ABOUT BATHS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 32, 7 February 1931, Page 6

ABOUT BATHS

THE WASHING HABIT

GROWTH OF RECENT YEARS

MUNICIPAL POOLS

A time-honoured joko which never fails to pleaso and amuse an Englishman is that which expresses the point of view of tho foreigner that the English must be a very dirty race, because they aro always washing themselves, says a writer in the "Melbourne Argus." George dv Maurier made effective use of this joke in "Trilby," when ho depicted tho amazement of Svengali on visiting in succession the studios of little Billee, the Laird, and Taffy in tho hope of borrowing money, and finding each of them engaged in having a bath. Mr.. Bernard Shaw was not too proud to make use of this joke in "Arms and tile Man." It may be true that, compared with tho foreigner, the Englishman has always been a cleanly creature; but it is only within tho present generation that the cult, of the batli has been developed in England. There seems to be very little foundation for the tradition which existed when "Trilby" was written, nearly fifty years ago, that the Englishman made a fetish of a daily bath. Professor Thomas Okey mentions in his newly-published volume of autobiographical reminiscences that"i"baths y .are a comparatively modern innovation" in college life at Cambridge. A story even to-day goes the rounds of Oxford and Cambridge, writes Professor Okey, to the effect that the members of a certain college sent a deputation to the master praying that baths might be provided for the undergraduates in residence. "Baths! Baths!" exclaimed the master. "What do they want baths for? The men are only here eight weeks at a time." In the humblo homo in Spitaliiclds, East London, in which Professor Okey spent his boyhood sixty years ago th'ere'was no bath./ And in this respect his homo did not differ from tho other houses in the neighbourhood. '' Once a year only our father or grandfather indulged in a tvb —a great occasion—that of the yearly journey' by train to Berkshire to deal for a crop of osiers (for basket making) at a farm. at Twyford, bocause if thero were an accident on >the railway it would be so disgraceful not to bo found clean when undressed.'' NO BATHROOM. When the Countess of Oxford (Mrs. Asquith) went to live at 10, Downing Street (the official residence of the Prime Minister), when her husband became, head of a, Liberal Government.in 1908, she found there was no bathroom in the house. And Sir Lionel Oust, in his volume of personal reminiscences of King Edward VIL, mentions that,the King, on his accession to the Throne in 1901, had considerable improvements made at Windsor Castle, the chief feature of these improvements being '"a. large increase in the , bathrooms, in which tho Castle was remarkably, deficiont." "Previous visitors to tho Castle, especially royal visitors," added Sir Lionel Oust, "needed to be almost medieval in their fiabits, talthough I believe that tho accommodation at Windsor/was in.advan.ee of that td be found in many of the royal palaces on1- the Continent." Of course, it is possible to have a bath without having a bathroom, and the tradition about the Englishman's "cold tub" dates back before the era of the bathroom. The bath tub was a wide, shallow vessel, which was carried up to tho bedroom ■or dressing-room when a bath was to be taken. The wator to fill the tub was carried upstairs by a domestic servant, in the days when labour was cheap and plentiful. But it was generally a warm bath, not a cold bath, which was taken in the tub. And this .was by no means a. daily practice with the Englishman of the nineteenth century; while to go back further is to enter the dark ages as regards ablution. Dr. Johnson stoutly j declared, "I hate immersion-," and Samuel Pepys, whose diary covers a period of 9i years and goes into very minute details as regards his daily life, only once records having a bath, and that was, when he visited the famous baths at the town of Bath, which were originally built during the Roman occupation of Britain. DOUBTFUL. Mrs. Pepys accompanied him and also took a bath—but, not for tho first timo in her life. Three years earlier tho diarist wrote: ". . .my wife being busy in going with her woman to a hot houso to batho herself, after her long being within doors in the dirt, so that she now pretends to a resolution of being hereafter very'clean." And the seoptical Samuel added: "How long it will hold I can guess." Tho bathroom is now to be found in practically all houses and flats occupied by the wealthy and middle classes in England, but\it is a comparatively modern innovation. It was not a part of the original structure iof .English houses which are more than fifty years old. The hot water system installed in English houses before the new era of ' the geyser or bath ■ heater does not < date back beyond fifty i years, and without a hot-water supply a bathroom in a country with a climate \ like that of England would not be in . frequent use. For after all bathing is largely a matter of climate. In v, hot country a daily cold bath is Tefreshing; but in a cold country a warm bath is naturally preferred toi-a. cold one. . The hot-water system originally installed in English homes.consisted of "a boiler at the back of the kitchen .range, connected by two pipes with a small tank or cistern in the bathroom. As the water in the boiler became heated after the fire in. the kitchen range had been lit, steam rose through one of tho pipes into the cistern,-and cold water descended through the other pipe from tho cistern to tho boiler. In this way the water in the" cistern became hot aftor the fire in the kitchen range had been burning for a couple of hours. When tho fire was allowed to go out the water soon became cold. NOT DAILY. The fact that it was necessary *to wait for a eouplo of hours for a warm bath prevented the Englishman having .1 bath every morning before going out to work. The practice in most English homes was for each member of a family to have a warm bath in succession onco a week, the- fire in tho kitchen range being kept burning so as to provide a sufficient supply of hot water for all. The abolition of the kitchen range in favour of the gas stove rendered the hot-water system useless, but th'o installation of tho gas stove in tho kitchen was1 followed by the installation of the geyser in the bathroom. In the working class suburbs of London very few of the houses have bathrooms, but this, necessary convenience has been installed "in the flats built during the recent housing shortago by tho municipalities, for workingclass tenants. An official inquiry made in Bormondsey showed that out of 19,000 hoijsos in the borough, only 120 had bathrooms. And .there are other London suburbs in which the proportion of houses with bathrooms is lower than jn Bormondsey. But even if every house in such suburbs had a bathroom, there is no guarantee that it would be used for its proper purpose. Landlords have complained that baths installed in working* class homes in England aro generally used for storing the house-

