The Phantom Barber

For a few months in 1942 the city of Pascagoula, Mississippi faced a new fear. As World War II raged on for its third year; what kept these folks up at night was not the threat of bombs but the possibility of losing their hair... to the Phantom Barber. 

Hair for cash? Hair for religion? Hair for pleasure? Why was a man sneaking into people's homes at night and cutting off locks of hair? 

Transcript

Here in Michigan, the first confirmed cases of COVID-19 were announced on March 10th of 2020. Fun fact… I haven’t had a haircut since a few days before then. Let me clarify, I haven’t had a professional haircut since a few days before then. 

Once a week, for nearly two years, I’ve shaved my head. I figure that I’ve saved my family nearly $600 over that time and honestly, it’s kind of nice being in charge of my own hair. It’s been a nice outlet for embracing my midlife crisis. 

“Nice mohawk Mr. Olli.”

“Thank you, random sixth grader. I did it myself.”

Hairstyles, beards, eyebrows… they can all serve as ways to express oneself. In some cultures and religions hair serves an even greater, more noble purpose.   

In Sikhism, a religion founded in the Punjab region of South Asia, believers follow The Kesh, one of the physical articles of faith. Both as a sign of dedication to the religion and belief in God's will, Sikhs leave their hair unshorn to represent the perfection of God's creation. Hair is a gift from God so why would you cut your hair, rejecting the gift? Sikhs never cut their hair, and they keep their hair under wraps with a turban. 

According to the Jewish Kabbalah, your hair contains vast amounts of energy, and can also demonstrate one's character. In the ancient text of the Zohar, it says, "...from the hair of a person you can know who he is." Male Hasidic Jews wear long sideburns, called peyos. Some Jewish men grow these sideburns longer than others, and some curl them or tuck them behind their ears. The Torah has 613 commandments, and only one of them applies to facial hair. Today, the absence or presence of facial hair is still a fervently debated issue among Jewish biblical scholars.

Rastafari are prohibited from cutting or brushing their hair. This is based on a very strict interpretation of Leviticus 21:5: "They shall not make baldness upon their head, neither shall they shave off the corner of their beard, nor make any cuttings in their flesh." So a Rastafarian never shaves or cuts their hair. Dreadlocks have also become a symbol of rebellion against authority, representing the mane belonging to the Lion of Judah. In Rastafarian philosophy, dreadlocks should form naturally, without brushing it or shaping it with scissors. 

In the Koran, nothing specifically states whether Muslim men must wear beards. Many Muslim men do so in accordance with words spoken by the Prophet Muhammad. Clerics, even now, are still trying to decide if it should be mandatory. 

In the bible, Samson let Delilah cut his hair, this act left him completely weakened. While all of these cultures and beliefs may differ in some ways, the fundamental reason seems to be similar.  

And in the Amish religion, an unmarried man is to be clean-shaven but once you tie the knot, it’s facial hair for life. 

For women, modesty is something that comes up in most religions. A woman’s hair is something that is looked upon as intimate. Because of this, it should only be shown to a spouse or family.

In the Lutheran religion, at my home growing up, my hair choices were not my own. My mother would have denied it, but she was still brushing and blow drying my hair well into my teens. Many of my school pictures barely contained my puffy, pompadour. My senior picture is the only one that is not within the frame. No joke. I’ll share it sometime on Curator135.com. 

I’ve always had hair ‘issues’. Colics, weird parts and now I’m thinning at a rapid rate. That all led me to my fauxhawk and beard that I sport now. Letting my freak flag fly as they say. I hope my mother isn’t irritated with me as she looks down from time to time. 

Speaking of my mom. February 2nd marks two years since her passing. I sure do miss her. 

For those of us who are allowed, receiving a haircut feels good. A fresh, new you for a bit. Hiding the grays, taming the mane, going short for summer. You can get a trim or shock your coworkers with a dramatic change. Shave it, dye it, donate it. There are so many things you can do with hair. 

But what happens when you get a haircut you weren’t expecting? A sibling takes the scissors to you while you aren’t looking… you shave too much of your eyebrow off… You're my daughter and you lean too close to a lit birthday cake or get your brother’s battery operated race car caught in your hair (both of which happened, poor Kaitlyn).  

Or… what if while you sleep, a stranger comes into your home and lops off some of your luscious locks. 

