The Victorians often claimed that cleanliness is next to godliness. The labour pangs of cleanliness began in the mid-19th century and were overseen by a most unlikely midwife. Edwin Chadwick was a civil servant who grasped the link between sanitation and disease in the 1830s, and also grasped the nettle of taking action to break it.

The availability of public washing and laundry facilities was negligible when Chadwick began to investigate sanitation, although a few enterprising places had taken a lead, spurred on by recent outbreaks of cholera. Nevertheless, the poor did value personal hygiene. The Children’s Employment Commission report of 1842, for example, included several incidental references to female miners trying to rid themselves of the bodily grime caused by their dusty work.

The same year, Chadwick published an influential report about the sanitary conditions of the labouring population, from which it was clear that the lack of facilities in working-class homes made it hard for occupants to secure more than an imperfect state of cleanliness.

In 1844, the Royal Commission on Sanitation endorsed Chadwick’s conclusions, accepting that the lack of washing facilities was a preventable cause of disease. Shortly afterwards, the newly formed Association for the Establishment of Baths and Washhouses for the Poor began to campaign for public washing facilities. Legislation soon followed. In 1846, local boroughs and parishes were empowered to build public baths, raising the cost from the poor rate.

The Public Health Act of 1848 was one of the most significant reforms in the 19th century. Local boards of health were set up with a wide-ranging remit and a duty to secure a clean environment. The power to provide public bathing houses was extended to these boards.

As soon as it became possible to develop washing facilities at public expense, newspapers reveal that committees were formed in towns across the land to explore the possibility of erecting a suitable building. Some took advantage of the ability to raise funds from the poor rate, while others, noting a potential business opportunity, were funded directly by public subscription or an entrepreneur.

There was one notable difference between the two models. A bath house that was funded via the poor rate was subject to maximum charges to prevent poorer people being priced out. A warm slipper bath plus towel cost twopence and a dip in a communal, unheated plunge pool a mere penny. The maximum charge for two hours’ use of the wash house was threepence. Establishments that were financed by another method were free to set their own charges. They tended to provide superior facilities aimed at a more affluent clientele, as some newspapers of the time suggested that deficiencies in personal hygiene were not solely vices of the poorer classes.

Although public bath houses were valued, a problem which plenty faced was the difficulty of generating enough income to cover the costs, even when demand was high. Money was needed for heating, cleaning and attendants’ wages. Repairs and maintenance of the premises and heating and water filtration systems would become greater as the building aged. Publicly funded premises needed to repay with interest any money they had borrowed for construction, and private entrepreneurs generally wanted a realistic rate of return on their investment.

Location played a part in whether a bath house covered its costs. Those which were easily accessible to a large number of customers seem to have fared better than those a few miles away from working-class homes. Another issue was the condition of the premises. A plunge pool in Sheffield was excoriated in the 1860s for the generally filthy state of the water, which was said to deter potential users. An unsatisfactory supply of water from the water company was considered to be the main problem, but this was compounded by the employment of many of Sheffield’s workers being in the steel industry. Skin being covered by black smuts from the furnaces was part of the job and a dip was a way of rinsing them off.

An anonymous letter of complaint in a Sheffield newspaper in 1872, about that same bathing house, demonstrates that a gulf had opened up between workers ‘whose principle purpose for using public baths was to rid themselves of the adherence which they cannot help having accumulated in a day’s or a week’s Vulcanian toil’, and gentlemen who could have no enjoyment in close contact with such people and wanted a superior bathing facility.

When those baths transferred to a new owner in 1877, the resulting refurbishment demonstrated that the gentlemen’s vision had largely won the day. The complex contained a Turkish bath, first- and second-class plunge pools, 21 slipper baths for males and seven for females, suitably segregated for decency, vapour baths, showers and sulphur baths and a smoking lounge. There were arched and decorated ceilings, chandeliers, marble-topped tables, damask curtains and carpeted floors. The wet areas had tessellated floors and walls with white and coloured glazed tiles. Attendants known as shampooers provided the technical components of the specialist baths.

The grandiose project was a financial failure and usually ran at a loss. With an increasing number of middle-class homes having their own slipper bath, men from the middle-class area where it was situated were not regular customers. There was unmet demand from ladies, whose access to the Turkish baths was limited to a few hours a week but apparently no attempt was made to offer women an extra session and reduce those for men. When the baths were purchased by Sheffield Corporation in 1895, to serve some nearby working-class areas, they were discovered to be in a shocking state of repair. Once renovated and reopened there was an immediate increase in the number of users of the slipper baths, which led to increased revenue.

If charges to the user were kept low in working-class districts, a yearly surplus on running costs could be made if interest and capital repayment was excluded. By 1898, the recently acquired bath house in Sheffield was in this position. Local councils regularly, if sometimes reluctantly, accepted that losses made by a publicly funded bath house were valid charges on the rates as they contributed to better health in the locality and were probably reducing demand for hospitals.

Growing population
Public bath houses were built throughout the Victorian and Edwardian period. This was partly in response to an increasing population, and partly because some of the earlier facilities had aged and needed replacing or had proved unprofitable and closed. One feature they had in common was their design. Many were primarily plunge pools which could be used for swimming, though with some slipper baths available. Depending on likely demand some also had a Turkish bath or other specialist baths. Architecturally, interiors often featured terracotta tiled floors. Plunge pools were lined with glazed tiles and walls were often also tiled with a mixture of white and coloured ones forming decorative patterns. Tiled walls were not cheap, but over time tended to repay the initial investment as they were durable and easy to keep clean.

Not all workers needed a public bath house. Some families opted for a portable tin bath in front of the fire, or outside in good weather with members using the tub in quick succession. For a large family this may have been more affordable than visiting the bath house, although it meant plenty of work for the woman of the house. By the 20th century, collieries started to house washing facilities for workers to use at the end of a shift if they chose. Sadly, some cases of child neglect that were reported around this time reveal that the poorest families desired personal hygiene but lacked the necessary money to keep themselves, their children and clothes clean, even if there was a local bath house. Cleanliness might have been made widely available but for some it remained unaffordable.

Bath houses were a 19th century concept that survived well into the 20th. In the 1930s, local councils regularly put forward proposals for new developments of bathing and laundry facilities, conscious that workers’ homes did not have baths or warm water. The need for public provision remained well into the second half of the century. It was only when swathes of old working-class housing was cleared and replaced with homes which had their own bathroom and space for a washing machine that the public bath house left the streets and entered the history books. {