Barber and beard culture, United Kingdom
Jermyn Street and St James's, London
The London streets of old gentlemen's barbers and shaving shops, and the city where the Handlebar Club was founded in 1947.
The streets of St James's in central London, around Jermyn Street and St James's Street, have served men's grooming for more than two centuries. Truefitt and Hill, founded in 1805, and Geo. F. Trumper, founded in 1875, still offer hot-towel shaves and beard trims, alongside shirtmakers and perfumers. London is also where the Handlebar Club for moustache wearers began.
The old shops
Truefitt and Hill, on St James's Street, is often described as the oldest barbershop in the world, founded in 1805 by William Francis Truefitt. Geo. F. Trumper opened in Curzon Street, Mayfair, in 1875 and later added a shop off Jermyn Street. Both kept traditions of the straight-razor wet shave, badger brushes and their own shaving creams and colognes.
Moustaches and sideburns
Victorian London was a city of whiskers: sideburns, mutton chops and full beards were common from the 1850s, and soldiers had to wear moustaches from the 1860s until 1916. In 1947 a group of men with large moustaches, many from the Royal Air Force, founded the Handlebar Club in London. It still meets, and members need a moustache with graspable extremities.
Guides of Jermyn Street and St James's, London
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Sideburns: Mathew Brady or Levin Handy, clipped by ABX, Public domain, source
- Moustache: VAZHAR, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Beard: @nazanin, CC0, source
- Handlebar moustache: unattributed, Public domain, source