Episode 35 - The Phantom Barber

In the mid-1800’s the theft of hair was becoming more and more prominent. Considered to be worth its weight in silver, human hair was in high demand for things like wigs and hairpieces. Over the last 300 years, in places like America, Europe, Asia and Australia, there are hundreds of stories involving hair thieves, cutting off locks of hair while their victims sleep, or mugging people for their hair or, perhaps most brazenly, performing cut and runs in public places. 

In the 18th century, hair came to be seen as a status symbol in Western countries. Nothing says wealth more than a giant head of someone else's hair. It’s frustrating to know that I could have made some money with my giant head back in 1993, but that’s okay. As time went on, hair products and accessories like curling sticks, crimping irons, creams, soaps, oils, and brushes became more and more profitable.. 

In 1851, over 10,000 pounds of hair was imported from France to England with an estimated value of $4,500 or roughly $160,000 today. According to “The Hairdressers' Journal”, by 1863, a hundred tons of hair a year was being sold in Parisian markets. 

Because shiny, black, curly hair was in such high demand, females in the northern parts of Italy and Spain were quite popular. In the poorer villages of Italy,  annual “hair harvests” were held. Local girls would line up to have their heads sheared like sheep, all in the name of making a few bucks from wig-makers. 

The value of human hair brought with it criminals looking to make some extra money. Reading from The Hairdressers' Journal again, "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."

In 1869 the city of New York saw an uptick in demand for unusual hair shades. The New York Times wrote an article stating that "the tresses dangling behind the head are easy prey." A few months later, someone wrote a letter to The Times reporting that hair thieves were hard at work in London too, “infesting the thoroughfares and omnibuses of London and stealing hair. A young friend of ours has just had the whole of her hair cut off in broad daylight in Westbourne Grove... It is to be hoped that the police will really endeavor to put a stop to this serious nuisance, otherwise ladies will be afraid to walk in the streets.”

On October 3rd of 1897, The Chicago Chronicle ran a story titled “Hair thief caught. Jack the Clipper caught by schoolboys after a chase.” 

“Angered at the sight of a man attempting to clip the hair of a schoolgirl companion, a crowd of fifty boys of the Carter school, Sixty-first street and Wabash avenue, led by Paul Brant of 5812 Wabash avenue, chased the long-sought-for “Jack the Clipper” and captured him Friday afternoon. 

The man was only caught after a long run and after he had sprained his ankle. He was set upon by the boys, who gave him a good drubbing. He was arrested and taken to the Hyde Park police station and yesterday was fined $100 and sent to the bridewell to serve out his time. He gave the name of Frank Wood.” 

A follow up article from a Delaware newspaper stated that, “The city of Chicago contains many half grown girls with suits of beautiful hair. Strolling carelessly along the sidewalks, sometimes after the street lamps were lit, but oftener coming from school, they heard a quick step behind them, felt a slight tug, the click of a sharp shears came to their ears and the beautiful braids of glossy black or velvet brown or shining gold were in the hands of the despoiler.”

In 1899, Chicago had a new Jack the Clipper that picked up where the last one left off. Admitting to hundreds of similar acts, he was only caught after removing some hair from the head of Erna Fransky. Miss Franksy put up a fight and foiled the follicle freaks' attempt to flee. 

Calling these criminals the clever, but obvious Jack the Clipper was of course, a nod to the infamous Jack the Ripper, serial killer from the 1880s. The nickname was still being used into the early 1900s. 

In 1907, an article from the Jackson County Banner in Indiana ran the headline “Cut off her Tresses While dreaming she was a victim of Jack the Clipper”.

It reads, “Miss Dollie Harris, the pretty 16-year-old daughter of a prominent and well to do farmer living near Sandborn, a little village near here, dreamed that she was pursued by a Jack the Clipper, who finally caught her and sheared off all her beautiful hair. She awoke in terror and was horrified to find her hair in a heap on the floor beside the bed. But, instead of the shears being in the hands of a Jack, they were tightly clasped in her own hand.” 

After that, the ‘Phantom Barber’ moniker really took hold and in 1942, a small city in Mississippi experienced the terror first hand in what would become the most chronicled story of hair theft in U.S. history. 

The wartime whereabouts of the Phantom Barber of Pascagoula made headlines across the nation in a time when there were a whole lot of newsworthy events taking place. An unknown assailant, armed only with scissors, was sneaking into people’s homes and removing hair from innocent children. There have been hundreds of Jack the Clippers and Phantom Barbers, but this story out of them all, is the most recognized. 

When the United States entered into World War II in 1939, the country watched as husbands and fathers and brothers and sons went overseas to fight. This left the country in very capable hands with women taking over the household and in most cases heading to the factories to support the war effort. 

