The Annals of the Barber-Surgeons of London

by Unknown

Pekham.

By writ of privy seal, and of the date aforesaid, by authority of Parliament, and for ten pounds paid into the hanaper.

(Endorsed.)

Inrolled in the Court of the Lord the King, in the chamber of the Guildhall of the City of London in the book marked with the letter l. folio thirteen in the third year of the reign of King Edward the Fourth from the Conquest.

The chief point which strikes us on reading the foregoing Charter is, that it contains a great deal relative to Surgery, and little, indeed nothing, concerning Barbery, and yet it is granted ostensibly to the Barbers!

Now the Surgical side being the more important one of the craft, and the raison d’être of the Charter being in a great measure to provide for the regulation of Surgery and the correction of abuses in that profession, this silence as to Barbery and recognition of Surgery would seem to be an evidence that the practice of the latter, more or less, was the rule rather than the exception with members of the Company of Barbers; and, as the Masters or Governors were empowered to make “statutes and ordinances” (by-laws) for the governance of the mystery, it was doubtless considered unnecessary to descend into any details concerning shaving and the like in a Royal Charter.

The preamble of this Charter is exceedingly quaint and interesting, reciting how through the “ignorance, negligence and stupidity” of various Barbers and other practitioners in Surgery, many of the King’s lieges had “gone the way of all flesh.” Then at the request of “our beloved, honest and free men of the said Mystery of Barbers,” the King grants to them, to be one body perpetual, etc., that two of the chief men of the Company (no doubt the two then existing Masters “exercising the faculty of Surgery”) may with twelve or at least eight other skilled Barber-Surgeons, elect two Masters annually: this provision in itself is singular, as it would seem to imply that the body then incorporated was to be ruled by two Masters only; but a reference to our list of Masters and Wardens will shew that from the year 1448 the Company has been ruled by four Masters, and so on in unbroken succession to the present time[48]; these other two Masters therefore were Masters of the Barbers proper, about whom nothing was said in the Charter, but who were chosen annually in accordance with ancient custom, the Chief or First Master being alternately a Barber, and a Barber-Surgeon.

The Corporation was to have perpetual succession, and a Common seal, to hold lands of a certain value, to be able to plead and to be impleaded, to make by-laws, to have the scrutiny and correction of (apparently all) Surgeons in the City and suburbs, as also the oversight of all their instruments and medicines, etc., and to have the power of inflicting punishment, by fine or imprisonment, on offenders. None were to practise Surgery until examined and approved by the Masters and presented to the Mayor, and authority was given for the freemen of the Company to be admitted into the freedom of the City.

Another clause in the Charter was one which, whilst it conferred a valuable privilege upon the Company, was a source of continual strife and conflict with the Civic authorities, for by it all our freemen claimed to be exempted from serving on Juries and inquisitions, and this immunity, though constantly disputed, was as often asserted and maintained, with various qualifications.

In The Times, November 26, 1839, is an account of the exemption of certain freemen of the Company from serving on Juries at the Central Criminal Court. In this instance neither the claimants nor the Recorder knew much about the matter—for one of the applicants said, in reply to the Recorder, “I rest my claim on the Charter of Henry VIII”!! And, further on in the discussion, the same bold Barber had the effrontery to declare that “the privilege was confirmed by an Act passed in the reign of George II.” This was the Act which separated the Surgeons from the Barbers, and which did not confirm to the latter the exemption claimed, but our freeman gained his point, and the Recorder only grumbled.