|
6: The rise & acceptance of the Victorian Turkish bath
If one excludes
those Turkish baths which were added to
existing hydros or hotels, then of approximately 450 individual Victorian
establishments which I have so far identified, 62% were owned by individuals or
partners, 19.5% by joint stock (ie, limited liability) companies, and just over
15.5% were managed by elected local governmental bodies.
Initially, most of the establishments were identified by
reference to classified city and town directories. Although this method was very
productive, there are a number of serious disadvantages which militate against any
notion of comprehensiveness or accuracy.
The usual difficulties
encountered in this approach have been noted by Shaw and Tipper and
are well-known to local historians. In addition, the two major
problems affecting this research were the large proportion of early
directories which were unclassified (making it unrealistic to attempt
to access the information needed), and the difficulty of assessing
accurate start and finish dates for the baths.
There is
also a particular problem in that many directories either did not indicate
the existence of Turkish baths separately from any other type of bathing
establishment, or else they did so inconsistently. It hardly needs saying
that it is quite impossible to identify every Turkish bath which opened
during the Victorian era nor, of course, would there necessarily be any
significant additional benefit from attempting to do so.
I n the early days most proprietors
started or bought their
Turkish baths without any previous experience. They saw what they perceived as a
good opportunity and hoped that there was a living to be made. Often they came
to the bath through their close involvement with one of the facs, or else they had
themselves been bathers in someone else's establishment.
Most proprietors owned only a single establishment, but there
were a few who, like Barter, owned more than half a dozen. Charles Bartholomew,
for example, several years before the arrival of the ubiquitous chain store,
built up a group of Turkish baths in seven different towns. Taking advantage of
the burgeoning railway system to maintain his personal control over them, he
claimed that he was, by the late 1880s, travelling 700 miles by train during the course of each
of his weekly rounds of inspection.
Only the Nevill family (seven branches), William Cooper
(eight) and Jonathan Hurn Faulkner (also eight) belonged to this elite group and
(unlike Barter and Bartholomew) all their branches were in a single city—London.
The
limited liability company
In
the second half of the nineteenth century, the rise of the limited liability
company (offering shares to ordinary members of the public) more or less
coincided with the rise of the Turkish bath. Nearly 100 joint stock companies
based in England and Wales have been identified, mostly by reference to the
files of discontinued companies (BT31) at the Public Record Office (PRO). Of these, around
10% either never went to
allotment, or never succeeded in their intention of running a Turkish bath.
Records for Scotland and (especially) Ireland are more dificult to come by.
Even at the PRO, many important files have been destroyed as a result of a
policy of random weeding. This was, unfortunately, the case with the papers of
Savoy Turkish Baths Limited, a company whose story would undoubtedly have
contributed much to the history of the Turkish bath in London and a company
whose origins we may never now discover. Such files importantly provide a
key to the aims and history of a company, listing also its directors and
shareholders; providing a more accurate dating of a company’s life; and in the
later files, annual reports and company accounts. Yet even so, files are
retained only for every fifth year, so that economic constraints determine that
there is a four-to-one chance of data critical to a proper understanding of a
company's past being destroyed—data usually unobtainable from any other
source. The information in company records provides dates which make
searching through appropriate contemporary newspapers more productive.
Nineteenth century newspaper reports are often extremely detailed.
Their accounts of meetings, and advertisements which show an establishment’s
facilities, hours and prices enable us to build a more comprehensive picture of
the national Turkish bath scene.In 1860, the extremely important and influential
London & Provincial Turkish Bath Company Limited was set up under the
auspices of David Urquhart to build and operate the celebrated Hammam in Jermyn
Street. A totally unique establishment, often patronised by Royalty, it survived
until 1941, closing only weeks before being destroyed during the London blitz.
While Urquhart's correspondence, most of it unpublished, includes letters
which tell of difficulties experienced during the setting up of the company, the
most valuable information about the early years at 76 Jermyn Street comes from a
different source.
One of Urquhart’s closest friends, the fac troubleshooter Major Robert
Poore, early became a shareholder in the company, and both he, and his family
afterwards, permanently retained a strong financial interest in it. It is
particularly fortunate, therefore, that the company’s very detailed first
minutes book has survived and is housed, together with other company documents
and memorabilia, with the Poore family papers at the Wiltshire County Record
Office, Trowbridge.
These documents, and the journals and correspondence of Major Poore, together
paint a fascinating picture of the day-to-day running of certainly the most
important of all Victorian Turkish baths. They also provide an insight into the
personalities of many of the company directors, some of whom, like Thomas Gibson
Bowles (founder of Vanity Fair and The Lady and grandfather of the
Mitford sisters) and Francis Francis (angling correspondent of The Field and
author of Diplomatic history of the Greek war ), were no less idiosyncratic and
argumentative than Urquhart.
7: Publicly
funded Turkish baths
|
