Image extracted from microfilm by Greg Hand
There are not many old-time barbers left in Cincinnati, probably none at all. Before you start pointing out some venerable tonsorial establishment boasting a marble counter, leather chairs, a stack of vintage magazines and a painted barber pole out front, ask just one question: Is there a jar of leeches in the front window?
Back in the day, your barber did a heck of a lot more than shaves and haircuts. Barber shops were very much like urgent care centers. The inimitable Edwin Henderson, who wrote under the penname “Conteur,” described [Enquirer, 10 July 1919] the experience of a German immigrant barber named Peter Muschler:
“In those days, many of the white barbers cupped and leeched and pulled teeth in addition to shaving and hair dressing. Muschler used as many as 6,000 leeches in a year. For several years after their arrival the broils of rival fire companies of the old schools of volunteers and of the contending factions of the ‘Brighton,’ ‘Mohawk’ and ‘Texas’ districts, and the use of fists generally in all sorts of personal differences were so frequent that leeches were in general demand all over the city.”
A generation raised on the belief that the best cure for a black eye is a bag of frozen peas probably can’t understand that paragraph. To clarify: Leeches were applied to black eyes and other bruises to drain the accumulated blood and to reduce swelling. Cupping, popular today as an alternative therapy, was practiced by barbers as a cure for fevers and general aches and pains. Minor surgical tasks such as these provided solid income at a time when, as the old knocking rhyme has it, a shave and a haircut cost two bits, or just twenty-five cents. An old-time barber told the Enquirer [19 August 1900]:
“The revenue derived from this work also provided quite a substantial amount in our pockets at the end of each week during those days. I remember that frequently I made not less than $25 cupping, bleeding and leeching while the proceeds from teeth extracted also provided a nice little sum.”
Image extracted from microfilm by Greg Hand
Conteur reports that barber Peter Muschler also did a fair amount of tooth pulling. When Muschler moved his shop in 1865, he disposed of a peck (about two gallons) of extracted teeth by tossing them into the furnace.
So closely were barbers associated with surgery that, according to the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine [October 2001], it was Henry VIII of England who in 1540 recognized the Worshipful Company of Barbers and Surgeons, affirming the right of barbers to perform bloodletting and tooth extraction, while prohibiting surgeons from cutting hair or trimming beards.
Of course, dealing with rowdy patients fresh from barroom brawls must have tried the patience of many a barber, no matter how royally worshipped. A Cincinnati barber named Christopher Eberle discovered this one fateful night. According to the Cincinnati Gazette [25 January 1879]:
“Wm. Nielis, a hostler living on Boal street, and James Toale, living at 434 Sycamore street, came into Dr. C.C. Eberle’s barber shop, No. 388 Broadway, about 9 o’clock last night. Toale was in a pitiable condition. Both of his eyes were closed, his face cut up and bloody, and his lips swollen so big as to prevent the man from speaking. They asked for some leeches, but when Eberle asked for his pay the couple assaulted him and made trouble all around. Eberle called in the police, who took the men to the Bremen Street Station. They fought the officers all the way to the lockup. The charges against the men are disorderly conduct, personal violence, and assault and battery.”
The connection between barbering and blood is memorialized in the traditional barber pole with its red, white and blue stripes. According to lore, the red symbolizes arteries and the blue represent veins, while the white indicates skin. It’s more likely that the stripes are a sanitized version of the ancient barber signs that showed a realistically bleeding arm. Some really old barber signs were topped by a golden bowl of the type once sued to collect blood.
Eventually, barbers got out of the surgical line. The Cincinnati Post [1 December 1927] reported on an emergency appeal for leeches to save the life of a sleeping-sickness victim in Somerville, Ohio. The physician treating the patient believed that applying leeches would keep the patient’s blood circulating until the effects of the disease had subsided. Boy Scouts in Cincinnati took up the cause and sloshed through every creek and river around the city in a fruitless quest for blood-sucking annelids. Having exhausted the natural habitats of the creatures, the scouts turned to their urban haunts.
“In Cincinnati Scouts scoured local drug stores for leeches. Late Saturday ‘ran down’ some in a small downtown barber shop, where they were kept as reminiscences of the old days when barbers also were physicians, and are still used occasionally for blackened eyes. The leeches were sent by special delivery to Somerville.”
The patient’s condition improved remarkably.
Some barbers extended their services into less bloody ministrations, according to William C. Smith in his delightful 1959 memoir, “Queen City Yesterdays”:
“Barber shops of the better class provided another service in addition to their regular vocation of shaving and haircutting. These shops displayed signs in the window reading ‘Baths Twenty-five Cents.’ The regular price for shaving was fifteen cents; for hair cutting, twenty-five cents; and tips were unknown.”
There were certainly a lot of barbers in old Cincinnati. An article in The Penny Paper (later to be known as the Cincinnati Post) [5 July 1882] provided a census broken down by the ancestry of each proprietor. According to that article, Cincinnati had 1,000 barbers, of which 795 were of German extraction, 91 were African American, 50 were Irish, 46 were “Americans by blood and birth,” five English, four Jews, four Italians, three Scots, and two Frenchmen. The city population that year was just over 225,000.
Some of these tonsorial practitioners were very curious indeed. An old-timer told the Penny Paper that he knew of an excellent barber who was totally blind but had learned his trade as his sight was failing and was renowned for his skill. There was a one-armed barber working in Covington who also had a sterling reputation.
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