the shoemaker's kids always go barefoot

A doctor’s wife said: “The shoemaker’s kids always go barefoot.” I know what she means. All my friends envy me because my husband is a hairdresser. They don’t know that he hasn’t touched my head in years.

1973 October 1, Rolls My Own [pseudonym], “Dear Abby: Doctor’s Wife’s Misery Has Lots of Company”, in The Daily Freeman, volume CII, number 293, Kingston, N.Y.: Mid Hudson Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 7, column 3

She showed me most of her letters, often urging me to write little postscripts of my own, guilt-tripping me with that old saying about how the shoemaker’s kids always go barefoot (“and the writer’s friends would never hear from him if it weren’t for Alexander Graham Bell,” she was apt to add).

1988, Stephen King, chapter 9, in Bag of Bones, New York, N.Y.: Scribner, →ISBN, page 130

I’ve got a lovely wife who’s a professional photographer, three lovely grown children, a lovely old dog with bad hips and a good disposition, and an old house which is always in desperate need of repairs. My wife says that’s because the shoemaker’s kids always go barefoot and the carpenter’s house always has a leaky roof.

1999, Stephen King, “Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling”, in Hearts in Atlantis, London: Hodder & Stoughton, →ISBN, page 493

One thing I found out is that security researchers often bounce their ideas off each other when developing exploits. So not only do I get all the vulnerabilities that this guy found, I get everything his friends found, too. How did I break into the PC of a security expert? Well, as the saying goes, the shoemaker’s kids always go barefoot.

2003, Mark Burnett, “dis-card”, in Stealing the Network: How to Own the Box, Rockland, Mass.: Syngress, →ISBN, page 176

You know that saying about how the shoemaker’s kids always go barefoot? Well, it’s not true about florist’s families, at least not ours. We nearly always have a bouquet of something colourful and fragrant in our house.

2011, Catherine R. Daly, chapter 2, in Best Buds (Flower Girls; 3), London: Scholastic Children’s Books, published 2012, →ISBN, page 24