At the Sign of the Barber's Pole Studies In Hirsute History

Excerpt

THE BARBER'S POLE

n most instances the old signs which indicated the callings of shopkeepers have been swept away. Indeed, the three brass balls of the pawn-broker and the pole of the barber are all that are left of signs of the olden time. Round the barber's pole gather much curious fact and fiction. So many suggestions have been put forth as to its origin and meaning that the student of history is puzzled to give a correct solution. One circumstance is clear: its origin goes back to far distant times. An attempt is made in "The Athenian Oracle" (i. 334), to trace the remote origin of the pole. "The barber's art," says the book, "was so beneficial to the publick, that he who first brought it up in Rome had, as authors relate, a statue erected to his memory. In England they were in some sort the surgeons of old times, into whose art those beautiful leeches, our fair virgins, were also accustomed to be initiated. In cities and corporate towns they still retain their name Barber-Chirurgions. They therefore used to hang their basons out upon poles to make known at a distance to the weary and wounded traveller where all might have recourse. They used poles, as some inns still gibbet their signs, across a town." It is a doubtful solution of the origin of the barber's sign.

This is the old word for doctors or surgeons.

The Barber's Shop, from "Orbis Pictus."

A more satisfactory explanation is given in the "Antiquarian Repertory." "The barber's pole," it is there stated, "has been the subject of many conjectures, some conceiving it to have originated from the word poll or head, with several other conceits far-fetched and as unmeaning; but the true intention of the party coloured staff was to show that the master of the shop practised surgery and could breathe a vein as well as mow a beard: such a staff being to this day by every village practitioner put in the hand of the patient undergoing the operation of phlebotomy. The white band, which encompasses the staff, was meant to represent the fillet thus elegantly twined about it." We reproduce a page from "Comenii Orbis Pictus," perhaps better known under its English title of the "Visible World." It is said to have been the first illustrated school-book printed, and was published in 1658. Comenius was born in 1592, was a Moravian bishop, a famous educational reformer, and the writer of many works, including the "Visible World: or a Nomenclature, and Pictures of all the chief things that are in the World, and of Men's Employments therein; in above an 150 Copper Cuts." Under each picture are explanatory sentences in two columns, one in Latin, and the other in English, and by this means the pupil in addition to learning Latin, was able to gain much useful knowledge respecting industries and other "chief things that are in the World." For a century this was the most popular text-book in Europe, and was translated into not fewer than fourteen languages. It has been described as a crude effort to interest the young, and it was more like an illustrated dictionary than a child's reading-book. In the picture of the interior of a barber's shop, a patient is undergoing the operation of phlebotomy (figure 11). He holds in his hand a pole or staff having a bandage twisted round it. It is stated in Brand's "Popular Antiquities" that an illustration in a missal of the time of Edward the First represents this ancient practice.

In a speech made in the House of Peers by Lord Thurlow, in support of postponing the further reading of the Surgeons' Incorporation Bill, from July 17th, 1797, to that day three months, the noble lord said 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 surgeon's pole, which was the same in other respects, was likewise to have a galley-pot and a red rag, to denote the particular nature of their vocation....