Guinea Pigs 
Barbara Taylor
In the 1790s revolutionaries on both sides of the Channel abandoned wigs and powder for hair worn au naturel. The English jacobin John Thelwall, tried for treason in 1794, cut his short in the Roman manner. A radical songster celebrated the look: ‘Each Brutus, each Cato, were none of them fops/But all to a man wore republican crops.’ In 1795 the style took on added significance when Pitt introduced a guinea tax on hair powder. Now every poor man who could not afford to be a ‘guinea pig’ looked like an enemy of the state. This could be hazardous: an army of spies and informers was crawling across Britain, bribing servants, stealing letters, listening in to conversations. Thelwall’s friend Tom Poole, a left-wing tanner and philanthropist living at Nether Stowey in Somerset, was denounced by local spies who took note of his short unpowdered locks. In Pittite Britain it took a brave man to expose his neck.
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Barbara Taylor teaches history at the University of East London. Women, Gender and Enlightenment (edited with Sarah Knott) will appear in paperback in May.
Other articles by this contributor:
Mother-Haters and Other Rebels · Heroine Chic
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