THE BARBER
Fred Nethercott: I worked in Stapleton Hospital. It was for 'mental defectives.' I was a barber. It was damn hard work mind — shaving them, keeping them clean. I had two patients working with me. What they called higher grade patients. I'd get a penny an hour for them extra on my money. That was 1950 up to 1960.
At that time there was a fourty-eight hour week. And in Stapleton Hospital there was a lot of part timers — nurses who had been married, done their nursing, brought up a family and gone back in again. And do you know the pettiness of local government in them days. It had to be heard and seen to be believed. They used to have a quarter of 48 hours, then they used to have half of 48 hours, and that was the hours that was allocated to these part timers.
They wouldn't get no holidays. Your stamp was about half of a normal stamp. If you were working so many hours you were entitled to all the privileges of the man working 48 hours. But if they cut off an hour then you became part time under their ruling. Instead of doing 25 hours you were doing 24. And you'd lose all the privileges. And the rows and the pettiness that used to come up over that business.
Alma Dolling: It's the same the whole world over. The part timers gets the brunt. I've only ever worked part time. Now if anything goes wrong, part timers gets it. If the till's short, the part timer gets it. I worked in a shop. Someone had to go so the part timer had to go. You does the work of a full timer.
I've never been able to work full time. I could have worked full time but it would have interfered with my family. I had three daughters and I just couldn't have coped with it. You would have thought they would have changed that. All they years ago it was bad and it's still bad today.
Fred Nethercott: There was a thousand patients in Stapleton Hospital mind. The official name for it was a 'mental defective institution'. They called it the institution for years. It was neither a mental home nor a hospital. It was a dumping ground — for all the misfits about caused through half starvation when the mothers were bearing them. Silly children as they used to call them. It was a halfway house. We used to get them come in there, into ward one, which was the receiving ward. About a dozen beds in there. It had the seclusion room in there. What we called the padded cell.
You'd get a person that would come in there who was as mad as a hatter and he'd be put in the seclusion room. First of all a magistrate would see him — have a look at him together with a doctor. Usually a police doctor. And together they would decide whether he was certifiable. According to how the magistrate and the doctor thought of him — he was either given a ten day order or a twenty one day order. If his physical condition was very low they would give him a twenty one day order.
But very often you'd find they were low physically and low mentally with it. At the end of twenty one days the same people come in — sometimes two magistrates and they'd ask him all sorts of silly questions. I've been in the ward when they've been asking, 'Hello Mr. Smith, how are you?' And in comes Mr. Smith, nothing on, only a dressing gown. Sits down. Starts shivering.
Then they'd say, 'Do you know what the date is today? What is your name? And he had to answer it. I used to be perhaps behind the scenes, shaving or cutting hair. And my ears would be flapping at this. And I'd think to myself, 'How daft can people become'. I lost all faith in magistrates and such like. You just imagine, they're asking him silly questions — in my opinion.
I asked once or twice the head male nurse, 'Do you know what date it is Dick? You've got to think.' And yet they was assessing him on his answers.
Next door to me was the shoemaker. He had two high grade patients working with him. He didn't have a key but sometimes he'd have to go on different wards, Al or A2 or A3, to measure up a patient. The keys always had to be hung up behind the door, so that you had your eyes on them all the time. That was a ruling. Sometimes your heart would drop - your stomach would turn to water.
I'd give the keys to Jock and I'd forget. I'd say to Bob, one of my assistants, 'Bob, have you got the keys on you?'
'No sir!' Them keys was punishable by instant dismissal if I lost them.
Alma Dolling: They used to put unmarried mothers out there years ago, in Manor Park. A friend of mine had a baby and she went out there. Years ago if you had a baby and your mother wouldn't keep you, you did have to leave home. Your mother did say, 'You've got to go'. You didn't have anywhere to go. But you could go to Manor Park so many weeks before you did have your baby. Then you did have your baby, then you did stay there six or eight weeks after. And they did have you scrubbing the floors, and seeing to the baby.
Then if you couldn't find anywhere to live you could go and work for Manor Park and they did keep the baby in there. It was called Stapleton Hospital then.
