![Cut-off ponytail (close in)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Cut-off_ponytail_%28close_in%29.JPG)
Hair theft has been a recurrent problem in various parts of the world where human hair is in demand, either for commercial products such as
wig
A wig is a head or hair accessory made from human hair, animal hair, or synthetic fiber. The word wig is short for periwig, which makes its earliest known appearance in the English language in William Shakespeare's ''The Two Gentlemen of Verona' ...
s and
hairpieces, or for
sexual fetishes
Sexual fetishism or erotic fetishism is a sexual fixation on a nonliving object or nongenital body part. The object of interest is called the fetish; the person who has ''a fetish'' for that object is a fetishist. A sexual fetish may be regard ...
. As hair has a high commercial value – in the mid-19th century it was regarded as worth twice its weight in silver – opportunist thieves have targeted long-haired women, and less commonly men and children, with the aim of stealing their hair. Hair thieves have typically sought either to surreptitiously cut off hair in public places, or have mugged people and shorn their heads. The crime of hair theft has been widely reported in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australasia over the course of at least 300 years.
Hair as a commodity
After a thousand-year abeyance, wigs came back into fashion in western Europe from the 16th century onwards, boosted in particular by
King Louis XIV of France
, house = Bourbon
, father = Louis XIII
, mother = Anne of Austria
, birth_date =
, birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
, death_date =
, death_place = Palace of Versa ...
in the 17th and early 18th centuries. Hair came to be seen in Western countries as a means of publicly displaying the wearer's high status, and ability to engage in
conspicuous consumption
In sociology and in economics, the term conspicuous consumption describes and explains the consumer practice of buying and using goods of a higher quality, price, or in greater quantity than practical. In 1899, the sociologist Thorstein Veblen co ...
. A burgeoning trade in hair products included all the tools needed to maintain elaborate hairstyles – curling sticks, crimping irons, creams, soaps, oils, brushes, pins, and so on. The increasing ornateness of formal hairstyles required many to supplement their natural hair with extensions, or to use wigs instead, created by commercial wig-makers.
This created a highly profitable market in human hair, which was said in the mid-19th century to be worth twice its weight in silver. In 1851, of hair was imported from France to England, with a value of £3,621 (£ today).
''The Hairdressers' Journal'' reported in May 1863, that a hundred tons of hair a year was being sold in Parisian markets. Not all hair was created equal; female hair from northern Italy and Spain was especially prized for its glossiness, black colour, and curly texture.
It retailed at a price of 10–12
shilling
The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 12 pence o ...
s per ounce (worth about £43/€50/$67 in 2013 prices), rising to £1 per ounce (about £87/€101/$136) for very long hair. A "hair harvest" was held annually in the poorer villages of Italy, where local girls sold their hair to wig-makers. One observer of a hair harvesting event reported seeing "several girls, sheared, one after the other like sheep, and as many more standing ready for the shears, with their caps in their hands, and their long hair combed out, and hanging down to their waists."
Hair crime
![Optimismic wigs and gifts st paul minnesota](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Optimismic_wigs_and_gifts_st_paul_minnesota.jpg)
The value of human hair has meant that for several centuries, criminals have seen hair as worth stealing. As a result, women in a number of countries have found themselves at risk of being mugged, and their hair shorn off by hair thieves. As ''The Hairdressers' Journal'' put it in 1863, "Even in the present day, it has happened over and over again that a good crop of hair has been laid in wait for, and shorn from the trembling victim, who has been only too glad to get free with but the loss of her hair."
An American newspaper reported in 1869 that demand for hair of unusual colours and shades was behind an outbreak of hair theft in New York City, where "the tresses dangling behind the head" were "easy prey." A few months later, a letter to ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'' reported that hair thieves were at work in London too:
It was not only women who were at risk. It was said that during the 18th century, the demand for hair in England was so great that in some places, children were forbidden to venture out alone, lest they fall victim to hair thieves. ''The Jacksonville Weekly Sentinel'' reported on 3 September 1869 that on their arrival at San Francisco, "eighty arrived Chinamen had their handsome pig-tails cut off by hair thieves." The ''Evening Independent'' of
St Petersburg, Florida reported in September 1913:
Women in
Wellington
Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...
, New Zealand were targeted on the streets by an opportunist hair thief in 1914. According to a victim interviewed by the ''Grey River Argus'', "For the life of me I couldn't tell you exactly when or where I lost my hair. I didn't feel anything at all
..when opposite Te Aro House, my friend said: 'Oh, someone's cut your hair off!' I laughed and said it was nonsense, but I found it was only too true."
