The Wigmaker
in Eighteenth Century Williamsburg

Richard Gamble, barber and perukemakerof Williamsburg in the middle yearsof the eighteenth century, appears to haveremained a bachelor all his life. Other thanthis he seems to have been no more improvidentthan the average craftsman of his time. That is to say,he came—or was brought—into court with startling frequencyin an endless round of suits to collect unpaid debts.

He was in good company. Going to the law was part ofthe colonial way of life in Virginia, and everyone from atown’s least citizen to the colony’s greatest planter engagedin it. In fact, suing and being sued had some of the aspectsof a game: the plaintiff in one case might shortly be defendantin another and witness in a third—and keep right ondoing business with the other parties in all three cases!

Court records abound with evidence that Williamsburgwigmakers were just as impecunious and as contentious asany of the rest. Mr. Gamble, however, had an additionaldistinction—of a sort. While most debt cases reachedsettlement out of court or ended in judgment for the plaintiff,Gamble actually went to jail for debt. In the VirginiaGazette of May 8, 1752, appeared this announcement to thepublic:

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BEING prevented carrying on my Business as usualby an Arrest for a Debt not justly my own. I herebygive Notice, That I have taken into Partnership withme Edward Charlton, late from London, who will carryon the Business, at my Shop, next Door to the RaleighTavern, in Williamsburg. Gentlemen, who please tofavour us with their Orders for Wigs, &c. may dependon being well and expeditiously serv’d and oblige

Their very humble ServantRichard Gamble.

N. B. All Persons who are indebted to me, are desiredto pay the same to Mr. Alexander Finnie, who isproperly impowered for that Perpose.

Alexander Finnie, co-defendant with Gamble in at leastone large suit for debt—perhaps the one that led to Gamble’s“Arrest”—was himself a wigmaker who had abandoned thecraft for the arduous pleasures of innkeeping. He wasproprietor at the time of the Raleigh Tavern, Williamsburg’slargest and most famous hostelry.

When Gamble died, Edward Charlton, late from London,succeeded to the business and became in time Williamsburg’sleading barber and wigmaker. His livelihood—as perhapshe foresaw—was already doomed when he retired frombusiness shortly before the Revolution: the wig fashion wason the way out in England and would soon be dropped inAmerica. And in any case his former clientele would vanishfrom the streets of Williamsburg when the capital of Virginiawas moved to Richmond in 1780.

Charlton, Gamble, and Finnie were only three of some

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