Unfortunately it also left behind shady opportunists who knew that in many cases, homes were void of the ‘man of the house.’ Due to Pascagoula being a factory town, they watched their population almost triple during the early years of the war. People were coming to find work and to help the war. When more people come in a wave like the one they experienced, things get tougher for the police departments. Out of towners can bring a lot of unknowns with them. 

Resources were at a premium. The army, when it needed to, might institute restrictions on food, or rubber, or steel. There were times when blackout regulations were considered. Oftentimes, the army would also enforce dim outs, requiring people to cut their lights at night or at least find a way to dim them. If the enemy couldn’t see you from above, they wouldn’t know where to drop bombs. 

Some folks used cardboard to cover their windows, others might have painted the glass, most just took the easier route and hit the lights a little earlier than normal. So with a majority of the male population gone, the dark streets and houses brought out some dubious deviants.  

In June of 1942, one such shifty character emerged from the shadows to bring Pascagoula  months of unrest. 

June 1st was a Monday, and on that evening everything was quiet and still at the Our Lady of Victories Convent. The nuns and the children were all nestled in their beds when a man quietly cut through the screen on one of the many open windows.  

Seven year old Edna Haydel, ten year old Mary Briggs and Mary’s eight year old sister Laura took up three of the beds in the room. In the fourth, was their guardian, Sister Camille; one of the nuns at Our Lady of Victories. 

Mary awoke to the feeling of someone or something tugging at her hair. She sat up and turned to see the silhouette of a man looming over her. He placed a finger to his lips and shushed Mary but she ignored the man and called out for Sister Camille. As everyone else in the room sat up with a jolt, the man slinked his way towards the window and leapt out. 

“Sister Camille!” Mary screamed again. 

“Mary Evelyn!” Sister Camille went to the lightswitch and turned on the bedroom light. “What’s the matter?” She asked. “What are you screaming about?” 

“There was a man in here. He was standing right by my bed! He jumped out the window.”

“Nonsense,” Sister Camille barked as her eyes adjusted to the light. That’s when she noticed the cut screen hanging from the window sill. A moment later she gasped at what had become of poor Mary’s hair. Not long after, Edna felt at her own hair and realized that it too had been hacked off. She’d slept right through it. 

Clumps of hair lay next to the beds of Mary and Edna. He hadn’t gotten to young Laura yet. Judging by how the hair was cut, police assumed that the man had used a pocket knife or razor to do the chopping. 

Initial news reports compared the Phantom Barber to two previous lunatics. The tickletoe burglar of New York and the trouserless kissing bandit of St. Louis. Sounds like two future podcasts to me. Police and reporters alike assumed that the Phantom Barber was indeed a former barber who had gone mad.  

On the following Friday, the Phantom Barber struck again. This time he quietly entered the home of the Peattie family. The family consisted of Mr. David Peattie, his wife who was ill in a hospital at the time and their six year old twins Carol and David. A second couple, Mr. and Mrs. Hinshaw lived in the home at the time, helping David take care of his children. 

The children were asleep and their father, David, had just retired to his bedroom. Around 10:30 Mrs. Hinshaw heard a noise from down the hall which she assumed to be one of the children stirring. After hearing more noise, her husband woke up. Together, the couple entered the children’s room. 

They noticed that the screen had been cut and that there were sandy footprints on a pile of clothes by the window. They went to David Peattie’s room and woke him to tell him what they found. That’s when Carol called out to them. The three adults ran to the room and found Carol sitting up in her bottom bunk grabbing for her hair that was no longer there.  

News reports said that Carol had been given a haircut as abbreviated and boyish as her twin brother. He’d been in the top bunk and nearly slept through the whole ordeal. Police took measurements of the footprints and reportedly acquired some fingerprints. 

The next monday, a man named R.J. Anderson was heading home from his supervising job at the shipyard. It was late in the evening and he was excited to join his wife and child in their slumber. As he pulled into the driveway of his home his wife and small daughter came sprinting out the front door, crying that someone was trying to cut through a back window. 

Police combed the neighborhood but found no trace of the man. 

The next Friday… I’m sensing a pattern here, I wonder if the police did as well. Fridays and Mondays were prime days for the Phantom Barber… things escalated rather quickly. 

Like the previous encounters, the screen was cut out, but that’s where the similarities seem to end. The Heidelberg’s, Terrell and Lillian were fast asleep when the man entered their bedroom window. 

