The Real Reason The British Military Demanded That Every Soldier Had A Mustache

If you were to watch British troops march across the globe in service of Queen and country in the Victorian age, something curious may have struck you. To a man, the soldiers all sported face fur. Yes, in the second half of the 19th century, members of the British military all wore a mustache.

What might come as something of a surprise is that the soldiers had to sport a hairy upper lip. That’s right: military regulations between 1860 and 1916 stated that recruits couldn’t shave their mustaches off, or they’d face stern consequences. And the punishment for walking about clean-shaven included jail.

Yes, even in the depth of the brutal conflict of World War I, soldiers had to keep their ’taches on. When a general from that era, Nevil Macready, looked into the subject, he was astonished to find out that one man had even faced a court martial for getting rid of the hairs on his upper lip. And this was shortly after the king himself had reminded them all to stay hairy.

If you’ve ever seen photographs in a book, or a film set in Victorian times, you might have wondered why everyone had facial hair. Did they all just like the look? And if it was just fashion, why did army bigwigs feel the need to make it an actual regulation? Well, there was a reason, but we’re going to need to take a trip through history to find it.

And it’s quite some history. From humble beginnings the image of a mustache-bearing man became synonymous with an empire as the British took over a large chunk of the world. But the word “mustache” only entered the English language in 1585, borrowed from a French description of Turks. Mind you, the facial decoration itself is older.

Yes, mustaches were so prevalent on the faces of knights in the Middle Ages that their armor had to be made specially to fit them in. If you go to Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, England, you can see the tomb of Edward, Prince of Wales. On it, his effigy features flowing whiskers issuing out of his chainmail.

Mind you, the mustache only really became the height of fashion when James I took the big chair in England. He sported a dinky mustache that was a contrast to the bushy beards that people had worn in the time of Queen Elizabeth. James’s son Charles I added a goatee, and the look took off, becoming the go-to for men’s faces in the 1600s.

The Puritans, led by Oliver Cromwell, weren’t as keen on the mustache, though. A clean-shaven look became more common, as Cromwell put an end to the more hirsute followers of Charles. One of those men, Arthur Capel, sported a quite delicious ’tache, as you can see, but it didn’t prevent him from losing his head.

But as the 17th century came to a close, beards lost popularity all across Europe. This was perhaps thanks to the Russian Tsar, Peter the Great, who put a tax on beards. So the Russians put their focus on mustaches – which remained free to sport – and they became ambitious hair sculptures in the ensuing centuries.

The fashion for bushy lip clothing gripped Europe for a whole century, until trendsetting poet Lord Byron entered the scene. For Byron, a massive facial caterpillar was out of the question – he preferred a slim, gently curved mustache. And he was the rock star of his day: everyone wanted to look like him.

Meanwhile, the fashion for mustaches in the military had its origins in the 18th-century Austro-Hungarian empire. There the wild Hussar cavalry liked to wear towering fur hats with sashes that flashed bright colors and, above all, mighty mustaches. They believed these frightened their adversaries. But the British weren’t impressed: at that time they were clean-shaven.

At least, the regular soldiers were. The wealthier officers, often members of the aristocracy, saw the mustache as a symbol of derring-do. So they began to sport the face fur as a sign that they were bold and brave, just like the hussars, favoring dash over the more mundane military virtues of drill and marching.

In Europe at least, the fashion spread from the aristocrats to the rank and file. By the 1840s the mustache actually distinguished recruits from civilians. The lip cover had become so closely associated with soldiering that it was actually frowned-upon for civilians to wear one in the first half of the 1800s.

But in the 1850s the distinction had started to be lost, as all men, regardless whether they served or not, started to wear full beards. And even when the military made mustaches compulsory, they weren’t the only guys to sport them. No, civilians of the late 19th century also walked around mustachioed.

Of course, today mustaches are not so common, outside of Movember. And the British Army has long stopped forcing people to wear them. In fact, it was only in 2019 that one branch of the U.K. military, the Royal Air Force, even allowed its fliers to have a neat beard.

As for the army, although mustaches are permitted – although not mandatory – beards are mostly forbidden. Some troops wear them when needed for undercover sorties, of course. And there are some ranks that are permitted a beard, including the gloriously named “Goat Major.” No, that’s not a particularly distinguished goat! It’s actually the man who looks after the regimental goat in the Royal Regiment of Wales.

If you’re a sailor in the British Navy, you’ll need permission from the captain of your ship for a beard. Once you’ve gotten the go-ahead, you’re given some time to let it grow. Then you have to present your face fungus for inspection. We do not know, though, what criteria commanding officers apply to the facial hair.

One military man who needed permission from his superior for a beard was Prince Harry. Yes, he had to ask the Queen to allow him to keep his facial hair when he got married. Not that royals can’t have beards! No, it’s just that he wanted to wear his army uniform for the ceremony, and usually that wouldn’t be allowed for a bearded man.

Of course, these days the British armed forces permit a person to wear a beard for religious reasons. Sikh men, for instance, are required by their religion always to have one. And America is no different either. In the U.S. military, a Sikh can be bearded if he serves.

You can even wear a beard in the army if you are a pagan. In 2019 Benjamin Hopper became the first soldier to be permitted to wear one on account of his belief in Norse gods. Normally, you can only have a neat mustache if you serve in the U.S. Army. That wasn’t always true, though.

