Site of the first Victorian Turkish bath in London

< Photo: Shifrin
              

5 Bell Street, off the Edgware Road, site of the first Victorian Turkish bath to be built in London.

'The proprietor [Roger Evans] was an uneducated man, of much good sense, but strong prejudice, absorbed by one idea—that the bath was the antidote to all human defects, whether physical or moral; and I think he was almost prepared to pledge himself to the doctrine, that the Turk is the perfection of human nature. He had been a mechanic, and kept a small coffee-shop. Having some business which brought him to [Rickmansworth], he there saw Mr [Urquhart], and went into the bath which that gentleman has most hospitably provided for all comers.

'He was then a severe sufferer from tic douloureux, and had been so for years. Receiving great relief from the pain (and the only relief he had ever experienced), he determined to build a bath in his little house in Bell-street, intending it  for the use of mechanics at a small fee of one shilling. He built the bath, I believe,  with his own hands, and, by dint of great self denial, managed to improve it gradually, and his patron gave him the assistance of his plans and patronage. This for a long time was the only public bath in London. He succeeded well in Bell-street...'  §

§ 'The Turkish bath' / R H Goolden   The Lancet   (26 Jan 1861)   pp.95-7   (Letter on proposed Turkish baths at St Thomas's Hospital, with author's letter to the hospital's Treasurer appended.)

This page enlarges an image or adds to the information found on the following pages:

The Victorian Turkish Bath Movement. Pt 4: Foreign Affairs Committees & their baths

London's first Victorian Turkish bath. Part 3: The first in London

Early problems and controversies. Part 5: doctors' attitudes

A working class movement