3: The class barrierOutside London, some local authorities did
install a Turkish bath. Southampton Corporation waited till 1894—and
then pretended that it was a vapour bath.
But Bradford Corporation just took a chance and
installed one as early as 1867. John Howarth, superintendent at
Bradford, was in no doubt about its value:
As a cleansing agent, pure and simple, there is no
comparison between the Turkish and the ordinary warm bath; because a
person may take a warm bath and still not be clean, as may be proved
by his taking a Turkish Bath immediately afterwards.
Such statements were often resented. Dr Christopher
Samuel Jeaffreson, an advocate of the bath, told the BMA:
It is somewhat repugnant to the English notion to
be told that we are a dirty set of fellows; that our baths, our
sponges, our soap, and flannels, only increase our filth by rubbing
the dirt in; and that cleanliness can only be obtained, not ‘by the
sweat of our brows’ only, but that we must be washed from within
outwards by myriads of rippling streams of perspiration.
To no avail did Richard Metcalfe propose that
Paddington Vestry provide Turkish baths for the working class because
air was more plentiful than clean water and cheaper to heat, and that
more people could more economically progress through a Turkish bath than
could occupy separately partitioned warm water baths, which had to be
emptied, cleaned and filled afresh for each bather.
So, for nearly 50 years, until 1905 (when Camberwell
Borough Council opened its Old Kent Road Baths) the provision of cheap
Turkish baths for London’s poor was constrained by the need of private
establishments to make a profit.
Though not required by law to do so, most felt it
necessary to provide different classes of baths. The Leeds Road Turkish
bath, opened by the Bradford foreign affairs committee as early as
December 1857, felt compelled to charge three different rates (1s., 6d,
and 3d).
Nevertheless, as true disciples of Urquhart, they
emphasised in their first advertisements that,
The
Turkish Bath is known to be much needed by all classes,—is one of
the best means for promoting sanatory well-being, and they have fixed
the Charges at so very low a rate as to meet the wants of all.
Persons bathing between the hours of FOUR to NINE
in the evening at a charge of THREEPENCE have all the privileges of
those paying the highest price in the morning.
In practice, of course, this separated bathers no
less than if they had advertised three separate classes of bath.
The co-operative baths in Rochdale were opened in
1859 at a cost of £200, raised by working men in 1/- shares. But even
here there were three classes of bather at 2/-, 1/-, and 6d.
Urquhart had seen people of all classes mixing freely
in the baths of Constantinople. Putting his ideals into practice, he
made the Turkish bath at Riverside, his Rickmansworth home, freely
available to any invalid who approached him.
Class was irrelevant to him and, in politics also, he
helped all who were serious in intent. He had, according to Lord Morley,
a singular genius for impressing his opinions upon
all sorts of men, from aristocratic dandies down to the grinders of
Sheffield and the cobblers of Stafford…
In 1856 he had written in The Free Press that
the Turkish bath was, ‘a means of destroying the barriers which now
separate entirely the lower from the higher classes’. He continued:
No barrier of ceremony, of pride, or of habit, is
so great as that of filth which, in these times, especially in large
towns, separates the poor from the rich, as if they were not members
of the same state, but, as Disraeli has phrased it, ‘the two nations’.
In truth, there was no way that Turkish baths at 2d
each could be made to cover their costs, especially with the price of
coal fluctuating over the years.
4:
The Subscribers' meeting
