The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-01-03
PRICE OF HUMAN HAIR.
Quotations By the Lock, Head, Ounce
and Ton.
Gondon Mail.)

Gondon Mail)
All previous records in prices paid for
human hair have been broken by the
sum just realized for a lock from the
head of Edward ".
Eight guineas was the sum paid for
this scrap of hair, and this works out
ait over $1,000 for the whole hirsute
covering of that monarch's head.
AS d small portion of the beard Of
George III only fetched Ell 15c., it
would appear that relics of the victor
of Tewkesbury and Barnet are in
greater demand than those of the
Georgian monarch.
1t is recorded that in ages past q GER
tain Countess of Suffolk was forced II
sell her beautiful hair for $50 in order
to provide a repast wherewith to re-
gale some notable friends; also that an
Oxfordshire girl, being unable TO raise
$50 to provide herself with dowry,
came UP to London and sold her hair
at 93 an ounce, and returned to her
native village bearing $50 with her,
with which money she
bought her a husband"
1t is calculated that something like
five tons of hair are required annually
by London merchants in hair, and al
though samples arrive from various
parts of the world. the bulk is chiefly
! French or Italian grown.
AT Limoges the annual hair market
is one of the great events of the year.
Then the young peasant girls blessed
with lengthy locks flock thither for the
purpose of selling their wigs to thu
highest bidder, returning home again
with pomatum galore for the purpose
of cultivating the following year s
crop. On the last occasion the average
price was as high as 82sl kilogramme,
or about 1Ss. q pound. but, alas! this
is only just about one-half what it was
in the palmy days of the chignon.
Naturally the tresses of novices who
take the veil figure largely in the hair
harvest. Some little time ago a con-
vent is said to have sold over ton of
human hair for $4,000 or IS. Sd. per
ounce, while a single convent near
Tours recently dispatched as much as
eighty pounds of hair to a Partisan
hairdresser, which would be worth al
most as many sovereigns.
As the aforementioned weight repre-
sents the locks of 300 novices. which
gives each on an average four and a
half ounces, it is very obvious that the
demoiselles of Tours cannot rival the
professional hair cultivators of the
Haute Vienne, who can sometimes OBJ
tain 60 for their locks.
A recent interview with a native mer-
chant revealed the fact that ga los.
was an average price for an English s
girls head of hair.
Hair which is worth about shilling
an ounce when it is but eight inches
long increases in value as it increases
in length, until it rises to as much as
sos. per ounce, providing the original
owner is living. For the long hair
which as a rule grows on corpses
fetches but Us. an ounce.
At the international exhibition of
1862 there was shown a specimen of
iet-black hair measuring the eXtraor-
binary length of seventy-four inches.
George Catlin, one of the first authori-
ties on the North American Indian,
records that a chief of the Crow tribe
possesses hair ten feet seven inches
long.
In Melbourne recently, however, a
lecturer quoted the case of a woman
whose hair had grown eighteen feet.
and was "habitually used as a bed
quilt by it's owner on winter nights.
This gifted lady could make good
living in London by advertising the vir-
tues of one of the many hair restorers.