Chapman's training as a barber or hairdresser

[HelenaWojtczak]

An aspect of Chapman I've never seen discussed.

There is a lot of talk about where he learned English so that he could chat to his very customers in his first job in London, but nobody asks where he learned hairdressing!

I've read Chapman referred to as a "barber-surgeon". I believe that is based solely on people having heard that expression before, and have coupled that with the fact that he trained as a surgeon, then became a barber.

However, there is no mention whatsoever of any hairdressing-related training in the documents he brought over from Poland. Furthermore, barber-surgeons didn't exist any more at the time he was trained. Neither Rapaport or any of the men Chapman worked under or trained under were hairdressers or barbers.

Now, a friend of mine is a barber, plus I have a hardresser. They both trained for AGES to learn their trade. OK I accept that there is a lot of chemicals, perms etc nowadays that didnt exist then, but still, my h/d went to college for 3 years and if you deduct the time spent learning stuff that didn't exist in the 1880s, you're still looking at a year or more to train.

How much training was needed to be a hairdresser in the 1880s?

Why did the Radin's give Chapman a job when he had no training?

Was he in fact in training AT Radin's?

[Penny_Dredfull]

Chapman's training as a barber or hairdresser

Helen- If you check out the 1891 Census Transcription online you will find an alphabetized list of all the occupations given by people living in London included in that census. You will see that "Barber Surgeon" is definitely one of them.
Yes, a barber-surgeon is often deemed to be a relic of a much earlier time, but it would seem that it persisted, at least among the poorer classes who couldn't afford proper medical attention.
And a barber-surgeon wouldn't have performed surgery in the sense of highly complicated, invasive and medicalized operations, rather they would have merely undertaken much simpler procedures such as boil lancing and tooth extraction. So no medical training as such was necessary, and they certainly weren't considered to be of the same professional calibre as a medical surgeon- a much more prestigious gentleman.
Further, the occupation of a man's barber is quite distinct from that of hairdresser- a term which implies the "dressing" of ladies' hair, although men sometimes would have their hair groomed with "macassar" oil. A gentleman's barber would have primarily cut hair for men and boys using comb and shears- no electric clippers then!- and shaved facial hair with a straight razor. A would-be barber would start as an apprentice, maybe as a "lather boy", to learn the trade. And such arrangements and training were much more informal then and didn't take the amount of time that it does now when more emphasis is placed on official/documented qualification and professional accountability.
Hope that's of some help to you!

[HelenaWojtczak]

Hello Penny

It's certainly interesting that anyone should still have been calling himself a barber-surgeon in 1891; everything I have read states that they died out in the mid 1700s.

I do not believe that he was a barber-surgeon. Since posting I have carried out research into felczers in c19th Poland and Russia and they received no training in barbering or hairdressing.

Your comments on man's barber being distinct from hairdresser are of interest. Everywhere that Klosowski worked, from his first job at Radin's in 1888 through to his last shop in Hastings in 1897 he was in the census and in all the directories as 'hair dresser'. The witnesses at his trial always referred to him as a h/d not a b/b. Not once is the word 'barber' used.

I think the lack of training explains why Klosowski managed OK when workiing as assistant to a trained hairdresser, but each time he got a salon of his own it failed.

Helena