Image by Alamy)" /> Anna may have been the Anne Buckett baptised in May 1643 in Middlesex, or the Ann Becket baptised in December 1644 in Surrey, though neither is certain. Like other daughters of merchants or gentlemen learning the gentler arts, she stitched both gardens she saw and those she imagined. Needlework creations of the time swarmed with peacocks, parrots, lions, leopards and sunflowers from foreign lands. In the 17th century, voyages to new colonies in North America, the Caribbean, Africa and India turned plants like tobacco and sugarcane into profits. They also sent waves of plants rippling back across the sea. For women at home, gardens made the wider world a material reality. Dainties for a queen In 1629, John Parkinson, royal herbalist to Charles I, dedicated his new book of flowers, Paradisi in Sole, to the king’s wife, 20-year-old French-born Henrietta Maria. “Knowing your maiestie so much delighted with all the faire flowers of a garden,” the work “seemed as it were destined, to bee first offered into your highnesse hands.” The more exotic and ‘outlandish’ a flower, the more fashionable. The potatoes of Canada with their small yellow blooms, wrote Parkinson, were once stewed with butter and wine as “dainties for a queene”. But by 1629 these were “growne to be so common here with us at London, that even the most vulgar begin to despise them”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-1130662874cmyk-fb05112.jpg" width="3226" height="2149" alt="A black and white sketch of several intertwining plants" title="A page from Paradisi in Sole, John Parkinson’s 1629 book of flowers dedicated to Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I. Parkinson urged elite women to smell and taste the blooms in their gardens" /> Paradisi in Sole was a gateway to further knowledge for ‘gentlewomen’, and Parkinson urged such women to look, smell and taste in their own domestic gardens. The crown imperial from Constantinople “doe smell somewhat strong as it were the savour of a Foxe”. Tulip bulbs tasted like “sweete onions”. The West Indian “daffodil with a red flower” was “by the Indians in their tongue named Azcal Xochitl”. Flowers introduced new smellscapes as well as sights. The scent of orange flowers – originally grown in China – in perfumed waters was favoured by ladies and queens, even if the orange fruit could be sold in playhouses by girls of dubious reputation. In a Dutch still life painting by Pieter Claesz dated 1627, a dead turkey baked into a pie clutches a sprig of orange blossom in its beak. On a table set with Chinese porcelain, a Pacific nautilus shell and Indian spices, the blossom is just one of many exotica. Sweet-smelling nasturtiums from the West Indies decked small bunches that a woman might present to a friend or receive from a lover. Blooms like jasmine, orange blossom and the delicate white flowers of the Mexican tuberose perfumed women from princesses to sex workers. A satire on a lady’s dressing room by Mary Evelyn in 1690 described gloves scented with such fragrances. In the poem Pendragon, or, The Carpet Knight his Kalendar (1698), the knight follows Selena to church, only to be overwhelmed by “a whiff of tuberose” emanating from “her skin or clothes”. A scent bottle from the Cheapside hoard of Elizabethan and Stuart jewels, found in London in 1912, is encrusted with enamel, gold and gems. Other bottles engraved with oriental-style birds and plants attested to the value of the smells they contained. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/HR2E2Tcmyk-8d05622.jpg" width="1754" height="1168" alt="A painting shows to women in dresses, with curly hair. The woman on the left wears a pearl necklace. The one on the right is holding a painting of a tulip" title="A portrait of Mary Capel (left) with her sister Elizabeth (holding a painting of a tulip). Mary was reportedly responsible for the introduction of 87 new plants into England" /> Like Anna’s pineapple, flowers were sources of artistic inspiration and invited readers to picture foreign places. Elizabeth, Countess of Carnarvon, holds her own painting of a tulip, also known as a ‘Turk’s cap’, in a portrait with her sister Mary Capel, later Duchess of Beaufort. For Mary, flowers were a scientific passion. Plants put her in touch with botanists like Hans Sloane and opened her mind to places she could only read of: the West Indies, China, Japan and Ceylon. Mary kept books of the plants she grew and collected, along with notes including their indigenous names. Among her pressed flowers at the Natural History Museum is a desiccated South American passionfruit “ripen’d at Fairford in Gloucestershire”. As a woman, Mary could not join the Royal Society, the premier organisation for the study of natural history, nor publish work in her name. Yet, in the century of her death it was reported that she was responsible for the introduction of 87 new plants, among them Virginian blush flowered speedwell and Persian bell flowered gigantic swallow wort. One hundred years after she died, botanist Robert Brown named the Western Australian gravel bottlebrush after her: Beaufortia Decussata. Prickly fig trees But not only duchesses took an interest in botany. “Mistresse Thomasin Tunstall” lived in rural Bull Bank in Lancashire, 5 miles north of Hornby Castle, far from noble courts. Tunstall collected rare native plants like the cuckoo flower and lady slipper orchid. Parkinson noted that she “hath often sent mee up the rootes to London, which have borne faire flowers in my garden”. The marginal notes in Tunstall’s copy of botanist John Gerard’s famous ‘herbal’ show her awareness of plants from the wider world. Tunstall noted