BARBER AND HIS POLE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 290, 6 December 1929, Page 15

BARBER AND HIS POLE

ORIGIN OF THE CUSTOM HAIRDRESSERS AS SURGEONS The barber’s pole seen in striped red and white along the city streets is a survival of the days when barbers performed minor operations of surgery be_ sides cutting haid and beards, says an American paper. When bleeding was necessary, the patient applied to the barber. To assist in the operation the patient had to have a staff to grasp, and when the staff was not in use the barbersurgeon tied to it the tape employed for bandaging the patient’s arm, so that both the pole and tape would be on hand when needed. The pole, with the tape attached was hung at the door as a s/gn. Later on, a pole was pinned with stripes around it in imitation of the real pole and bandage, thus making the sign. Lord Thurlow, in a speech in the House of Lords in 1797, said that “by a statute still in force barbers and surgeons were each to use a pole as a sign. The barbers were to have the blue and white stripped with no other appendage; but that of the surgeons was to have also a galley-pot and a red rag, to denote the particular nature of their occupation.” The last named barber-surgeon in London, according to a chronicler of those times was a man called Middleditch, who died in 1821. Timbs, in his autobiography, says: ‘'l have a vivid recollection of his dentistry.’’