The Moustache Was Once an Order in the British Army

On Sunday, November 1, a great many men will look in the mirror and leave the top lip alone. Movember, the month of growing a moustache for men's health, puts its money into prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and mental health and suicide prevention. The foundation behind it says the moustaches have now funded more than AUD 1.8 billion of work.

It is a modern charity built on a very old piece of grooming. The moustache has been a fashion, a uniform, a joke and a protest, sometimes all in the same century. For one stretch of British history it was also the law, at least if you wore the uniform.

A very old face

Facial hair is older than any of the words for it. Wikipedia's history of the moustache traces the earliest depictions to Old Kingdom Egypt, and the statue of Prince Rahotep, made around 2550 BC, shows one clearly. The English word came much later. Historic UK notes that moustache first turned up in English in 1585, in a translation of a French travel book.

For much of the following centuries the British upper lip was bare. By the time of the Napoleonic Wars, Debrett's points out, Britain's great commanders, Nelson and Wellington among them, were clean-shaven, and a moustache suggested an outlaw or a pirate more than an officer.

How the Army changed its mind

India changed that. In Indian society the moustache signaled status and manhood, and British soldiers serving there took up the style. According to Historic UK's account, the 16th Lancers were permitted moustaches in 1831, and in 1854 Lord Frederick FitzClarence ordered them for the European troops of the East India Company's Bombay army.

The Crimean War did the rest. When it began in October 1853, troops in the field were allowed to stop shaving against the cold. They came home bearded and moustached, and the returning soldiers made facial hair a mark of courage. Debrett's dates the change in fashion to the homecomings of 1856.

By 1860 it was in the rules. Army regulations, as both Historic UK and Debrett's record, required a soldier to shave his chin and lower lip but not his upper lip. Wikipedia puts it more plainly. Until 1916, no enlisted soldier was allowed to shave his upper lip. A clean-shaven private was, in effect, out of uniform.

Civilian Britain followed the soldiers. Historic UK credits the 1860s with the invention of the moustache cup, made to keep a gentleman's moustache dry while he drank his tea. Wikipedia places the peak of Western moustache fashion in the 1880s and 1890s. Barbers did well out of it, as our history of the barber pole and our visit to Truefitt and Hill on St James's both show.

The rule that the trenches ended

Civilian fashion had moved on by the end of the century, and clean shaving came back, partly from a belief that facial hair harbored germs. The Army held on until the First World War made the rule impossible. Gas masks needed a tight seal against bare skin, and water for shaving was scarce at the front. Historic UK also points out that many of the boys under 18 who served were too young to grow much of anything.

In October 1916 the order went. General Sir Nevil Macready signed the change, and Historic UK reports that he went to a barber that same evening to set the example. Sources disagree on the exact day, with some giving October 6 and others October 8.

Here is the rule's life in one timeline, drawn from the dates above. The arithmetic is Quiet Menace's own.

From the 1860 regulation to the 1916 order is 56 years. A recruit of 18 in 1860 would have been 74 by the time he was allowed to shave.

After the order

Freed from regulation, the moustache became a matter of taste again, and taste kept changing. In the 1930s, Debrett's notes, film stars like Clark Gable and Errol Flynn wore thin pencil moustaches. The Second World War brought back the waxed handlebar, a favorite of fighter pilots. In 1967 the Beatles turned up moustached on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, after Paul McCartney grew one to hide a scar, and young men followed. In the early 1970s the Oakland A's held a moustache contest, and the 1972 World Series was billed as the hairs against the squares. Debrett's calls the 1970s and 1980s a golden period, and Wikipedia ties the broad chevron to the same years. By the 1990s the clean upper lip was back.

The styles still go by the old names. The handlebar curls up at the ends. The walrus hangs over the lip. The chevron is thick and covers the top lip. The pencil is a thin line just above it. The horseshoe, sometimes called the biker, runs down past the corners of the mouth. Competitions keep the rest alive, and the World Beard and Moustache Championships of 2007 judged six moustache categories, from the Dalí to the English.

Growing one for November

If you are joining in, start clean and be patient. The first two weeks are the hard part, and most moustaches look like a mistake before they look like a decision. Trim along the lip line with small scissors and a fine comb rather than a clipper, and leave the shape alone until there is enough to shape. Wax only makes sense once the ends are long enough to hold a curl. If the beard joins in, our beard care guide covers oil and trimming, and our guide to safety razor wet shaving is the way to keep everything around it sharp.

For more, see grooming essentials, menswear history and the Quiet Menace grooming section. Movember's own site explains where the money goes.

For fifty-six years the British Army made the moustache mandatory. These days it takes a good cause and thirty days of nerve, which is a better reason to grow one.