During the rest of my term I always had my hair trimmed in my own fashion.

The prison crop, I may observe, is rather a custom than a rule; the regulations require only such hair-cutting and shaving as is necessary for health and cleanliness, but the criminal population affect short hair, and the difficulty is not to bring them under, but to keep them out of, the barber's hands.
Prison barbers are generally amateurs.

Of course the officers are above such work, and unless a member of the tonsorial profession happens to be in residence, the scissors are wielded by the first man who fancies himself a natural adept at the business.

The last barber I saw in Holloway Gaol was a coachman, whose only qualification for the work was that he had clipped horses' legs.

He wore a blue apron round a corpulent waist, and looked remarkably like a pork-butcher.