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3:
Dr Barter
& the birth of the Victorian Turkish bath
Basic facts concerning Dr Richard Barter (1802-70) can be found in the
Dictionary of national biography and in the Compendium of Irish biography.
A
book of personal recollections was written anonymously after his death
by a close friend, a writer of popular medical tracts (probably Mrs C G Donovan,
who helped to pay for the building of the People’s Turkish Bath
which Barter opened for the poor of Cork on 3 February 1863. This
was intended as a ‘personal tribute’ providing useful
(though occasionally inaccurate) background information on Barter’s
life and work—he had a developed social conscience, not always
approved of by the author. A better account of the man as a respected
and much-liked hydropathist can be found in the tenth chapter of The
rise and progress of hydropathy in England and Scotland by
Richard Metcalfe, himself a renowned hydropathist with a veritable
social conscience.
The
rise of hydropathy—the
water cure
Dr
Barter first became interested in water as a therapeutic agent soon
after the cholera epidemic of 1832. A decade later, he was converted
to hydropathy after attending a lecture in Cork given by Captain
Claridge the popular advocate of Vincent Preissnitz's
water cure. Barter then visited England to study the new system as
practised at Malvern by Drs Wilson and Gully, and at Ben Rhydding in
Ilkley, Yorkshire, by Stansfield.
Hydropathy,
with its uncomfortably Spartan ‘cold water cure,’ was extremely
fashionable at that time and is surely worthy of a modern history in
its own right. A short, and amusing, account can be found in Turner.
Most of the major practitioners, like those mentioned above, wrote,
perhaps, for a captive readership: those among their patients who
wished to know how to continue their treatment on returning home.
Amongst other British practitioners may also be mentioned
Smedley, Hunter, MacLeod, and Constantine. Most of the works in this
category appear, in part, like advertisements for the patent medicines
their authors so despised: lists of complaints cured, and testimonials
from their patients.
Despite
much opposition from his medical colleagues, Dr Barter opened his own
hydropathic establishment, St Ann(e)’s, at Blarney in 1843. Always
open to new ideas, he first installed a Russian bath and, in 1856,
having read The Pillars of Hercules, invited Urquhart to
visit St Anne’s to help him build a Turkish bath for his patients.
The
beginnings of the Victorian Turkish bath
The
first experimental bath stood in a ‘little beehive-shaped thatched
building’ and failed due to its inability to heat the air
sufficiently. Barter persevered having wisely sent his nephew to Rome
to study the ruins of the Roman baths, and on 5 June 1856, the
Urquharts were among the 300 guests at the laying of the foundation
stone for a new Turkish bath at St Anne’s.
Within
a few months Urquhart was in Manchester where he helped William
Potter, at that time secretary of the Manchester Foreign Affairs
Committee (FAC), to build the first Turkish bath in England which was
open to the public. The exact opening date is not yet known but it was
first announced in a letter to the editor of the Sheffield free
press (later reprinted in its sister paper the Free press,
published in London).
It
says much for Urquhart's advocacy of the new bath, and the publicity
which he and his committees generated, that when Potter placed a
quarter-page display advertisement (surely the first for a Turkish
bath) in the following year's local directory, it was not considered
necessary to describe what a Turkish bath actually was, or how it was
to be taken.
Back
at St Anne's, Barter soon realised that the baths in Turkey, as
described by Urquhart, were but a debased form of their Roman
original. Contemporary Turkish baths were too humid and, to be
medically beneficial, the necessary heat could only be tolerated by
the human body if it was dry heat. Barter successfully built a new
bath which became known in the British Isles as the ‘improved
Turkish bath’, and in 1859 he became the first to take out a patent
relating to the construction of such baths. It is a tribute to him
that even today in many parts of Europe—as, for example, in
Baden-Baden—the Turkish bath is known as the Irish-Roman bath.
Other
early Turkish baths in Ireland
Barter
was soon either the owner of, or at least associated with, ten further
establishments in Ireland, though none was so successful as St Anne's.
His People's Bath in Cork was the first attempt in Europe to provide a
Turkish bath for the working classes and much prejudice and opposition
had to be overcome in its establishment. It charged 3d. for men and
women, and 2d. for children. Even so, it was not always profitable.
Between 13 November 1871 and 2 November 1872, however, it provided
14,567 baths (over 45 per day on average) and made a profit for the
year of Ł18.3.8
Most
of the early Turkish baths in Ireland were purpose-built. Some, like
the Saracenic edifice in Dublin's Lincoln Place, must have seemed
exotic to those who, in the footsteps of Joyce's Bloom in Ulysses,
'walked cheerfully towards the mosque of the baths. Remind you of a
mosque, redbaked bricks, the minarets'. But writers in the building
journals of the day clearly seemed to approve, and were delighted that
Irish builders were seen to be so capable of executing this unusual
design.
