Andy_Ross
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 2, 2010
- Messages
- 67,746
If you look at early photos of British infantry from the second half of the 19th century, large bushy beards were quite common after the Crimean War. They disappeared again in the 1890s when official regulations were written regarding facial hair.
Kings Regulations from the 1890s "The chin and under-lip will be shaved, but not the upper lip. Whiskers, if worn, will be of moderate length"
In WW1 the regulations were relaxed because of the huge intake of new infantry.
During the first part of the 19th century the British infantry was normally clean-shaven, and moustaches were dismissed with the ultimate insult: they were too French. Cavalrymen, however, often adopted moustaches: this required the colonel of their regiment to write to the War Office for permission.
Napoleon’s Hussars wore moustaches in tribute to their Hungarian models, and the British cavalry then followed suit. The infantry, however, rejected them.
However, British soldiers were spending increasing amounts of time in India, where a moustache was seen as a sign of masculine virility and status — and the lack of them opened the British troops to mockery. There were cases of individual regiments instructing their soldiers to grow moustaches, and in 1854 the Army of the Bombay Presidency of the East India Company made moustaches compulsory.
In the Crimean War, Queen's Regulations were relaxed to allow soldiers to grow both beards and moustaches, to protect their faces from the bitter cold of the Russian winter.
After the war bears and moustaches became popular with the civilian population as it reflected the tough image of the war veterans, when they went out of fashion again the army changed regulations to get rid of beards.