that Gerard’s “Prickly Indian Fig tree” grew at “Mr Parkinson’s gardin at the siyne of the goulden morter on Ludyat Hill”. Women worked with these plants – as well as studied and collected them. A bill from the 1680s for Catherine of Braganza, wife of King Charles II, offers rare evidence of women’s garden labour. Weeders worked among the queen’s sweet-scented tuberoses, Ethiopian bladder senna, purple Virginian honeysuckle, and apios americana sourced from the keeper of the Chelsea Physic Garden. At least one found love amid the blooms. On 19 August 1688, Katherine Griffin married Thomas Williams – one of the queen’s garden labourers – at the Holy Trinity in Knightsbridge and is subsequently listed with the weeding women as Katherine Williams. Despite being paid 10p a day or £1 a month (roughly £120 today), half as much as the male gardeners whose names are recorded in the same bills, women like Katherine were adept at their tasks. The “garden of pleasure stored with these out-landish flowers… needeth not so much or so often manuring with soyle, as another garden planted with… English flowers,” John Parkinson had written in Paradisi in Sole. But it did “neede to bee well cleansed from all annoyances… stones, weedes, rootes of trees, bushes”. A weeding woman had to know which seedlings to pull. What might she have thought of the unusual plants she was required to treat like “so many jewels”? Such work did not go unnoticed. The young noblewoman Celia Fiennes described a statue of an “old weeder woman” in the Duke of Bedford’s cherry garden that was “done so like and her clothes so well that at first I tooke it to be a real living body”. A Mortlake tapestry pictures a woman weeding. Her clothes, which are not as rich as those worn by a nearby noble couple, suggest she might be the gardener’s wife. The daffodils growing beside her were new additions to the decorative garden under names such as ‘Narcissus Africanus’, the French daffodil, and the ‘Daffodill of Constantinople’. Shining like diamonds In the garden of pleasure and the adjoining kitchen garden, North American tobacco with its pretty pink flowers became a salve for ulcers and wounds, or a syrup to treat asthma. Manuscript books of recipes compiled by women include “pellitory of Spayne” (likely the North African Anacyclus pyrethrum) in a gargle for phlegm and rhubarb from China in laxatives. Widely read printed recipes called for sugar, the crystallised product of the juice from the sugar cane plant. With its fine white powder, a lady or her maidservant could transform English roses, borage, marigolds or gillyflowers into “candie hard and glistering like diamonds”. A humbler conserve of native betony flowers and foreign sugar purporting to aid conception instructed its maker to boil “betony new and tender one pound, the best sugar three pound” until they became a syrup. At the start of the 17th century, sugar was a luxury product. But by the end of the century, plantations established in British colonies like Barbados meant sugar was affordable for the likes of yeoman farmers and their wives. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/15-Ladies-Directory-Af-d.45-titlepagecmyk-c46872d.jpg" width="1104" height="735" alt="An old double page from a book shows an illustration of a woman making syrup on the left, and on the right, a page titled THE LADIES DIRECTORY IN CHOICE EXPERIMENTS AND CURIOSITES OF PRESERVING IN JELLIES AND CANDYING BOTH FRUITS & FLOWERS" title="The Ladies Directory of “experiments and curiosities” from 1662 offers women advice on producing drinks, jellies, candied flowers and cakes" /> But ‘exotic’ flowers had a darker side. To source specimens, English women relied on imperial trade routes. The Duchess of Beaufort had trees, cuttings and saplings transported from Barbados. One of the ships that transported “poyson trees” for her in 1696 returned to the island in 1702 carrying enslaved people as cargo. Some gentlewomen may have read Richard Ligon’s A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados (1657), written to attract sugar planters to the colony. He wrote of a new vegetable root “of which the negres brought the seeds” that was “very good meat” for sea voyages, “boyl’d with powdred pork, and eaten with butter, vinegar, and pepper”. Other pages detailed tortures to keep the enslaved African population in check. How much did women of the time know about their impact on ecologies and people far away? It is difficult to guess. Today, flowers imported to the UK from markets such as Kenya are plagued by instances of modern-day slavery. Are those of us who admire and purchase these travelling beauties, these innocent-looking roses, plastic-wrapped and transported thousands of miles on planes, so different from early modern women? Few 17th-century English women may have travelled the high seas to foreign climes but many, particularly the educated and wealthy, experienced the wider world through nature’s bounty. As plants shaped their view of foreign shores, they in turn made these plants into something new. In their gardens, foreign flowers were moulded into emblems of fashion and art, and exotic plants became perfumes, medicine and food. When the young Anna Buckett stitched a pineapple, the curious mind of this ordinary girl was encountering a world miles away from her English pinks and pansies. Or was it? Through books or word of mouth, pineapples had entered her own experience. Susannah Lyon-Whaley is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of York This article was first published in the June 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Why did Georgian dresses cost as much as a townhouse?!
