NO NIGHT BATHING!

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 281, 17 February 1928, Page 8

NO NIGHT BATHING!

IT is not true, as a stranger would suspect, that Aucklanders are at leisure all day and work at night. Nor does the committee of the City Council, which fixes the hours for swimming in the municipal baths, really labour under this misapprehension. It is merely subject to the delusion that people do not desire to bathe at night. Therefore, it closes the baths at 6 p.m. — and to ensure that life shall be made comfortable these muggy evenings, the City Council issues doleful warnings against the free use of fresh water, so that the tired and dusty worker, performing his ablutions in the bathroom of his home, is made almost to feel criminal as the result of his natural urge for cleanliness and comfort.

The excuse of the authorities for refusing to open the Parnell and Shelly -Beach baths is that the baths do not pay. To preserve this position, they shut them at night—and shut out money. When urged to permit night-bathing, they declare this would mean the employment of two shifts for supervision, which they could not afford. Does it need the services of a highly-paid expert to collect the bathers’ pence at the ticket-box? The caretaker could very well be relieved of this humble duty to devote his time to watching the safety of the bathers; and if additional hours of bathing meant longer hours for the caretaker, the position could he very easily remedied by employing a qualified life-saver for a .few hours each evening. This would be quite an inexpensive matter; and as far as the ticket-box is concerned, there are any number of girls wbo would be glad to preside of an evening in that important place for a pound a week. The argument that the loss on the baths would be increased by opening them for night bathing is surprisingly ridiculous. Could any sane person imagine private enterprise closing on summer nights the gates of such a monopoly as exists in the only two cold salt-water baths available for a city of 200,000 people? Not unless it were a very Giibertian concern. If the committee which now controls these baths cannot do better with them, both for profit and for the convenience of the public, it is time it handed them over to competent business management.