Shaving by steam [graphic]

"A complicated piece of machinery fills the centre of a room in a fashionable establishment; an open door (right) leads into a shop where, in the background, a pretty and extravagantly dressed woman (in the costume of c. 1828) presides at a counter; above the door is a model of the machine, 'Patent Shavograph!!!' Through a window (left) is seen the 'Ladies Hair Cutting Room': another machine operates on seated ladies, whose long hair is raised perpendicularly into the mechanism. Above the window is an erection of erect loops of hair, burlesquing the fashion. A dandy, waiting his turn, ogles the ladies through his monocle. Another, sitting on a chair (left), reads a newspaper, 'Herald'. The 'Shavograph' operates from right to left upon the customers who sit on a circular bench, each with his head held firm in a wedge cut from a millstone-like disk (B) at the back of his seat. The razor has just sliced off the nose of an officer who stands gesticulating wildly, putting his hand before splashing blood while one dismayed neighbour rises from his seat, and the other shouts 'Stop! Stop!' Four men on the left, waiting their turn for the razor, &c, to reach them, are unconscious of the accident. One is having his head pressed into position by a rod held by a fashionably dressed man (H) who is also working a lever. Below the design, in the border of the print: 'EXPLANATION. AAA a circular form on which the shavees sit. BBBBBB wheels that govern the position of the head. CC [cog-wheels] the machinery which moves the brush in every required direction. D a resevior [sic] of water [above the brush], boiling hot E a pipe [connecting F and D] filld with patent double compress'd shaving powder, through which the water is forced to forme a lather in the brush F. GGG [cog-wheels] the machinery which moves the razor H the Engineer with his directing rod. (Note) it is indispensible that the sitter should be firm & steady, it will be percived [sic] the neglecting this by looking after the Shop woman has cost one his nose, but he only pays the penalty of his own imprudence. "Accidents will occur in the best regulated families.' (This phrase is attributed to David Copperfield (1849) in the Oxford Dict, of Quotations, but Micawber was evidently quoting."--British Museum online catalogue