HistoryExtra’s Ellie Cawthorne met Professor Serena Dyer and her team of experts who are attempting to get up close and personal with the fine stitches of Georgian society by recreating a traditional mantua sacque dress – from scratch
Could you call a dress radical? The rise of the 18th-century mantua certainly marked a societal shift that went well beyond a fashion trend. As the popularity of this style grew, so too did the role of women in an industry previously dominated by men. Forget tailors – if you wanted to keep up with the Georgians, the mantua maker is where you’d go. To find out more about this generation of trend-setting women, HistoryExtra’s Ellie Cawthorne met Professor Serena Dyer and her team of experts who are attempting to get up close and personal with the fine stitches of Georgian society by recreating a traditional mantua sacque dress – from scratch. View Green Video on the source website
Bear fat, false rumps and arsenic makeup: 7 of the most bizarre beauty trends from the past
Ideas about beauty change all the time and, over the years, British women have done strange things to achieve a desired look. Here Margarette Lincoln explores some bizarre beauty rituals from the past 400 years, from larding hair with bear fat to eating arsenic
Personal appearance is linked to power, status, and self-identity so women have always tried to look their best. Before makeup and toiletries became mega industries, beauty products were limited, and women resorted to inventions that seem truly weird today… Hair looking lacklustre? Try bear fat For centuries, bear fat was touted to promote hair growth. Cleopatra is said to have been an early fan. Bears have strong, thick coats, so people reasoned that their fat would make tresses luxuriant – and even prevent hair loss. Britain imported tons of bear fat from France each year. Russian bears were thought to yield the best. The fat was refined, mixed with beef marrow, and then perfumed to make ‘Bear’s Grease’. But the genuine article was in short supply, so was routinely adulterated with pig fat or lard. To prevent doubt, canny retailers proudly invited customers to view the fat cut from recently slaughtered bears. In the 1790s, Reeves’s Perfumery Warehouse and Ornamental Hair Manufactory, based in Holborn, London advertised that it killed one bear each month for the purpose. Bear’s Grease was also used in pomade, the waxy substance used to keep hair in place. Persian Rose Pomatum, for instance, claimed to be made from “clarified Bear’s Grease, Buffalo’s Marrow, and Odour of Roses”. Such products attracted hungry pests, as did the powder used to bulk up a hairstyle. One 18th-century woman recalled seeing a mouse peep out of the curls of a lady in front of her at church, “no doubt well fed with so much powder and pomatum”. Women combated such unwelcome pests in their hair with head-scratchers and carefully placed flea traps (tiny boxes filled with blood and glue). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/01/GettyImages-90743543-e8f3323.jpg" width="734" height="1024" alt="UNITED KINGDOM - JANUARY 31: Vignette from a lithographic plate showing a shop exterior and a sign advertising 'Bear�s Grease' which was supposed to stimulate the growth of hair. Taken from 'The Bear' in 'Graphic Illustrations of Animals - Showing Their Utility to Man', a book illustrated by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and R K Thomas, printed by J Graf, C Graf, Day and Haghe, and published by Thomas Varty. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)" title="Perfumer, c 1845." /> Does my bum look big (enough)? Try a false rump In the 1780s, billowy muslin dresses with a sash at the waist were all the rage. Women wore pads around their hips to froth out the expensive white muslin and achieve a soft, rounded silhouette. The effect was meant to look natural but was artfully contrived. The hip pads were called rumps. False rumps came in different sizes and were usually stuffed with cork fragments and horsehair. Versions could be made at home, but many were sold in rump shops, irreverently termed ‘bum shops’. Some false rumps were shaped like buttocks, split with a gap in the middle, which only invited prurient curiosity about how the effect was achieved. This preposterous fashion was heavily mocked in the satirical prints of the day, which routinely depicted male shop assistants fawning over female customers, helping them to choose the most flattering rump for their height. On the plus side, whenever a woman sat down, this newfangled fashion always provided a plush cushion. Fancy a pearly smile? Try a teeth transplant Many people in the past had decayed and missing teeth due to sugar consumption and poor dental hygiene. The term ‘dentist’, borrowed from the French, was first used in London around the mid-18th century – but amazingly there was no register of approved dentists in Britain until 1879. Sets of false teeth were made of ivory, walrus tusk or even human teeth, retrieved from graves and battlefields. But these dentures were merely cosmetic. People took them out before meals because you couldn’t chew with them. Instead, some used a masticator – an instrument like a pair of pliers – to grind food up before swallowing. Those who could afford the cost might have opted for ‘transplanted’ teeth. A dentist would pull healthy teeth from a patient in need of money and pop a ‘live’ tooth straight into the mouth of the recipient. Donors were often children because small teeth were easier to fit, and front teeth were preferred because they had a single root and were more likely to ‘take’. All understood that donors could pass on diseases like syphilis; unlike the human teeth used in dentures, extracted teeth could not be boiled before use. Despite the risk, transplantation remained popular with women on both sides of Atlantic into the 19th century, which shows how desperate they were to have good teeth. But successful transplantation was always a matter of chance. Longing for smooth skin? Try veal – or a ‘toilet mask’ The secret to a velvety complexion was once believed to have been veal. A 17th-century household manual advised women to boil