Discussion Post: The Illustrious Client

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

This week, the canon story we’re looking at is The Illustrious Client and the chosen topic is Turkish Baths.

A few facts:

💠 In Western Europe, the "Turkish bath" as a method of cleansing and relaxation became popular during the Victorian era. The process involved in taking a Turkish bath is similar to that of a sauna, but is more closely related to ancient Greek and ancient Roman bathing practices.

The Turkish bath starts with relaxation in a room (known as the warm room) that is heated by a continuous flow of hot, dry air, allowing the bather to perspire freely. Bathers may then move to an even hotter room (known as the hot room) before they wash in cold water. After performing a full body wash and receiving a massage, bathers finally retire to the cooling-room for a period of relaxation.

The difference between the Islamic hammam and the Victorian Turkish bath is the air. The hot air in the Victorian Turkish bath is dry; in the Islamic hammam the air is often steamy. The bather in a Victorian Turkish bath will often take a plunge in a cold pool after the hot rooms; the Islamic hammam usually does not have a pool unless the water is flowing from a spring. In the Islamic hammams the bathers splash themselves with cold water. [Wikipedia]

💠 Turkish baths were introduced to Britain by David Urquhart, diplomat and sometime Member of Parliament for Stafford, who for political and personal reasons wished to popularize Turkish culture.

In 1850 he wrote The Pillars of Hercules, a book about his travels in 1848 through Spain and Morocco. He described the system of dry hot-air baths used there and in the Ottoman Empire which had changed little since Roman times.

In 1856 Richard Barter read Urquhart’s book and worked with him to construct a bath. They opened the first modern Turkish bath at St Ann’s Hydropathic Establishment near Blarney, County Cork, Ireland.

The following year, the first public bath of its type to be built in mainland Britain since Roman times was opened in Manchester, and the idea spread rapidly. It reached London in July 1860, when Roger Evans, a member of one of Urquhart’s Foreign Affairs Committees, opened a Turkish bath at 5 Bell Street, near Marble Arch.

During the following 150 years, over 600 Turkish baths opened in Britain. [Muslim Museum]

💠 ...Urquhart’s bath at his Riverside home in England was well known, and served as an early model for other baths, including the first bath in London, on Bell Street in 1860. The celebrated Victorian dermatologist Erasmus Wilson describes his visit to Riverside in the 1850s:

We arrive at the door of the Frigidarium; we loosen the latchets of our shoes, and we leave them behind the lintel; the portal opens and we enter. The apartment is small, but it is sunny and bright; throughout the glass doors we see a balcony festooned with the tendrils of the rose…

The Riverside bath was comprised of a hot room, built directly over the part of the floor with the hottest air underneath (240-250 F); followed by a second hot room, kept at 170F; and, down a set of marble steps, a third area with a divan, kept at 150F. Soft pillows were available for comfortable reclining in each space.

Wilson describes an adjacent washing area enclosed by a curtain:

We seat ourselves on the clean marble at the edge of the Lavaterina; our host plays the soft pad of gazul over the head, the back, the sides; we complete the operation on the limbs and feet ourselves; Basin after basin of warm water rinses the gazul and the loosened epidermis from the surface, and we rise…

After this scrub-down, Wilson visited the piscina, a square pool, for a cold water plunge. Wilson explains that typically this might be followed by a second washing, a warm Turkish towel, and a period of relaxation.

In 1862, Urquhart supervised the construction of another London bath at 76 Jermyn Street… [Anne Garner]

💠 In 1862 the London and Provincial Turkish Bath Co. Ltd. built what was said by some to be the finest [Turkish baths] in Europe at number 76...Jermyn Street...

He had travelled around Turkey, Greece and Moorish Spain and had been greatly affected by the Hammam’s popularity in these countries and especially how relatively classless they were...

By the time the Jermyn Street Hammam had been built there were about 30 Turkish baths in London. All due mainly to the efforts of David Urquhart. These Turkish Baths, as understood by the Victorians, were dry air saunas… drier even than the present day Turkish baths or hammams.

Urquhart gave lectures and wrote pamphlets extolling the return of this ancient method of healthy bathing. Recommending it for people suffering from practically any illness the Victorians thought existed, but including constipation, bronchitis, asthma, fever, cholera, diabetes, syphilis, baldness, alcoholism and even baldness and dementia. Feminine hygiene ailments could also be cured Urquhart maintained, although whatever they were, they apparently weren’t decent enough to discuss in the public forum of a pamphlet.