hold's supply of coal. Sometimes tho bath is used aa the baby's cot, and sometimes a tenant fattens ducks in it I for Christmas dinner. A bathroom in every house in Lonaoii would not solve tlio problem of enabling all the residents of the great metropolis to have a weekly bath, much less a daily one. There are. hundreds of thousands of families in London vfho rent a couple of rooms in a house, and have no access to a "bathroom. There are thousands of single young mpn'and women who rent bed-sitting-rooms, without auy right to use of the bath in the house (if there is a bath). MUNICIPAL HOUSES. ; But for these there are available the municipal baths. These municipal baths, which arc to be found all over London, provide not only good swimming pools which are extensively patronised in the summer, but also a.larg* number of small bathrooms which. ar« patronised both jn the winter and summer. In these municipal bathrooms hot water and towers arc provided at price! ranging from 3d- to 6d. Theso municipal baths are used throughout'the week by thousands of people belonging to the working class, and by thousands or! male and female clerks, typists; shop assistants, and others who , live ia houses which have no bathrooms', , But any of theso patrons of the municipal baths who tools: a bath oftener than oiwse a week would be regarded as overdoing the cult of cleanliness. . ,- In Bermondsey, where, as already stated very few of the houses have bathrooms the municipal baths opened three years afeo are comparatively luxurious. The building has marble- walla and stained glass windows. In,addition to a large swimming pool, 'ther'a are a hundred bathrooms' special bathi for babies, Turkish baths, Russian, baths, and a large .recreation room. Tho Japanese are said by some travellers to be the cleanest race on fcartli as regards baths. But the Japanese ideas regarding modesty are. at variance with ours, for in Japan there il no attempt to secure privacy for bathers. "Every house Las a bath, which, usually consists of a circular- Wooden tub of considerable size," states the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica." "Tha tub is .placed out of doors in-, the garden or court, and all the members of one family are usually served- by on» filling of -exceedingly hot water. OUT OF BOOKS. In the more luxurious houses and native hotels the system is largely the; same, although the tub may' bo out of doors; and the bather in these ia given a thorough massage at the same time. In all Japanese Laths, public and private, there is no attempt to achieve privacy. Public baths for instance will frequently have large unprotectcd_ openings through which the public in the streets can watch tho bathers." Mixed bathing is tho rule in public baths, and bathing dress is not worn.' As a concession to European prudery, separation of the sexes is sometimes carried out to the extent of dividing the public baths into two sections by means of a rop» or -bamboo pole. * ] Tho statement that all members of a Japaneso family use the same water in. the bath tub requires some modification. Julian Street, in his book terious Japan," writes as follows concerning baths in Japan: "A well-order-ed Japanese bathroom has a false floor of wood, witli drains beneath it, so that one may splutter about with the utmost abandon. One does one's actual washing outside tho tub, rinsing off with warm water dipped in, a pail from a covered tank at ono end of tha tub. Not until tho cleansing process has been completed does one enter th» water in the tub to soak " and get warm."