The first that Mr. Heidelberg knew there was an intruder was when he awoke to his wife screaming in the bed next to him.The Phantom Barber had upgraded from a razor or scissors to an iron bar. Mr. and Mrs. Heidelberg each took numerous blows to the face, head and body. Lillian had her lip cut open, lost three teeth, had a gash on her scalp and a nasty bruise on her shoulder. Terrell received a five inch scalp wound, cuts on his forehead, a nearly broken wrist from numerous blows and bruises on both shoulders. 

The pair were so badly beaten and it had happened so quickly that neither of them got a look at their assailant as he jumped out the window from whence he came. 

Police arrived quickly and as word spread around town, a posse of sorts was formed led by a pair of bloodhounds. They found a bloody pair of gloves that had belonged to Mrs. Heidelberg, in the woods, some 200 yards away from the home. The bloodhounds followed a trail until around 2:00 pm the next day and then the tracks stopped. 

They didn’t have much on the Phantom Barber. He liked to do his creeping on Fridays and Mondays. He had small hands for a man, unless of course Mrs. Heidelberg had large hands. That was never disclosed.

Things were getting so bad and the city was so nervous that on June 19th, Army officials announced that any dim-out regulations would immediately be lifted. Until the man was caught, residents could light up their houses like the fourth of July.  

The Phantom Barber’s final reported attack came on late on June 22nd, a Monday. Earlier in the day, Mrs. R. E. Taylor had received a fresh perm from her hair stylist. That evening, while she slept in a room with her husband and two daughters, the Phantom Barber entered through the bedroom window. 

Mrs. Taylor reported feeling something pass over her face, something that smelled awful. When she woke up, she felt nauseous and realized that nearly two inches of permed hair had been removed from head. Police recognized the complaint of an odor along with the ill feelings to be the result of chloroform. Mrs. Taylor seemed much more miffed about her perm being ruined than the fact that a stranger had broken into her house. 

By July the Phantom Barber seemed to be on hiatus. Either laying low due to the vigilant public or having obtained everything he needed. 

Finally, on August 13th, the police announced that they had a man in custody. They were confident that 57-year-old William Dolan was indeed the Phantom Barber. He was charged with attempted murder in the pipe attack on the Heidelbergs. Why Dolan? 

A man that lived close to Dolan found a clump of hair behind his house. He had a lengthy rap sheet from the other places he lived. He hitched a ride near there shortly before the assault happened.  

The newspapers picked up on his German ties right away and ran with it. Without him saying a word, they suggested that his efforts were an attempt to help impair the morale of American war workers. He’d also reportedly expressed himself as being a Nazi sympathizer. Someone had heard a rumor that Dolan called Hitler a ‘good man’ while also saying ‘Germans are better than Americans.’ Part of his education had also taken place in Germany decades before. Out of all of those things, only his education was able to be proven. Regardless of what was true, it was enough to make up everyone's minds in the court of public opinion.

They’d caught a man who loved women's hair and Hitler. That’s all they needed to know.    

A hearing took place on October 1st where Dolan was bound to the grand jury on a $2000 bond. The trial was then set for November and Dolan was moved to an undisclosed prison. 

On November 19th Dolan was convicted for his attack on the Heidelbergs. The hair cutting was never entered into the trial and while people assumed it was him, he was never tried for those break-ins. 

It would appear that Dolan was only in prison until 1948 when his sentence was first suspended. After moving to the small town of Bay St. Louis Missouri with his wife, he opened a small shop and settled down. His continued good behavior and the passing of a lie detector test, along with an investigation from the Jackson Daily News finding him innocent, led Governor Fielding Wright to announce a full suspension of his remaining sentence in 1951.  

The Governor felt that there was enough doubt surrounding the case to release him for good. 

In 1954, at the age of 69, William Dolan reportedly drowned. Later in the year a Senate bill authorized the state to pay Mrs. Dolan $2,500. 

The Phantom Barber, whether it was William Dolan or not, stopped his spree of breaking, entering and cutting around the time of Dolan’s arrest. So who was the mysterious Phantom Barber? My money is on Dolan, but this case of Jack the Clipper may never be solved. 

Thank you to Dave, David, Jim, Marie and Laura for being part of the team. If you’d like to become a patron of this podcast, please visit patreon.com/curator135 - There are three tiers of support or you can name your own donation. 

Please like, follow and subscribe to Curator 135 on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. 

If you enjoyed this or any of my other podcast episodes, don’t forget to leave a five star review. As always, thank you for listening and remember, be good to one another and be creative. The world needs you. 

143