Catch-pole’s manœuvre to catch customers, and get his shop talked about, was very successful. It is observed in the “Spectator,” that—“The art of managing mankind is only to make them stare a little, to keep up their astonishment, to let nothing be familiar to them, but ever to have something in your sleeve, in which they must think you are deeper than they are.” The writer of the remark exemplifies it by this story:—“There is an ingenious fellow, a barber of my acquaintance, who, besides his broken fiddle and a dryed sea-monster, has a twine-cord, strained with two nails at each end, over his window, and the words, rainy, dry, wet, and so forth, written to denote the weather according to the rising or falling of the cord. We very great scholars are not apt to wonder at this: but I observed a very honest fellow, a chance customer, who sat in the chair before me to be shaved, fix his eye upon this miraculous performance during the operation upon his chin and face. When those, and his head also, were cleared of all incumbrances and excrescences, he looked at the fish, then at the fiddle, still grubbing in his pockets, and casting his eye again at the twine, and the words writ on each side; then altered his mind as to farthings, and gave my friend a silver six-pence. The business, as I said, is to keep up the amazement: and if my friend had had only the skeleton and kitt, he must have been contented with a less payment.”
It was customary with barbers to have their shops lighted by candles in brass chandeliers of three, four, and six branches. Mr. Smith noticing their disuse says, “Mr. Batrich has two suspended from his ceiling; he has also a set of bells fixed against the wall, which he has had for these forty years. These are called by the common people Whittington’s Bells. In his early days, about eighty years back, when the newspapers were only a penny a-piece, they were taken in by the barbers for the customers to read during their waiting time. This custom is handed to us by the late E. Heemskerck, in an etching by Toms, of a barber’s shop, composed of monkies, at the foot of which are the following lines:—
“A barber’s shop adorn’d we see,
With monsters, news, and poverty;
Whilst some are shaving, others bled,
And those that wait the papers read;
The master full of wigg, or tory,
Combs out your wig, and tells a story.”
Mr. Smith’s inquiries concerning barbers have been extensive and curious. He says, “On one occasion, that I might indulge the humour of being shaved by a woman, I repaired to the Seven Dials, where, in Great St. Andrew’s-street, a slender female performed the operation, whilst her husband, a strapping soldier in the Horse-guards, sat smoking his pipe. There was a famous woman in Swallow-street, who shaved; and I recollect a black woman in Butcher-row, a street formerly standing by the side of St. Clement’s church, near Temple-bar, who is said to have shaved with ease and dexterity.” His friend Mr. Batrich informed him that he had read of “the five barberesses of Drury-lane, who shamefully mal-treated a woman in the reign of Charles II.” Mr. Batrich died while Mr. Smith’s “Ancient Topography of London,” was passing through the press.
The “Glasgow Chronicle,” about the year 1817, notices the sudden death, in Calton, of Mr. John Falconer, hair-dresser, in Kirk-street. While in the act of shaving a man, he staggered, and was falling, when he was placed on a chair, and expired in five minutes. His shop was the arena of all local discussion, and was therefore denominated the Calton coffee-room. His father and he had been in the trade for upwards of half a century. His father was the first who reduced the price of shaving to a halfpenny; and when his brethren in the town wished him again to raise it, he replied, “Charge a penny! Jock and me are just considering about lowering it to a farthing.” He would never take more than a halfpenny though it was offered him; and being very skilful at his business, and of a frank jocular turn, he had a large share of public favour, and was enabled even at this low rate to gather money and build houses. He died about sixteen years before his son, who carried on the business. He often said others wrought for need, but he did it for pleasure or recreation, and never was so happy as when he was improving the countenances of the lieges. He was generally allowed to be at the top of his profession. Some old men whom he and his father had shaved for fifty years, boasted that they were never touched by another: one very old customer regularly came for many a year to his shop every Saturday night from the western extremity of the town. His shop was furnished with two dozen of antique chairs, as many pictures, and a musical clock, and for a long time he had a good library of books, but they at length nearly wholly disappeared, and he took up to his house the few that remained as his own share. At two different times, when trade was dull, he gave his tenants a jubilee on the term day, and presented their discharges without receiving a farthing. He left behind him property worth between 2,000l. and 3000l.