In a newspaper report of some proceedings at a police office, in September, 1825, a person deposing against the prisoner, used the phrase “as common as a barber’s chair;” this is a very old saying. One of Shakspeare’s clowns speaks of “a barber’s chair, that fits all,” by way of metaphor; and Rabelais shows that it might be applied to any thing in very common use.[309]
The Barber’s Pole is still a sign in country towns, and in many of the villages near London. It was stated by lord Thurlow in the house of peers, on the 17th of July, 1797, when he opposed the surgeons’ incorporation bill that, “By a statute still in force, the barbers and surgeons were each to use a pole. The barbers were to have theirs blue and white, striped, with no other appendage; but the surgeons, which was the same in other respects, was likewise to have a gallipot and a red rag, to denote the particular nature of their vocation.”
The origin of the barber’s pole is to be traced to the period when the barbers were also surgeons, and practised phlebotomy. To assist this operation, it being necessary for the patient to grasp a staff, a stick or a pole was always kept by the barber-surgeon, together with the fillet or bandaging he used for tying the patient’s arm. When the pole was not in use the tape was tied to it, that they might be both together when wanted. On a person coming in to be bled the tape was disengaged from the pole, and bound round the arm, and the pole was put into the person’s hand: after it was done with, the tape was again tied on the pole, and in this state, pole and tape were often hung at the door, for a sign or notice to passengers that they might there be bled: doubtless the competition for custom was great, because as our ancestors were great admirers of bleeding, they demanded the operation frequently. At length instead of hanging out the identical pole used in the operation, a pole was painted with stripes round it, in imitation of the real pole and its bandagings, and thus came the sign.
That the use of the pole in bleeding was very ancient, appears from an illumination in a missal of the time of Edward I., wherein the usage is represented. Also in “Comenii Orbis pictus,” there is an engraving of the like practice. “Such a staff,” says Brand, who mentions these graphic illustrations, “is to this very day put into the hand of patients undergoing phlebotomy by every village practitioner.”
The News Sunday-paper of August 4, 1816, says, that a person in Alston, who for some years followed the trade of a barber, recently opened a spirit-shop, when to the no small admiration and amusement of his acquaintance, he hoisted over his door the following lines:—
Rove not from pole to pole, but here turn in,
Where naught exceeds the shaving, but the gin.
The south corner shop of Hosier-lane, Smithfield, is noticed by Mr. J. T. Smith as having been “occupied by a barber whose name was Catch-pole; at least so it was written over the door: he was a whimsical fellow; and would, perhaps because he lived in Smithfield, show to his customers a short bladed instrument, as the dagger with which Walworth killed Wat Tyler.” To this may be added, a remark not expressed by Mr. Smith, that Catch-pole had a barber’s pole for many years on the outside of his door.[310]