The Three Hats occurs amongst the trades tokens of the seventeenth century. There is one of the Three Hats and Nag’s Head in Southwark. In the seventeenth century the sign of the Three Hats at Leeuwarden, in Friesland, was accompanied by the following stanza:—
“Dit is in de drie Hoeden
Om ’t hoofd te behoeden,
Voor wind en koud.
Tromp was stout,
Voor der staten kroon,
Hier maakt men hoeden schoon.”[580]
The Locks of Hair was the very appropriate sign of John Allen, a hairdresser on London Bridge in the last century, who sold “all sorts of hair, Curled or Uncurled; Bags, Roses, Cauls, Ribbons, Weaving Silk, Sewing Cards, and Blocks. With all Goods made use of by Peruke makers, at the lowest prices.”[581] The locks of hair were represented curled and tied. This sign appears to have been not unusual with the hairdressers of a former age. In 1649, there was one in St Dunstan’s-in-the-East, who had the Lock and Shears; which are represented on his trades token by a lock of hair between a pair of shears, intimating that the “unlovely lovelocks” were curtailed by him. What he would require the tokens for in his profession (they were used as farthings) it is difficult to guess, as apparently no such small change was needed. This sign was in accordance with the spirit of the times; short hair was the unmistakable mark of the godly puritan, just as the straggling love-lock hanging over the shoulder denoted the cavalier. For this reason, Decker advises the young cavalier Gull:—
“Thy hair, whose length before the rigorous edge of any puritanical pair of scissors should shorten the breadth of a finger, let the three house-wifely spinsters of Destiny rather curtail the thread of thy life. Oh, no! long hair is the only net that women spread abroad to entrap man in, and why should not men be as far above women in that comodity as they go far beyond them in others.”[582]
The Periwig was another common hairdresser’s sign. Even this had to submit to the favourite blue colour, for amongst the Banks bills there is one of John Thompson, in Brewer Street, Golden Square, who lived at the Blue Peruke and Star. The star evidently was the original sign, to which the wig had been added on account of the profession of the occupant of the house.
The White Peruke, in Maiden Lane, was the sign of the barber, at whose lodgings Voltaire lived when on a visit to London; some of his letters to Swift are dated from that place. A white periwig was a highly fashionable object:—“Now, I think he looks very humorous and agreeable; I vow, in a white periwig he might do mischief; could he but talk and take snuff, there’s never a fop in town wou’d go beyond him.”—Cibber’s Double Gallant, 1707. So Shadwell, in “The Humorist,” 1671, describes Brisk, one of the dramatis personæ, as “a fellow that never wore a noble and polite garniture, or a white periwig.” Well might the barbers give the peruke the honour of this signboard, for the profits on that article must have been enormous. In Charles II.’s time, for instance, a fine peruke cost as much as £50; and hence the great respect Cibber paid to the one he wore in the character of Sir Fopling Flutter, which was brought on the stage in a sedan, and put on before the public. As the glory of Miltiades prevented Epaminondas from sleeping, so the beauty of this periwig disturbed the slumbers of Mr (afterwards Colonel) Brett, who in the end bought it from Cibber.[583] The thieves as well as the beaux knew the value of those wigs, and practised all manner of tricks to obtain them. Sometimes a boy, carried in a basket on the shoulders of a man, would snatch the “curly honour” off the head of the unsuspecting beau;[584] at other times they would cut holes in the leather backs of the coaches,[585] whilst the highwaymen were sure to include the periwig with the rest of the booty captured on the road. Though this article is now shorn of its honours, there is still a publican at Great Redisham, Suffolk, who carries on his trade under the sign of the Wig.
The French have a sign quite as absurd as our Blue Peruke—viz., The Golden Beard, (la barbe d’or,) which is carved in stone in the Rue des Bourdonnais, Paris, and also in the Marché aux Herbes, Amiens: both these signs date from the eighteenth century, but their origin is much older, as appears from the following:—
“The Duke of Lorraine, after the Battle of Nancy, wherein he killed Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, went in procession to visit the body, clothed in deep mourning, with a golden beard fixed on, that reached down to his waist, (after the manner of the old heroes that were knighted for their prowess, who, on a signal victory over an enemy, were honoured with such a beard.)”—Richardsoniana, London, 1776, p. 47.
The Anodyne Necklace was as notorious in the eighteenth century, as Holloway’s Pills and Rowland’s Macassar Oil are in our day. Advertisements concerning it were continually appearing in the papers:—
“THE Anodyne Necklace for children’s teeth, women in labour, and distempers of the head; price 5s. Recommended by Dr Chamberlain. Sold up one pair of stairs at the sign of the Anodyne Necklace, without Temple Bar; at the Spanish Lady at the Royal Exchange, next Threadneedle Street; at the Indian Handkerchief, facing the New Stairs in Wapping,” &c.[586]