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The Roman Baths
2. The Company
On 29 January 1861, a little over three weeks after the initial notice had
appeared in The Lancet, a small group of men met in Septimus
Beardmore’s place at 20 Cockspur Street to sign the Memorandum of
Association of the newly formed Roman Bath Company Limited.
Six Directors were appointed: the Right Hon Wm Basil
Percy Fielding, Earl of Denbigh, Viscount Fielding of Newnham Paddox was the
first-named; then followed the
two physicians Henry Ancell and Septimus Beardmore, the surgeon Henry Walter
Kiallmark, Admiral James Buney, and Ponsonby Arthur Moore.
According to the memorandum, the objects of the
company—ambitious for one set up barely five years after the reintroduction
of the Turkish bath in England—were to construct and operate a number of hot
air baths similar to those constructed by the Romans over eighteen hundred
years earlier. Like the grander Roman baths of old, those maintained by the company
were also to have ‘such chambers, rooms and apartments for reading
refreshment and other purposes as may be required or convenient for persons using or frequenting [them].’
As architects, the directors appointed Thomas Henry
Wyatt (later to be president of the Royal Institute of British Architects)
and his younger brother Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt (Secretary to the Executive
Committee of the Great Exhibition, and first Slade Professor of Fine
Arts at Cambridge).
Septimus Beardmore was appointed the first Managing
Director of the company and, while he was to have a seat on the board, he
was to be subject to the supervision and control of the Directors.
Indicative of the scale of the business which the
directors had in mind was their approach to the remuneration of their Managing
Director. This was to be £350 per year ‘until two separate Bath
Establishments have been opened by the Company and £100 per annum for each
additional Establishment so opened.’
We don’t know why Cambridge was chosen for the
company’s first venture and have not so far come across any sign that there
was any form of what, today, we should call market research. It may
just have been a feeling that an old-established university town had the
type of population which would enthusiastically make use of the superbly
designed facilities the board planned to provide.
And on 15 March, only six weeks after the board’s
first meeting, possibly encouraged by conversations with people in
Cambridge, the company placed an advertisement in the personal column of The Times
asking anyone interested in ‘the construction of a Roman or Turkish bath’ in
Oxford to contact them.
We don’t know what response, if any, there was to this
advertisement, but nothing further seems to have been heard about an early
venture in Oxford.
According to its Memorandum of Association, the
company was to be financed by a public offer of 30,000 shares at a cost of
£1.0.0. each. The response of the investing community was not
over-enthusiastic and in June 1861 the board decided to arrange a public
meeting at the Cambridge Guildhall to drum up support.
At the same time, they extended the duration of the
share offer until the end of the university term, while still retaining
an earlier incentive to local people. This offered admission tickets to
the baths at the rate of fifty-two free tickets for every hundred shares
bought, available for use as soon as the baths opened—and just at the time when
the company would most need a
steady income.
The public meeting was chaired by the Mayor of
Cambridge and ‘there was a large attendance’ which included several college
dignitaries, several directors, and the architect, Matthew Digby Wyatt.
Beardmore spoke about profits being made by Dr Barter’s
Turkish baths in Ireland, and by Roger Evans’s
London establishments in both Bell Street and Palace Street—though the
proprietor’s name was not mentioned. At no stage did
he give any projections of expected profits for the baths which the new
company was now proposing to build; nor, surprisingly did anyone ask for any
from the floor. But he
did indicate that any money raised by the company locally would be expended on
the Cambridge baths, and that the board would welcome the addition of some local directors.
Admiral Buney quoted views of doctors and others about
the medical benefits of the bath, and while there were a few questions
from the floor, none required any answer from the architect. As is usual at
such meetings, a resolution of general support was unanimously carried,
being proposed on this occasion by Alderman Henry Staple Foster, a former
Mayor of Cambridge.
Initially, each of the five directors held 50 shares, but
on 18 February 1862 the share register showed that Septimus Beardmore had
increased his holding to 250 shares. Other large shareholders were the
Reverend Ino E Cooper (100 shares) and two members of a wealthy Cambridge banking
family, Charles Finch Foster (300 shares) and Henry Staple Foster (200 shares). In addition, there were about forty
small shareholders whose addresses were in Cambridge.
Even at this stage, assuming that all the payments were
made, the company had a relatively small sum to play with—certainly
much less than £2,000—of which, in theory at least, the Managing Director’s
first annual salary would eat up £350. It must already have been clear that
finances were going to be tight.
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