Leopold
Bloom, incidentally, did not enter the Lincoln Place
establishment—at least, not on 16 June 1904 (Bloomsday).
Instead he paid 1s.6d. for a bath at the Turkish and Warm Baths at
nearby 11 Leinster Street; the 'mosque of the baths' had closed five
years earlier in 1899. The building itself, however, was not
demolished for another seventy or so years, and must have retained its
balneological association in the minds of Dubliners for many years
after the baths closed.
Early
Turkish baths in England
In
England the Turkish bath spread most rapidly around the industrial
areas of the north, especially in those towns where there was an fac.
London, however, did not have one until 1860 when Roger Evans opened a
small establishment in Bell Street, just off the Edgware Road.
Initially
at least, baths in England tended to be conversions of spare rooms or
basements in a proprietor’s own house or shop, as at 182-4 Euston
Road, London, where John Maxfield had a basement and ground floor
converted to baths, while the upper floors housed a private hotel. But
soon, specially designed baths also began to be erected. Provision
ranged from the ultimate in internal luxury and exterior magnificence
considered appropriate for Regency Brighton to such basic facilities
as those designed by James Shotton, at 4 Cecil Street for the
North Shields Turkish Bath Company Ltd.
Some
buildings, like the magnificent Roman Baths in Jesus Lane, Cambridge,
probably designed by Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt and still standing
(though now a restaurant), seem to have been built without too much
thought. The directors sought advice as to how high the
hot-room temperatures should be, but did no research to determine if
there was anyone in Cambridge who would patronise them.
The
Roman Baths closed within two years; their ‘Marble Top and Linen
Press’, their ‘Patent Weighing Machine and Patent Machine for
Washing, Wringing, and Mangling’, their ‘India Matting’ and
‘38 Dozen of Turkish and Bath Towels’, were all to be sold at
auction by Charles Wisbey on Tuesday 17 May 1864.
The
first Turkish baths in Wales and Scotland
While
there is ample evidence to indicate which were the first Victorian
Turkish baths in Ireland and England, it is by no means clear which
were the first such establishments to open in Wales and Scotland.
The
first to open in Wales was probably in a house in Llandudno named Ty
Aildro. Built in 1864 by the Llandudno Turkish & General
Bath Co Ltd, it offered facilities for six bathers.
It is
even less clear which was the first establishment to open in Scotland.
An advertisement published in 1863 for Peter Jack's Reformed Roman or
Oriental Baths at 366 Argyle Street, Glasgow, claimed that this
was 'the first HOT
AIR BATH in
Scotland. But in another advertisement, which appeared the following
year, Jack merely
claimed that this was the 'largest, most complete, and best
ventilated' Turkish bath, and that it was 'Unequalled in
Scotland.
In a
directory published four years earlier, this establishment had been
referred to as the Argyle Vapour Baths and Jack may merely have been
suggesting that it was the vapour bath for which he was claiming a
first. However, the wording of the advertisement (in the form of
an announcement that the first hot air bath in Scotland had just
been completed) makes this possibility seem unlikely.
Earlier,
two hydropathic establishments had opened Turkish baths within months
of each other. Alexander Monro and T H Meikle, whose Lochhead
Hydropathic Establishment in Aberdeen already had a variety of baths,
opened a large architect designed Turkish bath possibly during the
first week in January 1860, but more probably some time towards the
end of the previous month.
But
Monro's own Aberdeen water cure journal had already
reprinted a notice from the Scottish press of 11 October
1859 to the effect that the Dr James Lawrie's Sciennes Hill
Hydropathic Establishment at Newington, Edinburgh, had been 'open but
a few weeks' and had 'an almost endless variety of baths.' This would
suggest a date somewhere around the end of September 1859 if the
'endless variety' included a Turkish bath. Although this was not
specifically stated, it does seem most likely. Lawrie, who had studied
medicine at Edinburgh with Barter, visited him at St Anne's in 1857
(where he also met Urquhart) and modelled his own Turkish bath on
Barter's. It is hardly conceivable that he would have opened his
establishment before the Turkish bath was completed.
Nevertheless,
we still have no direct evidence that this was the first Turkish bath
in Scotland since Lawrie, in his own 1864 book on the Turkish bath,
only claims that his was the first in Edinburgh. There is clearly
scope here for further research.
Contemporary
building journals, especially The Builder and Building news,
often included illustrated accounts of Turkish baths which had just
been completed, or the plans of those about to be built. Fortunately,
many of these accounts are extremely detailed, not only with regard to
the construction of a building, but also in their description of its
furnishings and equipment. Together, they help paint a comprehensive
picture of the Victorian Turkish bath, its facilities, and (perhaps
surprisingly) the procedures followed by its bathers.
Dr
Alastair Durie,
Senior Lecturer, Dept of Economic & Social History, Glasgow
University, for information about Lochhead Hydropathic Establishment
4: Some early
publications
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