a piece of veal without skin or fat in a quart of water. Then they had to strain the mixture and add a few spoonsful of wine. When cool, it was used as a face wash. As late as the 1880s, a society courtesan still insisted that veal was better than any cold cream which, she said, encouraged hairs to grow. For a wrinkle-free complexion, women were encouraged to go to bed with a piece of raw veal on each cheek, strapped in place with linen bandages. The veal was thought to preserve the freshness of the skin. It was around this time that ‘toilet masks’ – also known as ‘face gloves’– grew in popularity on both sides of the Atlantic. These reusable face masks – which some might considered to be a predecessor to modern sheet masks – were used to moisturise, lubricate and even bleach skin. While they looked rather unsightly, toilet masks had the benefit of being reasonably cheap and long lasting – and wearers could add ointments and creams if they desired. Presumably – given their odd appearance – they were worn on nights when women planned to sleep alone. Madam Rowley’s mask, patented in 1875, was made of flexible rubber and intended to be worn during sleep three times a week. It marketed itself as being guaranteed to remove all “complexional imperfections”, either through perspiration or because medical ointments could be spread on the inside. Can’t find a diet that works? Eat more meat Need to lose weight? Eat meat four times a day! At first, women were not credited with the self-discipline needed to restrict their food intake and lose weight. Dieting was a male preserve. It indicated manly self-control, respectable ambition, and a patriotic desire to be a useful citizen. The first weight loss diet to catch on in Britain and the United States was William Banting’s diet of 1863. It was heavy on red meat and claret, which were associated with masculinity. In any case, the ideal Victorian woman was well rounded, with ‘meagre’ women being advised to pour olive oil over each meal. Even so, towards the end of the 19th century, female activists began to adopt Banting’s ‘meat diet’ as they pushed for equality and the right to vote. They hoped that overt control of their bodies would signal their ability to take a more active role in society. But this diet was expensive, and few could afford so much meat. Yet women were soon expected to be athletic and lean like their male counterparts. By the mid-1920s, the pressure to be extremely slim spawned an inventive range of quack products, including the Vaco Reducing Cup for a protruding abdomen. This suction cup was guaranteed to loosen the congestion of fat and make it vanish. Wealthy women even could buy a portable electric ‘Health Motor’ which vibrated a wide belt around hips or thighs, allegedly sloughing off inches with no need for actual exercise. Looking for a smoother complexion? Try makeup (at your peril!) Women had to fight for the right to wear makeup, which had often been associated with deception and sex work. Tinted lip salves could be made using any red dye. A popular 18th-century guide contained recipes for making lip cream from dyer’s alkanet and white wax, or roses and hog lard, a distinct improvement on 17th-century advice to blend the dye with sweat from behind the ears. Eyebrows could be rubbed with burnt cork. Yet many cosmetics were dangerous with long use. White makeup was made from lead or bismuth compounds – known to be corrosive; safer alternatives included starch or burnt bones. White lead in particular prompted the typical effects of lead poisoning: abdominal pain, muscle weakness, tingling in the hands and feet, and memory problems. It could damage and blacken the skin, and make hair fall out. Mercury-based red pigments meanwhile resulted in tooth loss and stinking breath. Such dangers encouraged Victorian women to revert to making lip salves, pastes, and healthy skin washes at home. Before the 20th century, fear of being poisoned remained perhaps the greatest barrier to everyday cosmetic use. Looking for a youthful glow? Try consumptive chic Tuberculosis was deadly, but its symptoms were widely admired: pale skin accentuated the veins, and feverish eyes sparkled. In the Victorian era, some white women danced with death by eating arsenic for a youthful pallor. Branded arsenic wafers (pills) and arsenical lotions to remove blemishes were openly marketed. They worked by poisoning the blood so that it carried fewer red blood cells to organs; anaemia then left the skin clear and pale. Skin damage by these means was so commonplace that specific washes were developed to whiten and heal complexions that had been yellowed and corroded by arsenic and other toxins. From the end of the 18th century, there was a market for creams guaranteed to be poison-free, but that didn’t stop women taking arsenic for the transparent-looking skin they desired. The body can tolerate a little arsenic. Though, when men died in mysterious circumstances, their wives were sometimes suspected of feeding them large quantities. The crime was hard to prove, but in one notorious case an American woman, Florence Maybrick, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1889 for murdering her husband with arsenic. Only an element of reasonable doubt saved her from being hanged. This scandal epitomises the suspicion and distrust that has long surrounded women’s beauty practices. Margarette Lincoln is the author of Perfection: 400 Years of Women’s Quest for Beauty (Yale, 2024). You can find her on Bluesky @margarettel.bsky.social and Instagram or visit her website
Underwear history: everything you wanted to know
Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
Dr Serena Dyer briefs us on the history of underwear – from bras and knickers, to G-strings, bloomers and codpieces
When did people first start wearing underwear? What's the difference between drawers and bloomers? Did medieval women wear bras? Were Victorian corsets really as uncomfortable to wear as you might imagine? And why did men wear codpieces? In this 'everything you wanted to know' episode, Dr Serena Dyer answers listener questions on the history of underwear, in conversation with David Musgrove.
