Archaeologists at Barbers' Hall : Mr. Sidney Young, F.S.A., on the Medieval Company.

Date:
[1904]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Archaeologists at Barbers' Hall : Mr. Sidney Young, F.S.A., on the Medieval Company. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    found women practising the art of surgery, and here, in the twentieth century, was history repeating itself in that respect. Sunday trading was with the Guild a great trouble for many years, and in 1413 they found Thomas Arundel], Archbishop of Canterbury, addressing a letter on the subject to the Mayor and Aldermen of London, his sons in Christ, and dearest friends, beseeching them, for the love of God and His law, to put a stop to a practice which he had suppressed at York before his translation to Canterbury. An ordinance was made fining barbers, wife, son, daughter or apprentice, for haircutting or shaving within the city on Sundays, 6s. 8d. for each offence, and uuderthis there were numerous convictions—on a subject which remains a difficulty after this nearly 500 years action upon it. Of the two distinct and hostile fraternities to which he had just made allusion, the shavers and cutters, as they were called, were evidently more popular than the more aristocratic surgeons, and as the barbers had well held their own in the disputes before the Corporation, this doubtless had an influence in obtaining for them a charter from the young king Edward IV., in the first year of his reign, 1462. The original document, with the great seal affixed, was pointed out by Mr. Young, as now lying on the table, with other charters, illuminated books, and the like valuable documents. He remarked in this connection, as very singular, that although textually granted to the Barbers, nothing as to barbery is mentioned in it, but surgery is alone referred to. It gave power to fine and imprison offenders against the provisions relative to the mystery, and exempted the members from serving on juries, and on watch and ward. The jury exemption had been claimed and granted at the Old Bailey over and over again, and was continued until the passing of the Jury Act some forty years' or so since; of fines by the Guild Court for con- tumacy there were hundreds, perhaps he might say thousands, of entries in the books. In 1493 the Barbers’ Company and the Surgeons’ Guild came to an amicable agreement over their difficulties, and Mr. Young read some salient points of the wiitten agreement, which was acted upon down to the formal separation of the two bodies in 1745, and also in order to point out that the barber surgeons five hundred years ago were shown to have taken a practical interest in technical education by the periodical delivery of lectures to students. He also produced and handed round, for the inspection of his audience, an old book which, containing portions of each of the four Gospels, was for many years used for swearing-in newly-admitted members ; and pointed to an illuminated diploma to a freeman as perhaps the earliest English diploma of a surgeon extant, apart from the quaint- ness of its composition and other curious details, including the provision of an instructor and examiner, in the presence of a great audience of many right, well expert men in surgery and others. There was likewise produced a set of ordinances to meet the provi- sions of an Act passed in the twentieth year of Henry VIII., signed