When I was at university a friend of mine went through a phase of washing her hair with egg yolk, beer, and anything that did not contain the mixture of chemicals that make up shampoo. It seemed to work (though the egg went wrong if you rinsed it in hot water) so after a while we left her to get on with it. I should ask her what she uses these days.
The link to 1911? They hadn't invented those shampoos yet. And if you wanted to wash your hair, you used soap (not good, for anyone who has tried this) or something gentler like egg yolk. What's more, washing your hair was a real palaver. For a start, your hair was waist length at least. Then, there was no shower, so you did it over the bath - and hot water wasn't necessarily on tap either.
Some instructions for washing your hair from the New York Times of 1910 explain that some specialists recommend doing so once a fortnight - though the more reasonable do it once a month or every six weeks. It's an elaborate routine: comb it out, apply tonic to the scalp, rub soap into a nail brush and apply to the hair, rinse four times. You might also want to make a special soap by boiling normal soap down to a jelly.
And then you had to dry it. Definitely a perfectly genuine excuse for turning down a date.
Sources / further info:
Random history - History of Shampoo
Lydia Joyce blog - History of C19th Hairwashing
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