“Leisure was built into the whole shopping experience” | Annie Gray on the history of the high street
Ellie Cawthorne talks to Annie Gray about how the evolution of the high street has been a story of growth, specialisation and diversification – but also of entertainment and enduring appeal
What can looking at a high street in any given era tell us about that period? So much. If you walk down any high street, you’ll see the things that people want and need on an everyday basis. So if you were strolling down a high street in, say, 1903, you’d have saddlers and leather workers, and specialist shops selling pork and different meats. You’d see a lot of shops selling cloth, because ready-to-wear clothing wasn’t around then. And you’d encounter lots of items that we simply don’t have a role for in our lives today – tiny little bits of ironmongery and things like that. Read more | A history of the high street Alongside the quotidian stuff, high streets have always been relatively prestigious areas for leisure shopping, featuring the likes of jewellers, swordsmiths, clockmakers and lace merchants. Luxury goods such as these are often imports, so they can tell you a lot about Britain’s place in a global context. Take tea for example: it was first sold in china shops, then in high-end grocers, then – as it became cheaper – everywhere. Just following the journey of tea reveals so much about the way in which people interacted with the global landscape of commercialisation. When did a cluster of shops that we might recognise as a high street first appear in British towns? The evolution of the high street was a really gradual process. The market was still the most important place to shop – certainly for the working classes – well into the 20th century. Market day was always the busiest day in town. But between 1650 and 1750, most towns in Britain begin to have some fixed shops, usually around or leading from the market. One of the first types of shop to move into fixed premises was the butcher. That kept mess away from the main shopping area, and enabled butchers to lock up stock and install cold stores. Read more | A brief history of shopping Traditionally, the market square was also a gathering place – somewhere people went to enjoy entertainment, to jeer at criminals in the stocks or to hear political proclamations. Slowly, these aspects became features of the high street, too. It was where you’d find sex workers, beggars, people ranting on street corners, hustlers drumming up custom for the bear fight being held the next day – that kind of thing. In my book, The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker: A History of the High Street, I argue that the high street isn’t just about shops. It’s a place for the community to come together. What items have been enduring staples of the high street? The most significant products sold there have been clothing and food, but the ways those things are sold have changed hugely. In 1700, a typical grocer would offer raisins, dried ginger and spices, but it would also sell you a couple of nails and maybe a bit of cloth as well. Gradually, shops became more and more specialised. In the 19th century, high-end grocers emerged calling themselves ‘Italian warehouses’. They sold Italian products such as olive oil and jars of preserves, but also the name just sounded more exotic. Then, in the second half of the 19th century, chain grocers such as Lipton’s, the Maypole Dairy and Home & Colonial were established to serve the lower end of the market. When the first Sainsbury’s shop opened in Drury Lane, London in 1869, it sold only eggs, milk and butter. There was a lot of money to be made in these early chain grocers, many of which sold just a small range of products. By the postwar period, multiple chain grocers were operating, including Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose, all expanding their offering on high streets. Then Britain saw the rise of the out-of-town supermarket – which is modelled on the market, only supersized – and the start of a move away from food shopping on the high street. What are some of the most interesting high street shops now lost to time? The fabric shop is a fascinating example of something that has all but disappeared. The story of clothing on the high street began with the sale of cloth, then cut cloth, then almost ready-to-wear – then, finally, truly ready-to-wear clothing. That final step didn’t really happen until the 20th century. Even when I was growing up in the 1980s, there was a popular chain of fabric shops called Gordon Thoday; I remember my mum spending hours in one. Just within my lifetime, fabric shops have virtually vanished from the high street, apart from some very small independent outlets. I think that if you told someone from 160 years ago, or even 60 years ago, that today we all buy off-the-peg clothes in randomly assigned sizes, they would have been flabbergasted. Read more | Beauty before durability: the interwar beginnings of fast fashion There was also a level of real specialism on the high street that I think we’ve now lost. You might have a lawnmower shop next door to a piano shop next to the oil man, who sold oil paints and different types of oils for cooking or fuel. It’s very rare to find really specialist shops anymore, especially given modern rent pressures. That said, one of the success stories of the past few years is the bookshop. Booksellers have always been prevalent, and in the early days of the high street they were a mark of a well-appointed town. People would stroll past to look at the prints in the window, each one displayed in its own pane of glass. Booksellers were usually printers, too. Inside you could tell them which book or collection of poems or sermons you’d like, and then you would choose your own binding. Some booksellers would also operate as circulating libraries. These were quite relaxed, exclusive spaces where you could sit and browse. Leisure was very much built into the whole experience, and bookshops embraced the idea of shopping as a pleasure to really lean into. When did shopping become seen as a leisure activity rather than just another chore? It always has been, to some extent. Even before the 17th century, if you were wealthy you would delegate the task of going to the market, but you might still go along to a selling fair. A lot of those still exist in a changed form: think of the Goose Fair in Nottingham, or the Midsummer Fair in Cambridge. Today these are big entertainment events with rollercoasters and candyfloss, but when founded they were international selling fairs. They would last up to a week, and you would spend a lot of time discussing possible purchases, which would be brought out and spread before you to inspect. You might even have salespeople come to your home. