As a lifelong sufferer from neuralgia, Urquhart’s
own primary concern was the therapeutic properties of the Turkish bath.
But, unlike Richard Barter, this was not his main emphasis in promoting its
public use.
First and foremost, he campaigned to promote the
widespread building of Turkish baths as the most effective means
of promoting personal hygiene and cleanliness, ‘for the cleansing of
the mind and body go hand in hand’.
Second, he believed that Turkish baths should be
cheap enough to be accessible to the poorest members of society.
Third, and perhaps surprisingly, he believed that
Turkish baths could break down class barriers by providing a place where
theycould easily mix.
Urquhart was not the first to espouse Turkish baths. Strictures
on the personal cleanliness of the English, with a description of the
hammams of the Turks was privately published by its anonymous author
in 1828, twenty-two years before Urquhart’s The Pillars of Hercules
brought the bath to a much wider public in 1850.
Yet the harder-hitting, better-argued Strictures made
no impact. Richard Beamish, in an 1859 lecture, suggested that,
It is true that an anonymous author had, in 1828,
anticipated with equal force and not less erudition, all that Mr
Urquhart had advanced in 1850, but he was not so fortunate as to find
a Dr Barter to give practical effect to his suggestions.
But it seems more likely that Strictures was
just a few years too early, appearing before the cholera epidemics of
1831, 1848, and 1853 and before enabling acts of 1846 and 1847
encouraged the establishment of public baths and wash-houses. By this
time cleanliness had become an issue of general concern.
But if Strictures was a few years too early,
Urquhart was a few years too late. When the legislation was enacted
there was no mention of Turkish baths because they did not yet exist.
Consequently, solicitors in many local authorities advised that they
could not legally be included in bath houses built at public expense.
Vapour baths, however, had existed prior to the Acts, and were
therefore permitted.
The 1846 act legislated that there should be at least
two classes of baths, that there should be not less than twice as many
baths for the labouring classes as for all other classes together, and
that no warm bath, shower bath, or vapour bath intended for the
labouring classes could cost more than twopence.
Had Urquhart written about the Turkish bath on his
return from Constantinople in 1837, or had he campaigned while the acts
were being considered, then his dream of Turkish baths for the masses
might have stood at least some chance of success.
Instead, for many years afterwards, claims that the
Turkish bath was more economical than warm water baths and more
effective as a cleansing agent, usually fell on deaf ears.
3:
The class barrier
