barber, a person whose primary activities in the 20th century are trimming and styling the hair of men, shaving them, and shaping their beards, sideburns, and moustaches. Barbers, or hairdressers, often provide shampooing, manicuring, hair dying, permanent waves, and shoe polishing within their shops, or salons. See also hairdressing.
The barbershop was a familiar institution in ancient Greece and Rome and then, as now, was a centre for the exchange of gossip and opinion. The more prosperous citizens, however, particularly in Rome, had household barbers. The great houses of ancient Egypt also had barbers among their retainers and offered the services of these as part of their hospitality to guests.
For six centuries the barbers of Europe practiced surgery. This custom began with the papal decree of 1163 that forbade the clergy to shed blood. Monks were required to undergo bloodletting at regular intervals, and some of them had been performing this task, along with minor surgery. Now they turned these duties over to the barbers—familiar figures at the monasteries since 1092, when the clergy had been required to be clean-shaven. This arrangement was satisfactory to the medical doctors of the era, who considered that bloodletting was necessary but beneath their dignity. They were also glad to relegate to the barbers other physical tasks such as the lancing of abscesses and treatment of wounds. At the beginning of his career, Ambroise Paré, one of the great pioneers of surgery, was among those who gave shaves and haircuts for a living.
In France a royal decree of 1383 declared that “the king’s first barber and valet” was to be head of the barbers and surgeons of the kingdom, who had been organized in a guild in 1361. The barbers of London were first organized as a religious guild but were granted a charter as a trade guild in 1462 by King Edward IV. This guild was amalgamated with that of the surgeons in 1540 under a charter granted by Henry VIII, and the members of the joint corporation were accorded the right to be addressed as “Master”—colloquially, “Mister.” British surgeons still prefix their names with “Mr.” instead of “Dr.”
The barber-surgeons were sometimes called “doctors of the short robe” to distinguish them from university-trained physicians and surgeons, whose superiority was apt to be only in their knowledge of Latin and their title of “doctor of the long robe.” In England the guild of surgeons was separated from that of barbers in 1745. The Royal College of Surgeons, however, did not receive its charter until 1800.
The barber’s trade was acquired only by a long apprenticeship until the 1890s, when schools for barbering were established.