Jim Bradshaw: A fine barber police became fine art in Franklin

According to the old adage, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and there may be no better demonstration of that than in the adulations given by the editor of the Planters’ Banner when the barber in Franklin unveiled a new pole in front of his shop in 1852.
The newspaper proclaimed the pole’s unveiling nothing less than the “Revival of the Fine Arts in Franklin,” which may have had as much to say about the state of the arts as with the glories of the pole.
“Our enterprising fellow-citizen, Mr. James May, has erected in front of his shop, on Main Street, the most magnificent barber’s pole now standing in the great valley of the Mississippi,” the newspaper claimed.
The pole was 25 feet high and sat on a 4-foot-high base.
“From his unusual philosophic and sententious mood for some weeks past, it was evident to his ten thousand customers that his teeming brain was busy in elaborating some great design, but the most sanguine were not prepared for the stupendous miracle which greeted their gaze on Monday last, when that pole, resplendent with various dyes, first bathed in the glories of the morning sun.
“The north pole of late years has attracted itself a mournful interest, in consequence of the ill-fated expedition of that adventurous navigator, Sir John Franklin; and future explorations may draw the north pole from its present obscurity, but until some further developments are made touching the one or the other, May’s pole must continue without a rival in public interest, as it is without a parallel in the annals of any people.”
(Sir John Franklin was a British explorer who led three Arctic expeditions. He and most of his crew died in 1847 when his ships became icebound while he was searching for the fabled Northwest Passage, a sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Arctic Ocean.)
It’s doubtful that Mr. May had 10,000 customers, given that the population of Franklin was 871 at the time, but the good barber’s “philosophic and sententious thinking” — and the editor’s appreciation of it — certainly extended beyond the tonsorial and barber-pole arts.
In a later edition, the Banner editor called attention to May’s advertisement “for the bathing establishment which he has erected in the rooms adjoining his barber shop on Main Street.”
His baths would not only get you clean, but they’d ease your rheumatic pains, too.
They were said to be “especially agreeable” during warm weather, presumably not only for the bather but also those around him.
“Health, comfort, and cleanliness alike demand that frequent ablutions should be made,” the newspaper advised, “and those who are not prepared at home with the necessary apparatus for bathing will find these rooms are an agreeable resort during the warm season.
“Of his medicated baths and preparations to remove rheumatic pains, we are not competent to speak advisedly, but we know that his shower-baths are refreshing, very; and while everybody is striving to do something for the Constitution of the State [a new one was under discussion in Baton Rouge], no one should neglect the opportunity thus afforded of doing something for his own.”
May’s ad promoted “warm, cold, shower, steam, and salt water baths” daily from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m., with “medicated baths prepared at the shortest notice.”
A separate ad promoted the barber’s “celebrated Cortex Ointment” as “a certain cure for rheumatism and rheumatic pains.”
The ad for the ointment may help explain the editor’s reluctance to endorse outright May’s medicated bath. An apothecary shop just down Main Street from the magnificent barber pole was also a substantial advertiser and sold, among other things, a “galvanic belt” that took care of rheumatism and just about everything else.
According to that ad, “the beautiful and convenient application of the marvelous powers of galvanism and magnetism, has been pronounced by distinguished physicians, both in Europe and the United States, to be the most valuable medical discovery of the age!” All you had to do was wear the belt to get well.
The good people of Franklin should have all lived to 100 if they wore the belt and also took the baths, but the editor didn’t make that association, and wise editors certainly didn’t pick one advertiser over another.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, “Cajuns and Other Characters,” is available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.