Rogue Barbers and Tall Tales
"He had lived in India and ...he told us this old yarn about one girl staying the night in a house of a friend, waking up to find her face wet and a man brandishing a razor over her. She screamed for help. Her friend, on rushing to her... [realized that her attacker was merely a] ...barber who had been in the habit of shaving the occupant of this room."
In the above quotation, Milly describes a story told to her by a man she met during one of her travels in 1900. This story illustrates one of the more unconventional dangers of travel. Below is a photo of a straight razor in the Eldon House collection. This one is, perhaps, similar to the razor the poor girl in this story had awoken to find perched above her neck.
George Butler & Co’s Keen Razor with quote from Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor Lost on the blade