When Gamble died, Edward Charlton, late from London, succeeded to the business and became in time Williamsburg’s leading barber and wigmaker. His livelihood—as perhaps he foresaw—was already doomed when he retired from business shortly before the Revolution: the wig fashion was on the way out in England and would soon be dropped in America. And in any case his former clientele would vanish from the streets of Williamsburg when the capital of Virginia was moved to Richmond in 1780. Charlton, Gamble, and Finnie were only three of some thirty men concerned with barbering and wigmaking in eighteenth-century Williamsburg. Once or twice between 1700 and 1780 the town apparently had to struggle along for short periods with but a single active practitioner of the craft. Usually there were at least two or three, and for a time in 1769 as many as eight plied their trade in the little capital city. About some of these thirty or more men we know nothing today except their names. About others quite a few facts survive in one place or another, chiefly the records of the York County Court and the columns of the _Virginia Gazette_. In addition, Edward Charlton’s account book of sales made and payments received during the years 1769 to about 1775 (there are some later entries) was found in the attic of a Williamsburg home only a few years ago. It helps immensely to round out our knowledge of his craft and clientele, and makes him almost inevitably the “representative” of his fellows in this account. [Illustration: _Two customers and seven workers in an eighteenth-century French barber-wigmaker’s shop. From left to right: a man (partly obscured in the shadow) prepares hair in the hackle; another sews weft to the peruke on the wig block in his lap; before the window a girl weaves strands of hair on the frame to make weft; a customer, standing, protects his face with a cloth as he dusts his head with powder; an apprentice shaves a second customer; in the background two workers heat curling irons in the fire; another apprentice dresses what appears to be a Ramillies wig on the stand._ DIDEROT] All of these Williamsburg barbers and perukemakers performed at least one, but not always all three, of the craft’s basic services: (1) making, selling, and dressing wigs and false hair pieces for men and women; (2) cutting and dressing men’s, women’s, and children’s natural hair; and (3) shaving men. Before we go into more detail on these aspects of the craft in colonial days, however, it may be well to peer briefly still further back into history. _BEARDS, WIGS, AND HISTORY_