William Fee was a young Irishman indentured to the Potomac Company of Virginia. Disliking the demanding work of lock making and river improvement, or perhaps resenting his bondage, he ran away from the canal in 1786, only to be recaptured. The company shaved off Fee's eyebrows and sheared two streaks in his hair, intersecting to form a cross, as punishment and to mark him as a miscreant. Francis Murray, another absconding servant who lost his eyebrows when apprehended, also had an iron collar forged around his neck, the mark of the incorrigible fugitive. Company policy was that shaving should continue every week “until their behaviour evinces that they are brought to a sense of their duty.” Many of the Potomac's servants, bought from European ships in Philadelphia and Baltimore, refused to be complaisant beasts of burden, and absconding was rife on company works, as it was wherever indentured servitude was practiced.