Victorian Turkish baths
The Victorian Turkish bath is a type of bath in which the bather sweats freely in hot dry air, is then washed, often massaged, and has a cold wash or shower. It can also mean, especially when used in the plural, an establishment where such a bath is available.
Hot-air baths of the same type, built after Queen Victoria's reign, are known as Victorian-style Turkish baths, and are also covered in this article.
The Victorian Turkish bath became popular during the latter third of the queen's reign. It retained this popularity during the Edwardian years, first as a therapy and a means of personal cleansing, and then as a place for relaxation and enjoyment. It was very soon copied in several parts of the British Empire, in the United States of America, and in some Western European countries. Victorian Turkish baths were opened as small commercial businesses, and later by those local authorities that saw them as being permitted under the Baths and Washhouses Act 1846. They were also found in hotels, hydropathic establishments and hospitals, in the Victorian asylum and the Victorian workhouse, in the houses of the wealthy, in private members' clubs, and in ocean liners for those travelling overseas. They were even provided for farm animals and urban workhorses.
Some establishments provided additional facilities such as steam rooms and, from the second half of the 20th century, Finnish saunas. These complemented the Turkish bath, but were not part of the Turkish bath process, any more than were the services of, for example, the barber, visiting physician, or chiropodist, who might be available in some 19th-century establishments.
The use of Victorian Turkish baths began to decline after World War I and accelerated after World War II. In the 21st century, there are very few Victorian Turkish bath buildings extant, and fewer still remain open.
Terminology and usage
The Victorian Turkish bath is a type of hot-air bath that originated in Ireland in 1856. It was explicitly identified as such in the 1990s and then named and defined to necessarily distinguish it from the baths which had for centuries, especially in Europe, been loosely, and often incorrectly, called "Turkish" baths. These were usually Islamic hammams, but during the latter part of the 20th century, steam and vapour baths of various types also came to be referred to as "Turkish" baths. The term has even been used to describe women's baths in the Ottoman Imperial Harem, most famously by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and as the title—or as the supposed subject—of orientalist paintings.When the first Victorian Turkish baths were being built, there was much discussion about how the bath should be named. Because it was based on the baths of the ancient Romans and not on the Islamic hammam, many argued that it should be called the Roman bath or the Irish-Roman or Anglo-Roman bath. Some bath proprietors felt strongly about this and named their baths accordingly. But the new baths finally became known as Turkish baths because, for many years, that is where western travellers had first come across, and frequently written about, the 'exotic' hot-air baths of earlier times.
The Victorian Turkish bath process
In a Victorian Turkish bath, bathers relax in a series of increasingly hot dry rooms, usually two or three, until they sweat profusely. This progression can be repeated, interspersed with showers, or a dip in a cold plunge pool. It is then followed by a full body wash and massage, together called shampooing. Finally, no less important, is a period of relaxation in the cooling-room, preferably for at least an hour.There is no standard prescribed route through the rooms of a Victorian Turkish bath, though some establishments may recommend one, while some others are physically arranged so that a standard route seems to be predetermined, as in the baths built by the Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell in Old Kent Road.:p.30
Some bathers prefer to start in the hottest room and work towards the cooling-room; others never venture into the hottest room and prefer to start with the coolest and work their way into hotter areas. Once acclimatised, bathers usually go back and forth as they wish, but it is considered important always to end with a rest in the cooling-room. Bathers should never remain in a Turkish bath if they feel the slightest bit dizzy or uncomfortable.
Since the purpose of the Victorian Turkish bath is to expose the surface of the body—the pores of the skin—to the hot dry air, the European practice of bathing naked is the most effective one, and costumes are prohibited for hygienic reasons. This, as explained in numerous brochures for Turkish baths and saunas, is because the typical short shower neither removes sweat from a bathing costume before entering the pool, nor any pool chemicals from a costume on re-entering the hot-rooms afterwards, whereas both sweat and residual chemicals are more effectively removed from an uncovered body.
In Britain, for most of the 20th and late 19th centuries, men and women were able to bathe naked in separate baths, or separate sessions, a writer in the Christian World noting in 1881 that 'man in a state of nudity' may be seen 'any day in a Turkish bath'.
This was not only the case in commercial Turkish baths but, well into the 20th century, in local authority baths also. Alfred Cross, who designed baths for the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury and the Urban District Council of Epsom, had earlier defined the Turkish bath, in his then standard work on public baths and wash-houses, as 'the exposure of the nude body to hot dry air, massaging or shampooing, ablution with warm and cold water, and finally drying and cooling'.
In London, Bermondsey Council took nudity for granted in a promotional film made for them in the 1930s.
Although many British bathers prefer bathing in the Turkish bath without costumes, or just loosely covered with a towel, nudity in local authority baths is now rare, even in single sex sessions. However, a few local authorities and private members' clubs hire their Turkish baths to local naturist clubs where nude bathing is the rule.
