The smiths soon found that most of the business was absorbed by the barbers: the latter kept little shops for cutting hair, shaving, bathing and curing the wounded, especially about the royal palaces and the houses of the great: the shops were marked by a striped pole and a basin, symbols that all the king’s subjects might know where to apply in time of need; (the fillet around the pole indicating the ribbon for bandaging the arm in bleeding, and the basin the vessel to receive the blood). The barbers became so important that in 1461 the freemen of “The Mystery of Barbers, using the mystery or faculty of Surgery,” obtained a charter from Edward IV., and were incorporated under the name of “The Company of Barbers in London,” and none were allowed to practise save those admitted by the company. Although this charter was several times confirmed by subsequent kings, yet side by side with the regular barber-surgeons there grew up a body of men who practised pure surgery, and who actually formed a company, called “The Surgeons of London.” In 1540, by Act of Parliament, these rival companies were united and named “The Masters, or Governors, of the Mystery and Commonalty of the Barbers and Surgeons of London.” The third section of this Act, after reciting that persons using the mystery of surgery oftentimes meddled and took into their cure and houses people infected with pestilence, great pox, and other contagious infirmities, and also used or exercised barbery, as washing, or shaving, or other feats thereto belonging, “which was very perilous for infecting the King’s liege people resorting to their shops and houses and there being washed and shaven,” enacted “that no |5| manner of person within the City of London, suburbs of the same and one mile compass of said City of London, after the feast of the Nativity of Our Lord God then next coming, using barbery or shaving, or that hereafter shall use barbery or shaving within the said city, etc., he nor they, nor none of them, to his, her, or their use, shall occupy any surgery, letting of blood, or any other thing belonging to surgery, drawing of teeth only excepted; and furthermore, in like manner, whosoever that useth the mystery or craft of surgery within the circuit aforesaid, as long as he shall fortune to use the said mystery or craft of surgery, shall in nowise occupy nor exercise the feat or craft of barbery or shaving, neither by himself, nor by one other for him, to his or their use; and moreover, that all manner of persons using surgery for the time being, as well freemen as foreigners, aliens and strangers within the circuit aforesaid, before the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, next coming, shall have an open sign on the street side where they shall fortune to dwell, that all the King’s liege people there passing by may know at all times whither to resort for remedies in time of necessity [2].”