Hair today, where tomorrow?

[Pauline]

We've been sorting through various old family bits and pieces and despatching them to archives and museums as appropriate.

However, one item that has us stumped is a sample of hair from someone who died in 1924. We imagine his widow was intending to use it to have something like a mourning locket made but for some reason didn't - maybe that custom had gone out of fashion by 1924.

So now we are wondering what to do with this hair sample. Having been kept in the family for almost 100 years we hate to be the ones to throw it away but as the original owner of the hair no longer has any living descendants, the responsibility of deciding what to do with it has fallen to us.

Any suggestions?

 

[Tim]

Hi Pauline,

Well I'd be very seriously thinking of sending some of it off for DNA analysis! But I would keep the rest, why wouldn't you?
Put it in an envelope detailing who and when, and keep it for future generations to ponder over.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

DNA Analysis would be interesting but I'm not sure there would be sufficient of a high enough quality sample to get a result. It is significantly harder to extract DNA from older samples where there may or may not be hair follicles present. Remember the hair itself is dead material it's only the follicle that has DNA.

 

[Tim]

A good point well made. So assuming there was, I would go down the DNA route.

 

[Pauline]

Thanks for the suggestions. We wondered about DNA analysis but weren't sure what we'd be aiming to achieve by it. I haven't checked to see if there are hair follicles present - it may be slightly irrational but I'm not too keen on handling this hair too closely!

It's tempting to leave it for future generations to ponder over but being even further removed from the person than we are I strongly suspect it will go straight in the bin.

Pauline