BARBERS WHO BECAME FAMOUS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 65, 17 March 1910, Page 2

BARBERS WHO BECAME FAMOUS.

; Perhaps tbe best-known of all barbers who have attained fame were Arkwright, the Improver of the spinning, Jenny, who .was said to have turned to mechanics when the wigmaking trade fell off, and Jeremy Taylor, wbo was .brought up in bis father's shaving shop in Cambridge. Edward Sugden, afterwards made "Baron St. Leonards, was the son of a balrcutter In a shop in Lincoln Inn, London. Once, when Sugden was addressing a ■crowd in the interest of his canUdacy for Parliament, a man.called out to know what soap cost and bow lather was made. "I am particularly obliged to that gentleman," Sir Edward Is reported to have said, " for" reminding mc of my lowly origin. It. is true that I am a barber's son, and that I "myself was once a- barber. If the gentleman who so politely: reminded mc of these facts had been a barber, he would nave continued to remain one till the end of his tote." "-'Charles Abbott, Baron Tenterden, was edso a barber's son, and It is related bow, when he was made a peer of England, he took his own son to a little Westminster shop and bade him remember that it was there that his grandfather . bad been accustomed to shave-others for a penny. William Falconer, the- poet, was a poor barber in Edinburgh antil bis poem, "The Shipwreck." brought him renown and, Incidentally, a commission In the Boyal Navy. Craggs, ' associated " with the South Sea Bubble, was a barber turned promoter. He became enormously wealthy; but when the South Sea crash came his fortune dwindled, and in despair" be committed 'suicide 7 .' "Giovanni Bdzoni of Padua was a barber witb a varied and interesting history. Belzonl set up a shop In England, but soon found more profit In posing at Sadler's Wells as the " Paiagonian Samson." Being thrifty, Belssoni acuminated quite a fortune. -He achieved lasting fame as the discoverer of Interesting relics in the tombs of Egypt and as a traveller;