Fred Nethercott: Looking back on it I can never understand how I stuck it. I used to get a series of shocks. It's bound to happen. When you're shaving at the rate of a hundred patients a day, you'd get a patient who'd have a fit as you're halfway shaving him. You'd have to put your razor quickly down and hang on — shout for Charlie or Harry or somebody. Bob (my assistant) used to be very good at that. 'Allright, allright Mr. Barber', he used to say. He used to come over, he would fling himself, he would sit on him. Still the lather brush in his hand, dripping . . .a paint brush he used to use, not a lather brush.
Well my nerve give out. And in the end I had pains across the chest. I went to the doctor and the doctor said, 'The Nethercott family is prone to this. You've got rheumatic across the chest!' So I had these plasters to put on, sticky things. Looking back on it you think how bloody stupid they are. And I was out for about three months, slowly going downhill. Worried like hell about the job. Then I got better. Went away to convalescent with the union — Transport and General Workers. That was in '55.1 went off to littleport.
I went back to Stapleton Hospital, went back there for about 12 months. Then I packed it in. I realised how damned stupid I was.
Then I worked in town, at the bottom of Christmas Steps, for twelve months. I didn't like it there at all. It wasn't me to 'Yes sir, No sir'. Then an advert came up. One of these barbers in 100 Fishponds Road had packed it in. I rang up — made an appointment. Over the phone he said, 'Let's see, Nethercott did you say. Are you the Nethercott that worked out at Stapleton Hospital?'
I said, 'Yes'. 'Oh', he said. 'See you on Wednesday.' I was on tenderhooks then and I went there on Wednesday and almost before I got through the door the secretary stood up and shook hands and asked two or three questions. 'That's all. All right,' he said, 'you can start Monday.'
'I can't start Monday,' I said. 'I've got to give a week's notice.' I gave them a week's notice and started on the following week. I was there then right up until they closed down. Six years ago.
They threw a lot out of work mind, because there was a big laundry there. And they used to do the laundry work for a lot of the hospitals.
Why did I become a barber? My brother came out of the 1914 war. I was about eleven. I was born in 1909. He was a barber before. He bought a little shop with the money he had from the army. He had a little bit of money because he was a battalion barber. It wasn't 'Will you come up and give me a hand.' Nobody asked in them days. It was 'You, Up!' You was detailed. And I went up and helped him. Lathering, standing on a box.
Towards the end of my life as a barber the thing that used to irritate me was, you'd get customers coming in that would want a particular style - which in them days was what they called a Tony Curtis style. That was prevalent. You'd get a kid come in and he'd want a Tony Curtis. Now I'd look at his face, and I don't know why I should have this, but I always had the ability to see the finished article. I could immediately visualise it. And if I didn't like it ... 'Oh dear, he's not going to be satisfied with it.'
One lad would want a Tony Curtis and you'd look at him and think it would suit him. So you'd cut his hair in a Tony Curtis. And you'd blow it and he was satisfied. He was delighted. His mate, a totally different boy altogether — short, stubby boy, fat face. 'How do you want yours done lad?' 'Tony Curtis.'
'Oh dear', you think. 'He's never going to look right.' I did try to talk him out of it and give him a style that suited him. That used to frustrate me. I think it's one of the trades that's changed as much as any. I don't regard it as a trade. It was a profession. I know it sounds a bit bigheaded this — but he was equally important as a surgeon, or a doctor or a dentist. He was using some sharp instruments mind.
The barber was the first doctor. The method of doctors was to bleed a person. Well barbers used to have to do that job. He was used to sharp instruments. A barber is older than a surgeon. The origin of the barber's role is — they used to go round with rags. The barber would do the bloodletting, which was usually in the side of the neck or behind the knee, or in the crook of the arm — where there was a secondary artery. He'd open up that and allow it to bleed. Then he'd bind it up with one of these cloths.
That patient would have to stop there until it scurried as they called it. Then he would remove the cloth, and then if he was a specialist at the job, and the patient was important enough, he'd go and get a cobweb and put a cobweb on it. Then he'd put that rag, wet with blood, round this bit of stick and that would dry.
