2. Barber

The origin of the barber pole posted outside of nearly every barbershop which features the red and white spiraling stripes, dates back to Europe. Another one of the gruesome services a barber-surgeon would offer was the extracting of teeth. Whether he was applying leeches to a customer, delousing a lice infested patron, or performing bloodletting, once he was finished he would wrap the bloody bandages around the customer and later wash out the bandages and hang them on the white pole that sat outside his place of business.  The wind would cause the bandages to wrap around the pole, leaving bloodied red stains.  Sometime around the 1500's the poles outside were painted red and white to signify the older practice of the barber-surgeons bloody bandage hanging. It is often thought that the addition of the stripe of blue, most commonly found on an American Barbershop pole, is because of the colors of "Red, White and Blue" from our nation's flag. Barbers in the eighteen hundreds surgeon duties had moved away from barbers and they more focused on the grooming aspects