Whether costumed or not, bathers normally cover seating with a towel before sitting or lying down. This also helps protect against accidental burns from seats which have been vacant for some time.
History
The Victorian Turkish bath: Islamic and ancient Roman influences
Two people were primarily responsible for the introduction of the Victorian Turkish bath into the 19th century's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland: Scottish diplomat and sometime MP for Stafford, David Urquhart, and Irish physician and hydropathist, Richard Barter, founder and proprietor of St Ann's Hydropathic Establishment near Blarney, Co. Cork.Urquhart came across the Islamic hammam while serving in the Ottoman Empire in the 1830s. He described the system of relatively dry hot-air baths used in Morocco and Turkey, which had changed little since Roman times, in his travel book The Pillars of Hercules, and became an enthusiastic advocate of the bath for the remainder of his life. Barter had already been using vapour baths at St Ann's, and when, in 1856, he read Urquhart's description of the hammam he was, 'electrified; and resolved, if possible, to add that institution to establishment'. He realised that the human body can tolerate a higher temperature when exposed to dry air than it can when exposed to vapour. Believing that a higher temperature increased the curative effectiveness of the bath, he invited Urquhart to St Ann's, offering him 'land, workmen, and materials', to help him build one for his patients.
Their first attempt, in the shape of a 'little beehive-shaped thatched building' failed due to its inability to heat the air sufficiently.:p.16
Urquhart returned to his political work in England but Barter persevered. He sent his architect to Rome to study the ancient Roman baths. On his return, based on what he learned in Rome and the plans and details he brought back,:p.130 he built a bath at St Ann's differing from the traditional Islamic hammam in the dryness of the heated air.:p.102 This was the first Victorian Turkish bath, known today in Europe as the Irish-Roman bath in honour of Barter and his architect—also coincidentally named Richard Barter, though they were not related.
Early Victorian Turkish baths in Ireland and England
Barter's first successful bath at St Ann's was formally opened on 11 May 1858, though it had already been in use for some time, while still in the process of being improved. The three main rooms were the sudatorium, the tepidarium, and the frigidarium. Even while experiments were continuing, Barter was promoting the bath throughout Ireland.On 17 March 1859, he opened the first Turkish bath in the country to be built for use by the general public at 8 Grenville Place, in nearby Cork. There were separate baths for men and women at a cost of one shilling. Children under ten paid half price and 'A servant attending is free of charge'. Shampooing was not included and cost an additional sixpence. Between 1859 and 1869, Barter, or companies associated with him, built nine other baths in Ireland, while at least forty others are known to have been in existence as standalone establishments at some time during the following hundred years. There are no longer any Turkish baths in Ireland today.
Back in England, Urquhart was kept in touch with Barter's progress while he was actively involved in campaigning on behalf of Turkey prior to the Crimean War. He had gathered around himself, particularly in the north of England, groups of mainly working class political followers calling themselves Foreign Affairs Committees, whose main activities were calling meetings and writing to newspapers.Their political views were promulgated in the Sheffield Free Press, a paper owned for a while by local politician Isaac Ironside, who led the Sheffield FAC. After Ironside had, at Urquhart's suggestion, visited St Ann's for his own health, the paper, and its later London version The Free Press, also acted as a means of communication about Turkish baths.
Letters to both papers on St Ann's and on the progress of its Turkish bath were published, and were of great interest to many FAC members. Urquhart encouraged them to start Turkish baths to provide themselves with a living, to give them more time to support his political work, and to have places where they could freely hold political meetings.
The opening in Manchester of the first Victorian Turkish bath in England, some time around 12 July 1857, was proudly announced in the Free Press papers. Urquhart had helped finance its building in part of the Broughton Lane home of FAC member William Potter who managed, and later owned it. From the beginning, separate sessions for women were supervised by his wife Elizabeth.
Around England, Urquhart's FACs, regularly brought up-to-date by the Free Press papers, were responsible for starting at least thirty Turkish baths.:p.35 Except in Ireland, where Barter was the main influence, the FAC members and their baths soon inspired others to start opening them. In this, as in all work with the FACs, Urquhart's wife Harriet was totally involved. She agreed that the bath at Riverside, their home near Rickmansworth, should be open to all who wished to try it, whether they were his servants, friends or neighbours, local doctors with their patients, FACs wanting information, or their members who were unwell. She kept many sciatic and invalid guests over for breakfast. 'Some days there were as many as twenty-five people using it.'
From Manchester, Turkish baths spread north to the Urquhartite stronghold of Newcastle, where a bath was installed at the Newcastle upon Tyne Infirmary, and simultaneously down through the Midlands, another area with many FACs, until they reached London, where Roger Evans opened the first in Bell Street, near Marble Arch, in 1860.