For talking of cutting throats,
For calling hair-powder flour,
For meddling with anything on the shop-board.
Shakespeare alludes to this custom in "Measure for Measure," Act v. sc. 1, as follows:—
"The strong statutes
Stand like the forfeits in a barber's shop,
As much in mock as mark."
William Shakespeare (the Stratford Portrait).
Half a century ago there was hanging a code of laws in a barber's shop in Stratford-on-Avon, which the possessor mounted when he was an apprentice some fifty years previously. His master was in business as a barber at the time of the Garrick Jubilee in 1769, and he asserted that the list of forfeits was generally acknowledged by all the fraternity to have been in use for centuries. The following lines have found their way into several works, including Ingledew's "Ballads and Songs of Yorkshire" (1860). In some collections the lines are headed "Rules for Seemly Behaviour," and in others "The Barber of Thirsk's Forfeits." We draw upon Dr Ingledew for the following version, which is the best we have seen:—