barbershop shaves ca. 1918

[mblakele]

I ran across "My Conversion to Self Shaving – Charles E Kennedy" in the April 1918 Gillette Blade. We tend to romanticize the old-school barbershop experience. Kennedy had a different perspective after long years of suffering with mediocre barber shaves.

My barber shop days were now Wednesdays and Saturdays, and from the more frequent shaving at the hands of careless youths who gazed at me through the mirror and talked sporting news instead of watching the grain of my beard. I had developed that pest of all pests, a number of ingrowing hairs.

As you might expect, the story ends with his conversion to a Gillette safety razor. Full text at http://books.google.com/books?id=ECuyAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA3-PA25#v=onepage&q&f=true - it is only a few pages long.

 

[Krona Kruiser]

Awesome read! I loving reading these old passages. Nostalgia and romanticism have a way of distorting the facts.

 

[celestino]

Thanks for posting the info.

 

[CharlieFoxtrot]

Awesome read! I loving reading these old passages. Nostalgia and romanticism have a way of distorting the facts.

+1 here. He must have had a high threshold for pain. I don't think it would of taken me 30 years before I learned to shave myself. Why didn't he just get a straight and shave at home?

 

[dpmtherrien]

Nice post, thanks.

 

[Face&Head]

Fantastic! A must read.

 

[Vlad]

Great read, thanks for finding this. Truly, the best years of shaving are upon us!

 

[pipskicks]

+1 here. He must have had a high threshold for pain. I don't think it would of taken me 30 years before I learned to shave myself. Why didn't he just get a straight and shave at home?

Guess it wasn't normal to shave yourself back then? I was thinking the same though...

 

[jman158]

Thanks for the post! I suppose even back then there were barbers that hacked away with the straight. It truly is an art.

 

[pipskicks]

+1 here. He must have had a high threshold for pain. I don't think it would of taken me 30 years before I learned to shave myself. Why didn't he just get a straight and shave at home?

Maybe because these guys don't have indoor plumbing then, the way to go was the barbershop where they could provide warm water?

 

[mblakele]

That was the reason for old-style scuttles, I think. Boil water on the stove, which might be wood-fired or coal-fired. Pour the hot water into the scuttle, and carry it upstairs or wherever you plan to shave. A traveling businessman might have trouble with that option, though, and it might be difficult in a boarding house. It would be time-consuming too, since you have to wait for the water to boil. Easy to see how most men might shave once or twice a week.

 

[Hrothgar]

nice thread and article. thanks.

 

[weizemanner]

Guess it wasn't normal to shave yourself back then? I was thinking the same though...

Almost all of the good razors were sold to barbers through barber-only distributors. There were other razors sold at hardware stores, but imagine going to the hardware store and shaving with the single edge blades you found there.

Any razor worth putting to your face back then cost something like $200-300 in today's cash. Naniwas and Nortons didn't exist, or at least weren't easily available. Diamond and CrOx pastes/sprays were hard to come by in high enough quality for razor sharpening if you weren't a barber. Having to store and use boiling scuttles which are delicate and strops which can't be bent or gotten wet, razors, pastes, mirrors were not as good as our modern ones and were expensive made with real silver, and the whole lot of soaps, creams, AS, PSO, etc...

By the time you were ready to shave yourself with a straight, you could have started your own barbershop. If you were rich enough to get all of the stuff to shave yourself, you had too much work to spend time learning how to shave yourself. That's why you generally see old pictures of people who got shaved by barbers, and people with beards.

The DE in the article meant no hones, no strops, no need for a mirror, no scuttle, just shave in the bath or the shower it's safe now, no pastes, and because of the thinner sharper blades less beard prep was necessary too.

 

[Deltaboy]

WOW no wonder most of my pre WW 1 Kin had Beards.

 

[Vlad]

Great OP, deserving of a bump; great comment by weizemanner.

Almost all of the good razors were sold to barbers through barber-only distributors. There were other razors sold at hardware stores, but imagine going to the hardware store and shaving with the single edge blades you found there.

Any razor worth putting to your face back then cost something like $200-300 in today's cash. Naniwas and Nortons didn't exist, or at least weren't easily available. Diamond and CrOx pastes/sprays were hard to come by in high enough quality for razor sharpening if you weren't a barber. Having to store and use boiling scuttles which are delicate and strops which can't be bent or gotten wet, razors, pastes, mirrors were not as good as our modern ones and were expensive made with real silver, and the whole lot of soaps, creams, AS, PSO, etc...

By the time you were ready to shave yourself with a straight, you could have started your own barbershop. If you were rich enough to get all of the stuff to shave yourself, you had too much work to spend time learning how to shave yourself. That's why you generally see old pictures of people who got shaved by barbers, and people with beards.

The DE in the article meant no hones, no strops, no need for a mirror, no scuttle, just shave in the bath or the shower it's safe now, no pastes, and because of the thinner sharper blades less beard prep was necessary too.

 

[beginish]

Cool article.

 

[Slash McCoy]

+1 here. He must have had a high threshold for pain. I don't think it would of taken me 30 years before I learned to shave myself. Why didn't he just get a straight and shave at home?

If he had, then his article would never have been published in "Gillette Blade".

 

[Niles]

Enjoyed that very much.