A look back at Victorian hairdressers in Watford

Amongst the hairdressers in the town was Mr WW Carter, whose ‘better class establishment’ at 11 Queens Road was two doors away from the Watford School of Science, Art and Commerce/Public Library (a Victorian Gothic-style building in which I took several exams, demolished for Sainsbury’s new shop, before that too was demolished). During his three years at No. 11 and before then in the High Street, Mr Carter had personally superintended his ‘able’ assistants, whose skills covered every branch of the trade; ladies’ hairdressing being a special feature.

The Watford School of Science, Art and Commerce, Queens Road, 1891 (Image: Reader submitted)

He provided gentlemen’s hair cutting and shaving services in his ‘comfortably furnished’ rooms and would cut hair at ‘gentlemen’s schools’ and families’ residences. He sold razors, leather razor strops for sharpening razors and shaving brushes. Mr Carter also ran another business on the premises, selling stationery, writing materials, fancy goods, perfumery, combs, brushes and toiletries of a ‘superior kind selected to meet the demands of the nobility, gentry and public’ from whom he received a substantial patronage.

Another hairdresser was Mr Edward Stark of 137 High Street, on the southern junction of the High Street with Carey Place, where his business had been established since 1883. In his brightly-decorated shaving and hair-cutting rooms, there were comfortable seats and daily newspapers and periodicals for his customers’ ‘amusement’. He claimed that his shaving, hair cutting and shampooing was ‘a positive pleasure at his hands’ rather than ‘an ordeal’.

Edward Stark's shop, 137 High Street, 1891 (Image: Reader submitted)

Mr Stark was an ‘ornamental hair’ manufacturer and supplier to ‘fashionable circles’ in Watford. Wigs, ‘scalps’ plaits, tresses, ‘fronts’ and ‘perukes’ (traditional judges’ periwigs) made on ‘the newest principles and faithfully copied from nature’ were on display in his shop. In addition, he sold scents and extracts, hair washes and restorers, razors and strops, shaving brushes, soaps and imported ‘restorative’ Eau-de-Cologne. He seemed a genial character, happy to convey his hairdressing knowledge to ladies’ maids and gentlemen’s attendants.

Like Mr Carter, he ran a dual business. He sold leather Gladstone bags, handbags, dressing and writing cases and purses, and manufactured and sold every type of umbrella, from gentlemen’s umbrellas to ladies’ fancy sunshades, many made on site. In an ‘emergency’, he would recover old umbrellas in 45 minutes. He also manufactured and sold plain walking sticks which cost from 6d (3p) as well as ‘richly-mounted and engraved’ sticks.

Advertisement for Arthur Spicer, 1895 (Image: Reader submitted)

Mr Arthur Spicer was another hairdresser who plied his trade nearby, at 132 High Street. He was amongst the older established hairdressers in Watford. His entry in the publication is amusing to modern eyes: ‘Most people who are fortunate enough to have hirsute appendages will agree that occasional pruning is not only necessary for their comfort, but also conducive to the vigorous growth and continued health of the hair.’ He continued: ‘Since it is essential to keep our capillary organs in a proper condition, it is important to select a thoroughly reliable hairdresser’. Mr Spicer, of course.

He employed ‘competent’ assistants who paid particular attention to ladies and children. He also arranged for his staff to visit local schools and ‘waited on’ gentlemen at their own residences daily if required. His rooms were fitted with ‘every modern convenience’ for shampooing, hairdressing, shaving, etc. He kept a well-stocked shop, comprising the ‘best classes’ of perfumery and toilet preparations, brushes, combs, razors and hand mirrors and cigars!

The Watford hairdresser I remember was Mr Francis Puttock of 39 Queens Road. Walking from the High Street, his shop was two-thirds down on the right before the Derby Road intersection, between a needlework shop and a dentist. That entire section of Queens Road was demolished some years ago and is now modern shops.

As a child, I dreaded the six-weekly visits to Mr Puttock. I remember him as slim and upright, with a strict no-nonsense approach. Dreaming of long hair, I felt it an outrage that I had to sit and watch it being unceremoniously chopped; always to the same style. Eventually, in my mid-teens, I stropped (only in a ‘tonsorial’ context!) and was finally allowed to grow my hair. I stopped going to Mr Puttock, but have since remained wary of hairdressers! I wonder how I might have fared as a child at Mr Stark’s in 1891.

• Lesley Dunlop is the daughter of the late Ted Parrish, a well-known local historian and documentary filmmaker. He wrote 96 nostalgic articles for the ‘Evening Post-Echo’ in 1982-83 which have since been published in ‘Echoes of Old Watford, Bushey & Oxhey’, available at www.pastdayspublishing.com and Bushey Museum. Lesley is currently working on ‘Two Lives, Two World Wars’, a companion volume that explores her father’s and grandfather’s lives and war experiences, in which Watford, Bushey and Oxhey’s history will take to the stage once again.