As the suffrage movement gathered pace in the late 1850s and early 1860s, it truly seemed – for a glorious, if short-lived, time – that women would at last become enfranchised. The louder the women’s voices and the stronger their arguments for equality, the thicker became the beards of British men and the more intransigent their opposition. Beards, whiskers and bristling moustaches were a viscerally visual representation of the idea that this was one thing that women would never be able to do. From the end of the Crimean War until the end of the nineteenth century, huge facial hair would dominate British men’s appearance.
Source: Moustaches, Whiskers & Beards, Lucinda Hawksley