On May 1902 the Star newspaper published an article entitled ‘Danger Found in Beard’:
A movement against the beard has been started… For some years fashion has favoured the shaven face. Now come the doctors, declaring that the beard is a vehicle for the spread of disease germs, which may not only menace the health of the wearer, but also be transmitted to others; that the diaryman who wears a beard does so to the peril of his customers who drink the milk he contaminates; that doctors who wear beards report greater mortality among their patients than those who do not; that the man with a beard who enters a railway coach cannot come away without an addition of bacteria, which always infests such places.
Moustaches, Whiskers & Beards by Lucinda Hawksley, National Portrait Gallery