A barber who played a major role in the Theatre Boycott that helped demolish segregation and whose business served as a hub for the community has died.Earlston “Scratchie” Lawrence was 95.Friends said Mr Lawrence, whose shop is on Angle Street in North Hamilton, was a veteran member of Devonshire Recreation Club and a one-man repository of sports history and folklore.Dale Butler, a former Progressive Labour Party MP and minister, said Mr Lawrence was a “legend” and one of the island’s longest-serving barbers.He said: “The barbershop played a key role in the community and he and Theodosia Lambert were partners there for 60-plus years.“It was inside his barbershop that many of us, myself included, learnt about outstanding football and cricket players.“Mr Lawrence was like an oral historian — you would sit there just to listen to the stories without even needing a haircut.”Mr Butler added: “He was also a fanatical fan of Devonshire Cougars. It was rare for him ever to miss a game.”Mr Lawrence was among those recognised by the Senate in June for their participation in the Theatre Boycott protests of 1959. Scratchie’s Barber Shop was celebrated as a landmark in 2017 with the first Priscilla Wilkinson awards.The awards were established by Mr Butler to honour neighbourhood businesses.Mr Lawrence said at the time that he took to cutting hair like a duck to water.He added: “I found that I had a good touch for it — I enjoyed it and people enjoyed coming here.“I called myself the barber that gave customers the profile that they needed. I could change peoples’ features the way that they wanted. That was my trademark.”The shop was a meeting place for customers to debate sports and politics and its walls are still decorated with sports photographs and memorabilia.Mr Lawrence, whose nickname was said to derive from the chicken scratch he sold when he worked in a grocery store as a child, started the business in 1942.Mark Steede, the president of Devonshire Recreation Club, said yesterday that Mr Lawrence was a club “stalwart” known to members as Uncle Scratchie.Mr Lawrence served as a manager of the Cougars and was a medic at the club for 50 years.Mr Steede said: “They say his start date for Devonshire Cougars was 1958. Before that, he was an avid follower of the Pembroke Juniors.“He said he had two left feet and that’s why he never played, but he loved football and with him, it was Cougars for life.”The attachment to the Cougars endured even though Mr Lawrence once joked that watching the team’s troubles on the pitch would give him a stroke.Mr Steede said: “Back then, Cougars would lose a lot but always had a close chance of a goal.“Uncle Scratchie always had a vintage Cougars jacket — I would ask when he retired if I could have it, but it would not fit me.”Mr Lawrence was still a medic for the team as it improved over the 2004-05 season and players applied his sports rub as a pregame ritual.Mr Steede said in 2005, when the Cougars lifted the League trophy for the first time, one of their instructions was to take their motorcade to “Uncle Scratchie’s house” in Pembroke.He added: “He came out with the biggest smile and tears in his eyes as if we had delivered what he finally wanted.“He was a cool guy, always with the same cool, calm and collected temperament,“He could share his energy to relax you — even in his old age, he could be a man of few sentences but his smile was louder than anybody else in the room.”Mr Steede said: “He was iconic of Bermuda and very important to the community, both through Devonshire Rec and his barbershop. A lot of people can take away his memory.”