Saturday Morning Beard Fact

Facial hair as often been viewed as subversive. In the mid-nineteenth century the Manchester Courier announced: ‘Since the late insurrection and massacre at Naples it is unsafe for any man who wears his beards and mustachios to walk the streets of that capital, as the lazzaroni (beggars) regard those hairy ornaments of the face as sure tokens of a republican.’ In the 1960s, UK Foreign Office records reveal that members of the IRA were expected to be identified by their beards. It is also alleged that in the early 1960s the CIA hatched a plot to eliminate Fidel Castro’s beard by infusing his clothing with thallium salts, which make hair fall out.

Moustaches, Whiskers & Beards by Lucinda Hawksley, National Portrait Gallery