When long-curled perriwigs were in fashion, some fine heads of hair fetched extraordinary prices; and as it was impossible to find human hair in sufficient quantity for the purposes of trade, recourse was had to horse-hair. One of the companies projected just before the bursting of the South Sea bubble, was a company for dealing in human hair which promised unheard of profits. In “A Description of Trades,” published 1747, we are told, “that the business of hair-curlers and sellers is properly a part of perriwig making, but of late years they have prevailed so much as to become quite a separate trade, and really not an inconsiderable one neither, some of them being even styled _merchants_, who have the makers-up of hair in all shapes for their customers. There are also abundance of hawkers and pedlars who go up and down the country to buy up this commodity, who generally dispose of it to these hair-sellers.” The material for a perriwig being somewhat costly, and trickery not uncommon, the character of the barber was the best guarantee for the quality of the wig. The reader has probably heard how Tom Brown, meeting a parson at Nando’s Coffee-house, recommended him to the honestest perriwig-maker in Christendom--the barber at Chelmsford, with his nineteen daughters, all bred up to his own trade, and being kept unmarried, their hair grew so prodigiously fast that it gave them full employment throughout the year; the barber cropped them every four years, and never lacked a plentiful harvest--so that Chelmsford was as famous for its wigs, as Romford for calves. The girls were all virtuous, which made the hair the stronger, and there was not finer hair to be had in the kingdom. On this, the parson who was in want of a new wig, and had been cheated in his last purchase, set out for Chelmsford, and returned thoroughly satisfied--that he had been sent on a fool’s errand. The value of long fair hair, when wigs were in fashion, is amusingly shown in Walpole’s anecdote of the Countess of Suffolk, married to Mr. Howard. “Such was their poverty, that having invited some friends to dinner, and being disappointed of a small remittance, she was forced to sell her hair to furnish the entertainment, and for which she obtained twenty pounds.” Middle Row, Holborn, was chiefly inhabited by perriwig-makers, and the French barbers congregated in Soho.