In the byways of history we
meet with allusions to "the five women barbers who lived in Drury-lane,"
who are said to have shamefully maltreated a woman in the days of
Charles II. According to Aubrey, the Duchess of Albemarle was one of
them.
At the commencement of the nineteenth century a street near the Strand
was the haunt of black women who shaved with ease and dexterity. In St
Giles'-in-the-Fields was another female shaver, and yet another woman
wielder of the razor is mentioned in the "Topography of London," by J.T.
Smith. "On one occasion," writes Smith, "that I might indulge the humour
of being shaved by a woman, I repaired to the Seven Dials, where in
Great St Andrew's Street a female performed the operations, whilst her
husband, a strapping soldier in the Horse Guards, sat smoking his pipe."
He mentions another woman barber in Swallow Street.
Two men from Hull some time ago went by an early morning trip to
Scarborough, and getting up rather late the use of the razor was
postponed until they arrived at the watering-place.
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