Circassian Hair Care System, 1875

These advertisements from Curran & Co.'s Farmer's and Mechanic's Almanac of 1875 demonstrate the great appeal of the Circassian Beauty - and her extraordinary hair - to the American public, including men.

The term Circassian was used in the broadest sense to refer to all the various peoples of the North Caucasus region of Turkey. It was also used more specifically with regards to two peoples who together were known as Kir-Kas, or to the Adyghe people. Between 1764 and 1865 they were engaged in a war with the Russians, at the end of which many Circassians went to Russia, the Balkans, various parts of the Middle East and to Consantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

Circassian women - many of whom were either in the Ottoman Sultan's harem, or in the Constantinople slave market just after the Russian-Circassian War - were noted for their great beauty and their luxuriant hair. P.T. Barnum, who had heard of them, featured one in his American Museum in 1865. After that date, the Circassian Beauty became a popular attraction at circus sideshows and dime museums in America and in England. However, many of these women were not Circassian - not even Turkish or Middle Eastern. There is a great post at The Vapour Trail about the many non-Turkish, so-called Circassian, Beauties in English freak shows of the 1880s - supposedly rescued from white slavery, these ladies were often Americans who enhanced their hair with beer to achieve a "mossy" look.

In addition to the beer, they might have wanted to check out these delightful products - which brought joy not only to sideshow voluptuaries, but which were "warmly commended by chemists, physicians, clergymen, and the fashionable world." The clergymen interested me particularly, and I was sorry that none of the testimonials concerned ministerial heads. Who knew that the Victorian clergy longed for hair that was "more lustrous, elastic and free from impurities than ever before."

There were two products that one had to purchase in order to achieve optimal results, as had the ladies in the ads, who are gazing respectively at a birdcage (symbolic of her possible former slavery?) and into a mirror (symbolic of plain old vanity). Circassian Hair Restorer was "a reproductive agent, not a hair-destroying dye" and contained no alkalies, no corrosives and no nitrate of silver (all of which are implied to have been in other, less efficacious, products). It restored the youth of the hair (including the color) by invigorating the roots. And it prevented baldness by "imparting tenacity" to the roots.

The Circassian Hair Oil was to be brushed into the hair morning and evening to "vivify the inert scalp" - it would then nourish, strengthen, cleanse, gloss, increase volume, and make the hair soft, pliable, elastic and free from split ends. But wait - there's more! The oil would also cure the neuralgia and headaches that were caused by unhappy scalp pores clogged by greasy hair oils. Though since it is the nature of oil to be greasy, it is not made clear how the Circassian Oil would achieve all of this.

The Restorative cost a dollar a bottle, and the Hair Oil was 35 cents for a small, $1.40 for a large, bottle. This was a lot of money in 1875, but the customers quoted in these ads seemed very pleased (as they always do!). In Shauck, Ohio, the agents for Circassian Hair Oil, Messrs J.J. Cover & Co told the inspiring story of "an old gentleman, over sixty years of age" who

...bought four bottles of us two years ago, and was at the time nearly bald, and what remained was fast coming out. The HAIR OIL prevented his hair from further falling off, and caused a luxuriant growth of fine, soft black hair, which hangs in clusters (as he lets it grow long) over his snow-white side whiskers and beard, presenting a singular appearance; so much so that he is frequently asked if he does not wear a wig. The writer saw and conversed with him; and it is for this instance that we are obliged to order more.

Which begs the question of why the old gentleman did not also use the Circassian Hair Restorative, in order to "renew the youth" of his side whiskers and beard; and, if he was using it, why it did not seem to be working.

[Note: I apologize for the small images, but it was the best that Blogger and I seemed to be able to do!]