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/GettyImages-2167573986-da782fd-e1732096503419.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A confectionery shop and livery stables just off Putney high street, 1897. Since the 19th century, people have fretted about small-scale grocers being forced out of business by ‘Big Shops’ (Photo by Historic England Archive/Heritage Images via Getty Images)" title="A confectionery shop and livery stables just off Putney high street, 1897. Since the 19th century, people have fretted about small-scale grocers being forced out of business by ‘Big Shops’ (Photo by Historic England Archive/Heritage Images via Getty Images)" /> The idea that you would go out to spend a day just having fun shopping in town really took off in the late-17th and early 18th century – and it caused a lot of concern at the time. Many people hated the idea of browsing – a notion that, unsurprisingly, was widely associated with women. Quite clearly, men were just as guilty, but women were the ones who took the flack. It was known as ‘tumbling’, in reference to women who would grab at bolts of cloth, tumbling the fabric all over the place without buying anything. Shopping was seen as a game into which you entered with whoever was selling. Most places didn’t have fixed prices until the mid-18th century, so you needed to bargain. Trying to get a good price – to get the better of the shopkeeper, as it were – was treated as a kind of intellectual exercise. Napoleon supposedly called Britain a “nation of shopkeepers”. How have shopkeepers been regarded over time? For much of history, shopkeepers were not regarded as society’s most upstanding members. If you go back to the medieval period, there was a really strong idea that you should shop directly from the producer, often a farmer – which all sounds very idyllic and organic and local. But, even back then, that idea was utter rubbish. Read more | The medieval marketplace: a time traveller’s guide to shopping in the Middle Ages In the Middle Ages, there were people buying stuff from producers, then selling it on. Such on-sellers were widely hated, considered immoral and profiteering. Gradually, people began to realise that producers aren’t necessarily very good at selling, and that maybe people who are really good at making cheese should just make really good cheese, while a specialised salesperson, perhaps with a network of agents, should sell that cheese. People came to appreciate that, though there might be a bit of profit in on-selling, those profits ultimately find their way into the system, so it’s quite good for the economy overall. What can you tell us about the rise of the department store? The concept is not actually very old. It was only from the 1860s onwards that the ‘Big Shop’ – a brilliantly descriptive term – emerged on the high street. Such establishments weren’t called ‘department stores’; when that term did start to be used, it was a pejorative Americanism for something that was seen as a bit shabby and downmarket. A lot of the early Big Shops evolved out of other, more specialist shops that just started selling additional items. For example, mercers originally sold only silk, but then many mercers became drapers, then the drapers started to sell furniture, then carpets and clothes and homewares. They might move into ready-to-wear, and add some toys, and perhaps an entire house-fitting service. Then, before you knew it, you had yourself a Big Shop. A lot of the early Big Shops extended into adjacent premises, ending up with a real mishmash of buildings. When department stores became established, they often sported glorious, usually neoclassical frontages that you could spot a mile away: think big columns, huge atriums with multiple floors, and massive windows. Many department stores also had staff quarters on the top floor, because the shop assistants would live in. The idea of the window display was really driven by department stores. Selfridges displayed a monoplane, and Lewis’s of Liverpool placed a hand excavated from Pompeii in its window. Another innovative sales technique introduced by department stores was the big marketing stunt. Read more | What can the streets of Pompeii reveal about daily life in ancient Rome? Gordon Selfridge – very brash, very American – was well known for this. He thought British high streets were incredibly backward, and even had the law changed in order to build his massive store on Oxford Street. But the golden age of the big department store stunt was the interwar period. Bentalls in Kingston upon Thames was great at such affairs. When the first hoover was launched, a giant hoover was installed in its atrium. On another occasion, it had a Swedish diver called Anita Kittner plunge from the mezzanine into a tiny swimming pool five storeys below. The floor had to be reinforced because of the velocity with which she hit that pool. Alarmingly, she lost her swimming costume on the way down. Other stores would hold cookery demonstrations, and catwalk shows were common up until the 1970s. It was all about bringing people in through the door, making the department store a hub for more than just shopping. What refreshments were on offer for hungry shoppers? As they are today, refreshments have always been a huge part of the high-street experience. In the modern context, I’m not fond of a chain cafe, but it’s important to acknowledge that early examples were crucial to the development of the high street. Take Lockhart’s Cocoa Rooms. Cocoa was traditionally associated with institutional living – workhouses, hospitals – and Lockhart’s was squarely aimed at the poor. You could bring your own food, and