In more recent times, outbreaks of hair theft have been reported in several countries in south-east Asia, and in South America. A gang of Brazilian hair thieves consisting of "a fat man driving a small taxi, a boy about 14 and two women dressed as policewomen" were reported to have shorn the hair off 10 women in the municipality of
Mogi das Cruzes
Mogi das Cruzes ( or ) is a municipality in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, located within the metropolitan region of the state capital of the city of São Paulo. The population is 450,785 (2020 est.) in an area of 713 km2. It is located 40& ...
near
São Paulo
São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the GaWC a ...
in 1967. In 2007, women in
Myanmar
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...
(Burma) fell victim to hair thieves who stole their hair on the street or while commuting. As many Myanmar women have very long hair, reaching to their waists or knees but worn in a
ponytail
A ponytail is a hairstyle in which some, most or all of the hair on the head is pulled away from the face, gathered and secured at the back of the head with a hair tie, clip, or other similar accessory and allowed to hang freely from that point ...
, thieves found it easy to snip it off surreptitiously. The price of hair, at about $445 for , made it a profitable enterprise.
More outbreaks of hair theft occurred in Brazil in 2008, the victims including a woman in
Aracaju
Aracaju () is the capital of the state of Sergipe, Brazil, located in the northeastern part of the country on the coast, about 350 km (217 mi) north of Salvador. According to the 2020 estimate, the city has 664,908 inhabitants, which re ...
, whose -long hair had not been cut in 20 years.
In 2013, long-haired people in South Africa and Venezuela were also reported to be the target of gangs of hair thieves. A number of inhabitants of
Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demo ...
and
Durban
Durban ( ) ( zu, eThekwini, from meaning 'the port' also called zu, eZibubulungwini for the mountain range that terminates in the area), nicknamed ''Durbs'',Ishani ChettyCity nicknames in SA and across the worldArticle on ''news24.com'' from ...
had their
dreadlock
Dreadlocks, also known as locs or dreads, are rope-like strands of hair formed by locking or braiding hair.
Origins
Some of the earliest depictions of dreadlocks date back as far as 1600–1500 BCE in the Minoan Civilization, one of Europe ...
s stolen by "hair jackers", carrying out "cut and runs" using anything from knives to shards of broken glass. The thieves' motivation was the high price of hair extensions, resulting from a new method of hairstyling known as "crocheting", that can give recipients an instant set of dreadlocks, which has produced intense competition for supplies of human hair.
A Venezuelan gang of hair thieves known as the Piranhas were reported to be operating in broad daylight in shopping malls in the city of
Maracaibo
)
, motto = "''Muy noble y leal''"(English: "Very noble and loyal")
, anthem =
, image_map =
, mapsize =
, map_alt = ...
. According to news reports, gang members, several of them female, are known to surround their victims, force them to pull their hair back into a ponytail, and then cut it off. As many as three cases a day were being reported in August 2013. The President of Venezuela,
Nicolás Maduro
Nicolás Maduro Moros (; born 23 November 1962) is a Venezuelan politician and president of Venezuela since 2013, with his presidency under dispute since 2019.
Beginning his working life as a bus driver, Maduro rose to become a trade unio ...
, pledged to bring the Piranhas to justice: "We will capture these people, we will legislate to ban this crime. What sort of aggression is this? Our girls are sacred and we will apply the law with great force."
Sexual hair crime
Not all hair theft is motivated by commercial desire. Sexually motivated hair theft has also been reported – the work of
hair fetishists known in the 19th century as "plait cutters" or "hair despoilers". They were said to cut off the braids or tresses of girls attending public gatherings, and to take their prizes home to be touched, caressed, and admired. Hair fetishists also collected commercially available hair products, blurring the distinction between sexual fetishism, and a widespread 19th century consumer culture that endorsed "collecting, hoarding, displaying, desiring, fondling, possessing and continually looking."
In one case reported by ''The Hairdresser's Journal'', a well-to-do German "hair fancier" was caught after a campaign of hair stealing, and was found to have an "immense number of beautiful locks
f hair
F, or f, is the sixth Letter (alphabet), letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is English alphabet#Let ...
in his home. The locks were arranged in a cabinet which resembled a museum, "together with all particulars of the fair one's name, age, place of residence, and station in life
..in each placed packet containing a lock of ravished hair."
See also
*
Paraphilia
Paraphilia (previously known as sexual perversion and sexual deviation) is the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals. It has also been defined as sexual interest in anything ot ...
* ''
The Rape of the Lock
''The Rape of the Lock'' is a mock-heroic narrative poem written by Alexander Pope. One of the most commonly cited examples of high burlesque, it was first published anonymously in Lintot's ''Miscellaneous Poems and Translations'' (May 1712) ...
'' by Alexander Pope
References
{{reflist, 2
Crimes
Human hair