Barber shops

There are two classes of barbers, one of them being styled surgeon-barbers, who are qualified to do many things of this sort. John has paid two visits to a barber to have his hair cut, but the sights he saw were sufficient to deter him from again repeating the experiment. The barbers in this town rank next in number to the shoemakers. Their shops are a little like those of old-fashioned barbers in England- that race which is fast becoming extinct, and only now to be found in villages and out-of-the-way country towns. A few chairs placed round the single room, which communicated directly with the street by folding doors; a cane settee on one side against the wall, where the friend, guitar in hand, waits his turn; one small looking-glass, of distorting qualities, in a gilt frame; a good many spittoons on the floor, which are more for ornament apparently than use; a small for-legged table, upon which are ranged the instruments of the craft; one small basin and a jug of water- such are the usual accompaniments of the man of scissors.

Olivia Stone, 1887

Such you may see fifty times over as you take a short walk through the town of Las Palmas, for the barbers’ doors are always open, as if to invite the attention of the casual passers-by. No gaudy red-and-yellow pole adorns the outside; no tempting array of hair-restorers, pomades, and cosmetics attracts the eye, for there are no shop-windows. The greatest amount of ostentation is when the simple word “Barbería” is inscribed in big capitals above the door. For shaving, a basin of a half-moon shape is placed under the chin. The barbers mostly combine bleeding, blistering, and tooth-drawing with the more harmless occupations of shaving and hair-cutting. This combination of barbering and surgery is not agreeable. On John’s first visit to a barber’s here he saw a man’s boil dressed, and on the second a wound in a man’s head washed, and the hair generally picked over by the barber’s fingers for lice. The machinery for brushing the hair with circular brushes very naturally has not yet penetrated to this out-of-the-world spot. Shampooing is unknown, its place being taken by a kind of dry wash after the hair cut.

Olivia Stone, Tenerife and its six satellites (1887)