sit in one all day. So I think they deserve an honourable mention, though I wouldn’t necessarily want to go and spend all day there, sipping cocoa and eating a sausage. Read more | 9 ways our food shopping habits have changed since 1947 Some street-seller offerings from the past are really interesting, too – things such as saloop. Very few people in Britain today have heard of saloop, but it’s still a popular drink in the Middle East [where it’s now commonly called salep]. Made from powdered orchid root, it’s a pick-me-up that was frequently served on street corners in 18th-century Britain. So I think a mug of saloop would have been worth stopping for. What debates about high streets have raged over the centuries? People have always been concerned about the high street. First of all, they were worried that shopping was immoral, and that everyone would waste their hard-earned money. Then, when shops became more established and we all realised that we loved them, concerns shifted to the issue of small shopkeepers being driven out of business by Big Shops. People have been arguing over that since at least the 1850s. In the early 20th century, the debate focused on the ‘death of the grocer’ – the idea that small-scale specialist grocers would be forced under by Big Shops with food halls and unskilled workers. That took a lot longer than people at the time thought it would, but it has undeniably happened. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/EE0F1J-dce56e8-e1732096569520.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Thomas Rowlandson’s early 19th-century depiction of people enjoying hot saloop, once a popular drink served on street corners in Britain (Photo by Penta Springs Limited/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="Thomas Rowlandson’s early 19th-century depiction of people enjoying hot saloop, once a popular drink served on street corners in Britain (Photo by Penta Springs Limited/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> The class aspect – whether a high street is being gentrified or is in slow decline – has long been a topic of debate. Ethically, too, there are many choices to make when shopping, because another argument that has raged forever concerns the treatment of producers. There was a huge boycott of slave-produced sugar from the late 18th century, while in the 1890s people were concerned about dressmakers being worked to the bone. We still have debates today about working conditions and modern slavery in terms of how our products are made. Many people have talked about the ‘death of the high street’. Should we be worried? I think we should bear in mind the idea of ‘use it or lose it’, but actually I believe there’s more hand-wringing than there needs to be. So long as we still have a community hub, it might not be such a bad thing if the high street constricts. I do think, though, that we would definitely lose something if our high streets disappeared entirely – and modern surveys reveal that 98 per cent of the population agrees with me. We can’t turn back the clock, but even though we’ve got fewer shops now, history shows us that all previous predictions about the disappearance of the high street have been confounded. Annie Gray is a historian, cook, broadcaster and writer specialising in the history of food and dining in Britain since around 1600. Her latest book is The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker: A History of the High Street (Profile Books, 2024) This article was first published in the December 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
A bodice-ripping revolution: how Victorian women cast off deadly fashion trends
From fire hazard petticoats to garments that caused fainting and even death by poison, some trends in 19th-century women’s fashion were risky business for those who wore them. How did things change? Matilda Nightingale explores stories of the women who fought back…
Global expansion and the Industrial Revolution brought about monumental change in the 19th century – not least when it came to making clothes. At the Great Exhibition in 1851, the latest machineries were showcased to huge crowds and manufacturers – from spinning jennies (invented in the previous century) to newly developed fully automatic power looms. The textile industry had leapt forward, allowing women's wardrobes to expand as a result. But among all the promise of progress, a poignant irony lingered. While production and increased choice took centre stage, the new garments being produced on these machines were becoming increasingly restrictive. Corsets and crinolines became a symbol of social status in Victorian England – but at the same time they caused health issues and even restricted how women lived their lives. Corsets had been in fashion for centuries, but they became more widespread in the Victorian era. By the late 19th-century, the hourglass corset style emerged and gained popularity. These certainly looked beautiful – with fabrics of cotton, satin, silk, and embroidery adding to the era’s aesthetic that drastically accentuated the wearer’s bust and hips – but their design also put pressure on both those areas, and the stomach. To create the desired silhouette, women were laced into a construction of whalebone (or reeds and steel alternatives), linen or silk. Eyelets and steel busks (rods that kept the garment upright) enabled the corsets to be drawn even tighter – down to 18 inches in circumference in some circumstances. How dangerous were corsets really? All of this put enormous strain on the body. There were cases when women were so restricted by their corsets that they fainted. In an article looking at the health effects of women’s clothes – published by the British Medical Journal in 1887 – the author notes: “A stout kitchen-maid, aged sixteen, recently under my care, complained of fainting in her household work. The fainting-fits did not recur when the stays were worn looser. This is one of many cases. Cases of women dying in the streets, or even on the stage, attributed to tight-lacing, are often recorded in the daily papers.” The dangers of corsets didn’t stop there. One cost-cutting method for manufacturers was to add hazardous substances to the fabrics used