THE 



ENGLISH CYCLOPEDIA. 



ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



BATHS AND WASHHOUSES, PUBLIC. 



BATHS AND WASHHOUSES, PUBLIC. 



BATHS AND WASHHOUSES, PUBLIC. Until within a very 

 few years there were in England no public bathing establishments 

 which in any measure answered to the Thermae of the Romans [BATH], 

 places where, for a very moderate sum, the poorer, as well as the more 

 affluent classes, might enjoy the use or the luxury of a warm, a tepid, 

 or a cold bath. There were numerous " Baths," but they were private 

 ones of a comparatively expensive character. It is certainly remark- 

 able that the metropolis of England should have been so long behind 

 that of other countries in providing inexpensive and convenient public 

 baths. But so it appears always, or almost always, to have been. 

 Among the vestiges of Roman London the remains of baths, and 

 especially of warm baths, have been frequently discovered in the 

 course of excavations made both within the walls of the ancient city 

 and outside of them. Even at the present day, in one of the curious 

 narrow lanes which extend from the Strand downwards to the Thames, 

 called Strand Lane, may be seen one of these old Roman baths, with 

 the clear spring flowing into it, and still quite available for its original 

 l>ni|>-.se. Remains of another Roman bath, which were found in 

 digging for the foundations of the Coal Exchange, have also been 

 preserved, and may still be seen. Like the other Roman baths found 

 in London, these, however, belonged evidently to private houses ; but 

 it is probable that public baths were provided for the use of the 

 citizens. In Rome, as we have seen [BATH], the public baths were 

 numerous and on a magnificent scale. In other cities there were also 

 public baths ; nor is it likely that Londinium was unprovided with 

 them, though they were perhaps of a comparatively humble class. Be 

 that as it may, there are no traces or records of public baths in the 

 city subsequent to the Roman dominion. The citizens, however, had 

 their Thames, not then a polluted stream; and there were several 

 smaller streams, now diverted or wholly lost, or else perverted into 

 sewers. There would seem, moreover, from the statement of Fitz 

 Stephen, who wrote in the reign of Henry II., to have been wells or 

 springs which were resorted to for bathing. It is not clear however, 

 that these were properly bathing-places, though, from the way in 

 which Stow speaks of them, it is likely they were. Stow (1598) 

 especially mentions a bathing-place well known in our own time : 

 " Somewhat north from Holywell is one other well, carved square with 

 stone, and is called Dame Annis the Clear ; and not far from it, but 

 somewhat west, is also one other clear water, called Perilous Pond, 

 because divers youths, by swimming therein, have been drowned." 

 There is little doubt that swimming was always practised by the 

 London youths wherever they could find a place fit to swim in, but 

 baths, except for medicinal purposes, do not seem anywhere in England 

 to have been constructed. Where, from its natural heat or supposed 

 sanctity, the water was believed to possess peculiar curative properties, 

 baths were indeed erected at an early period. The baths of Bath 

 were perhaps never wholly neglected from the time of the Romans, 

 who were well acquainted with their qualities. In the Tudor period 

 medicinal baths were in great repute. At Holywell, in Flintshire, is 

 a ifcry beautiful edifice, erected by the mother of Henry VII., the 

 lower part of which served the purpose of a plunging bath, while 

 the upper part was a chapel ; and the baths of Buxton were much 

 resorted to before the Reformation. Still no public baths appear to 

 have been anywhere erected for the mere purpose of ablution*. In 

 1648, an ordinance granting to a Doctor Chamberlain, "that he might 

 have the benefit of improving all baths for fourteen years together, 

 f < >r the good of the people," was read in the House of Commons, and 

 committed ; but his " improvement," no doubt referred to medicinal 

 ARTS AHD SCI. DIV. VOL. II. 



baths. It was not till the reign of Charles II. that the want of public 

 baths was, in a measure, supplied;; three or four baynios, as they 

 were called, being then erected in London. These were, however, 

 only for the wealthier classes, the charge being 4s. for each person ; 

 and, in fact, they were in a measure medicinal, being for " sweating, 

 hot bathing, and cupping ; " and, as they are described as after the 

 Turkish model, they were, no doubt, pretty much like the shampooing 

 batha of the present day. These places became the resort of dis- 

 reputable persons, and fell into discredit, the very name being long 

 generic for a house of ill-fame. In the course of the 18th century, a 

 few baths were opened. Perilous Pond, its name being changed into 

 Peerless Pool, was in 1743, walled in, enclosed, and converted into 

 an excellent swimming-bath. Others of a like character were formed 

 in subsequent years ; and during the present century there had come 

 to be a good sprinkling of swimming-baths about the metropolis, as 

 well as several establishments for warm and cold bathing. The warm 

 baths were, however, almost invariably too expensive for general use, 

 and the favourite resort for swimming was, as it still is, the Serpentine, 

 in which as many as 12,000 persons, it is said, in a report of the 

 Humane Society (1850), have been counted bathing at once, early on 

 a Sunday morning. The canals in the vicinity of London were and 

 are also resorted to by a large number of bathers. 



But if baths of any kind were rare, public washing-houses or laun- 

 dries were quite unknown. In olden days, indeed, the English were 

 not wholly, or perhaps generally, home-washers. The housewife or 

 the laundress carried the linen down to the nearest convenient spot by 

 the side of a stream, where " the shore was shelvy and shallow," like 

 that which the whitsters [washers] of Windsor resorted to, by Datchet 

 Mead, where Falstaff was so unceremoniously slighted from the buck- 

 basket. It is on record that the corporation of Reading, upon the 

 suppression of monasteries, petitioned for the grant of the Friary in 

 that town, for a town-hall, because their old hall stood by the river 

 Kennet, near the spot which was used by the townswomen for washing 

 clothes ; and the corporation say in their petition that the noise of the 

 women's clappers caused great interruption to the transaction of public 

 business. These clappers were, of course, wooden ones. Washing in 

 cold water, they used wooden battledores to beat their clothes, just as 

 the Uanchitaeuio of the Seine do still. In the present day, washing by 

 the river-side is, we believe, nowhere to be seen in England, but it is 

 common enough in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland ; and, as is well 

 known, the Parisian laundresses pretty generally resort to washing- 

 boats on the Seine. In Pepys's day, London families would seem to 

 have sent their linen to be washed by their servants at some washing 

 establishment ; for that most valuable of diarists tells us, that on August 

 12th, 1667, he dined all alone, " my wife and maids being gone over 

 the water to the whitster's with their clothes, this being the first time 

 of her trying this way of washing her linen." Again he notes (August 

 19th, 1668), " This week my people wash over the water, and so I little 

 company at home ; " by which we may suppose that Mrs. Pepys was 

 satisfied with her trial of " this way of washing her linen," as she con- 

 tinued to practise it for above a year. 



It was reserved for our own day to establish public baths and 

 laundries for the community generally, and for the poorer portion of it 

 in particular. The practical philanthropist early saw that the sanitary 

 improvement of the condition of the poor in our larger towns was a 

 work loudly calling for accomplishment. Medical men, clergymen, 

 city missionaries, parochial officers, and all whom either professional 

 duty or benevolence had led to enter the dwellings of the very poor, 



B 