No, back in Civil War times, extravagant face fungus was the norm for those who served in the armies of both sides. One general, Ambrose Burnside’s magnificent facial decoration was much admired. So much so that sideburns gained their name because of the distinctive way he wore his face fur.

One of the Confederate generals equally well endowed with facial hair was Richard Stoddert Ewell. He was not particularly renowned as a soldier, though, performing poorly at Gettysburg. Nor was anything named after him. His mustache wasn’t even his distinguishing feature. No, he was known as “Old Bald Head” for reasons obvious from his picture.

It wasn’t only Americans who loved their mustaches, of course. Famed Brit Lord Kitchener, best-known these days for his appearance in recruitment posters, was the very definition of the military man. And when he told the Brits that they were needed, they volunteered for “Kitchener Armies” in their droves, every last one of them wearing a mustache.

Of course, by the time of World War I, the British military had earned its spurs all around the globe. Typical of its leaders was Charles Napier, who led the conquest of Sind – modern-day Pakistan – in 1843 adorned with a quite fabulous mustache. Adventurer Richard Burton also enjoyed a fine example of facial hair, which led him into a duel with a young man who dared to ridicule it.

Fashions come and go, though, and after the end of the British Army’s stipulation, mustaches were less popular. Not unheard of, of course, because many famous men still enjoyed the addition of facial hair. Albert Einstein, for instance, is nearly always pictured with his trademark mustache, as was actor Clark Gable.

And you cannot talk about mustaches without mentioning Salvador Dalí. He had an adornment few could match, stiffly waxed into points. So solid was the work he’d done with it that when his body was dug up to allow DNA collection 28 years after he’d passed, the mustache was entirely undisturbed.

So mustaches do have a long and storied history. But why make them compulsory? Well, perhaps one reason was that they were associated with instilling fear in enemies. In the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, officers in the British Army considered their enemies’ face fur to be “appurtenances of terror.”

The French weren’t the only nation who favored the mustache. As British soldiers started to penetrate India, they met tribes who considered their lack of facial hair unmanly. Not the least of these was Mysorean leader Tipu Sultan. He mocked the Brits as not “fully male” and had them painted resembling girls.

Unsurprisingly, this idea that mustaches were a sign of manhood caught hold among the British. Soon, they too were joining what they named the “mustache movement.” By 1831 one of the British regiments, the 16th Lancers, was allowed to sport the facial hair. Mind you, it still took some time for true acceptance.

When James Abbot returned from service in India to the shores of England in 1843, there were mutterings about him. His mustaches attracted accusations of “going native” as the look was not yet common back home. Although to be fair, by all accounts he did now seem to resemble the Afghan nobleman who had inspired his new look.

Still, Lord Dalhousie, India’s Governor General was one of those who did not approve. He wrote that he did not care for “capillary decorations.” Indeed, when he penned a private letter to a friend, he noted that he “hate[d] to see an English soldier made to look like a Frenchman.”

But Dalhousie was increasingly drowned out, as sections of the U.K. press clamored for more mustaches, not fewer. Chief among the pro-mustache forces was Charles Dickens, who wrote a “beard manifesto” in 1853. The clamor had an effect: a year after the esteemed writer penned “Why Shave?” the Bombay – now Mumbai – section of the East India Company’s army was ordered to don facial hair.

By that time the U.K. had become embroiled in the Crimean War. And in the Crimean winter, soldiers needed beards to keep the cold out. Queen Victoria was taken with the valiant troops, noting in her journal in 1856 that they “were the picture of real fighting men... They all had their long beards.”

Yes, the Crimean War really kicked off a craze for all sorts of hair decorating the face. The sideburns, beards and mustaches of the troops were seen as symbolizing the bulldog spirit of Britain. Honoring the persistence and bravery of the boys in Russia, people back home aped their face fungus.

So mustaches had come to represent British values. So much so that Command No. 1695 of the British Army’s Regulations, issued in 1860, made them mandatory. It read, “The chin and the under lip will be shaved, but not the upper lip. Whiskers if worn will be of moderate length.”

And it’s no wonder, with every soldier wearing one, that mustaches soon came to represent the military. When figures from the British Army were seen in public or pictured in the newspapers, they all had a decorated top lip. Some of the generals of the imperial forces were well-known to the people, and all had face furniture.

It wasn’t just in the army that mustaches became popular. They were so common that the mustache cup, created to keep liquid away from facial hair, went on the market. And an 1861 scientific article claimed that Americans spent 36 million working days each year on shaving their mustaches into shape.

But all good things come to an end. By the late 1880s people had started to see face hair as a haven for bacteria and germs. Meanwhile, King Camp Gillette invented razor blades that were cheap and disposable, and it was now much easier to stay shaved. And a new conflict spelled the end of the military mustache.

That’s because putting on a gas mask was a tough task if you had a beard or whiskers. The mask just wouldn’t seal on anything but skin. Plus, the lack of water suitable for shaving made it tough to abide by the regulations. The final indignity for the military came as recruits got younger: they just couldn’t grow a proper mustache.

So in October 1916 the regulations were changed. The words “but not the upper lip” disappeared. Men were no longer forced to wear mustaches in the British Army. The man who ran the council that decided on the change was Macready, and the ink wasn’t dry on the orders before he visited the barber and rid himself of the facial hair that he hated.