for corsets. These arsenic-laden dyes may have created vibrant and fashionable green shades, but they also posed significant health problems – from skin irritation to poisoning to even death (if you believe the post-mortem reports). Cage crinolines – with their distinctive bell-shape – were first patented in 1856 by RC Milliet in Paris and quickly gained popularity. They were made using steel hoops suspended on cotton tape, which helped enhance the size of the skirt and gave the illusion of a smaller waist size. Much like the corset, crinolines could be hazardous. They were heavy – making it difficult for women to move or walk through narrow spaces and down stairs. The 1862 edition of the satirical magazine Punch highlighted the ‘dangers’ women faced when wearing crinolines. Under the heading “fashion for the fireplace”, the journalist notes the “numerous cases” of crinoline-wearing women having “been burnt alive in consequence of their delightfully wide skirts catching fire”. On the podcast | The history of beauty: everything you wanted to know While corsets and crinolines were physically restrictive, the impact of wearing these items went even further. Women wearing such items were not able to perform ordinary activities in the same way that men could; exercise and outdoor activities were much more difficult for them, with the result that these became far more masculine spheres. Some feminist scholars have since highlighted how they have been used to control women. Valerie Steele's The Corset: A Cultural History (2001), for instance, makes the argument that corsets have historically worked as a means of disciplining women's bodies, emphasising their vulnerabilities and restricting them in a way that men are not. Rebellion From the 1850s, one woman attempted to change how people thought about women’s clothes, advocating for practicality and safety above anything else. Florence Wallace Pomeroy – or Viscountess Harberton – founded the Rational Dress Society in 1881. A keen cyclist, she thought that long Victorian skirts were heavy, impractical and hazardous for such outdoor activities. She championed dress reform and favoured knickerbockers worn under a shorter skirt. In 1883, the Rational Dress Society funded an exhibition in London. It displayed many practical and groundbreaking garments that denounced the conventional norms of Victorian fashion, and was reported as follows in the 22 May 1883 edition of the North Eastern Daily Gazette: “The exhibits include a costume for climbing (recommended to lady mountaineers); riding pants with an ingenious arrangement of small pleats at the back set up with elastic; a divided skirt, and polonaise flannel combination garment and silk chemise; a hat weighing one ounce; a complete walking costume, guaranteed "all wool," that weighs only three and a half pounds; a dress for a fancy ball Joan of Arc in full armour and lady's travelling dress that turns in five minutes into a stylish dinner costume and goes into a box ten inches long.” One year later, in the 1884 pamphlet ‘Reasons for Reform in Dress’, Harberton and her fellows campaigned against tightly-laced corsets, high-heeled shoes, and voluminous skirts. They continually advocated for more health-conscious and practical solutions – such as divided skirts for cycling. Read more | How dangerous were Victorian corsets? The dress reform movement was not without its critics. In 1898, Harberton was asked to leave a hotel because the landlady deemed her ‘rational dress’ attire – a skirt worn over voluminous trousers – inappropriate. According to the Liverpool Mercury, the landlady “thought it was best in the interests of the good order in her house that ladies wearing rational costumes should not be admitted into the public room, which would be crowded with men of all sorts, some of whom would make jokes at the expense of the lady as to the size of her ankle.” The case ultimately ended up in court, with the landlady charged with indictment (charges that were later dropped). A poem published in the United States – in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in 1858 – even went as far as comparing dress reformers to prostitutes. The American Amelia Bloomer – editor of the Lily, the first dedicated women’s rights newspaper – fought back in her own rhetoric: “Women should not dare to make a change in their costume till they have the consent of men – for they claim the right to prescribe for us in the fashion of our dress as well as in all things else.” Amelia Bloomer was an editor of the Lily, the first dedicated women’s rights newspaper. In 1851, she was inspired by Elizabeth Smith Miller’s adoption of the ‘Turkish trousers’ and advertised this new style in her newspaper. It became widely popular and was known as the ‘bloomers’ The dress reform movement from the 1850s through to the 1890s was a crucial fight for women’s rights, depicting how fashion could inspire social change. Women like Viscountess Harberton understood how garments like corsets and crinolines were not only physically restrictive, but also represented societal and cultural expectations women were imposed to follow. Further revolutions in women’s wear would come in the Edwardian era – which saw movements towards freedom for women in other spheres, including political representation – and the First World War, which broadened the possibilities for women further. Yet these reform built on the ground that had been laid by Victorian women who fought back against the restrictive (and sometimes, deadly) fashions. Matilda Nightingale is a public historian with twelve years of curatorial experience, focusing on Victorian culture, fashion, and social history
False rumps & rotten teeth: 400 years of bizarre beauty practices
Margarette Lincoln reveals the extraordinary lengths women have resorted to in the pursuit of beauty over the past 400 years
From false rumps and fake teeth to toxic skincare and insect-laden wigs, over the past 400 years, British women have resorted to extraordinary lengths in the pursuit of beauty. Speaking to Ellie Cawthorne, Margarette Lincoln delves into some of these past beauty practices, and considers their impact on the women who engaged in them. View Green Video on the source website