Not that it particularly mattered as far as the Jermyn Street Hammam was concerned because, like most other Turkish Baths being built in London, when it opened it was men-only. A separate women’s bath, laid out in the original plans, was never built and even Urquhart’s ideal of different classes bathing together didn’t materialise either. No ordinary working man could have afforded 3/6d during the day and as much as 2/- in the evening. [Another Nickel In The Machine]

💠 For those who could afford it, the ultimate in luxury was the Turkish bath which were available in most large cities. According to Living London, "it is practised in perfection at the Hammam (or Turkish bath) in Jermyn Street, St James's. It costs four shillings, and it takes two hours; but nothing yet invented by Londoners, or annexed from abroad, has ever come near the delicious experience or the restorative quality of the Turkish bath. One enters, a world-weary wreck, tired from travelling, working, pleasuring, maybe, rheumatic; one sits, or reclines, in a succession of hot-air rooms, each of the eight hotter than the last - varying from 112 degrees F to 280 degrees F - until a sufficient perspiration has been attained."

"Then one is conducted to the shampooing [Victorian term for massaging] room, and whilst reposing on a marble slab, one is massaged by light-handed attendants. That process is followed by a series of brushes and different soaps; and after a variety of shower douches and a plunge into cold water, the bath is complete. A sojourn in a lofty cooling room, a quiet smoke, or a light meal, and one sallies forth to a new being. A visit to the gallery of the attendant hairdressers makes perfection more perfect..."

While these luxurious Turkish and vapour baths were beyond the reach of the working classes, those in regular employment could afford to use the public or private baths once a week. As The Graphic reported, "At the cost of a pint of the commonest beer, the working man may enjoy an invigorating swim or a wholesome cleansing in a private warm bath." [Michelle Higgs]

💠 The fragrance Hammam Bouquet is described by Penhaligon's as being ‘...animalic and golden... warm and mature, redolent of old books, powdered resins and ancient rooms. At its heart is the dusky Turkish rose, with jasmine, woods, musk and powdery orris.’

First created by William Penhaligon in 1872…. Hammam Bouquet, which soon became a great favourite with respectable gentleman during the Victorian era, actually owed its provenance to the smells of the Jermyn Street Turkish Baths that William Penhaligon had hoped to replicate.

...from 1888 the Jermyn Street Baths also employed a resident tattooist who excelled in artistic dragon designs, and ~ if the rumours can be believed, some of Queen Victoria’s sons were decorated in this way when visiting the establishment. [Essie Fox]

💠 At one time or another the Neville family owned nine Turkish baths, all of them in London. Of these, four were in reality twin establishments, built next to each other in pairs. The larger one was for (Gentle)men; the smaller one for women (Ladies).

The pair in Northumberland Avenue were, from the bathers' point of view, quite separate and had individual entrances, of which the women's was round the corner in Northumberland Passage (now Craven Passage)...

The Nevilles had their Head Office here, and the upper three storeys were let out as offices to other companies. The Turkish baths occupied the whole of the first floor, ground floor, and basement… With upholstered couches, marble seats, and an elegant fountain, the ambience of the public areas ensured that these baths were among the most comfortable to be found, as befitted a centrally located establishment hoping for clients from the Hotel Metropole on the opposite side of the road and from the nearby government offices…

Bathers paid their entrance fee at the cash desk just inside the door, leaving their shoes in the boot room and their valuables in individual lockers. They then passed into a large domed two storey high cooling-room with a gallery at first floor level supported by columns...

Half-height brass-decorated mahogany divisions formed alcoves in which there were couches for resting during and after the bath. Most of the alcoves on the ground floor had four couches, while those on the gallery were limited to two, making it possible for over 70 bathers to use the resting area at the same time…

A wide mahogany staircase led down from the cooling-room to a half landing with toilet facilities. From there, two separate narrower flights led to the basement, in the centre of which was the tepidarium, or warm room… Two further hot rooms opened from this apartment, in the smaller of which the highest temperature was maintained… Surprisingly, a smoking room led off the second hot room. This was unusual since when Turkish baths boasted a separate smoking room it was more usually located next to the cooling-room, or else smoking would be permitted in part or all of the cooling-room itself. Finally, complementing the hot rooms, there were three shampooing (massage) rooms, with cool recesses, showers, and a 30ft plunge bath. [Malcolm Shifrin]

💠 In the [Victorian] period… baths weren’t primarily a homoerotic / gay thing. (Not that gay men couldn’t use the baths for facilitating their lifestyle… certainly it could be done, if one was careful. But that wasn’t the baths’ primary context.) What’s important to remember is that indoor plumbing of the type we’re used to wasn’t necessarily a given in the 1890s, even in houses in big cities… So the amenity of having big luxurious city baths where other people dealt with the logistics of water and heating and whatnot was a big deal – all part and parcel of the Victorian Cleanliness Movement, which was huge…

Some data about the [Northumberland Avenue] bath that Holmes and Watson were visiting:

Leading off from the cooling-room were three hot rooms, each with marble mosaic floors, and tiled walls and ceilings… The calidarium… could be raised to a temperature of 270°F, the tepidarium to 180°F, and the frigidarium to 140°F. All were lit by electricity...

As in other Nevill establishments, fresh hot air came through a grated opening below the ceiling, while the stale air was extracted through ventilators in the seats near the floor level, or gratings in the floor itself...

The adjacent shampooing-room was also fitted with marble slabs, and tiled throughout. The bather then had a choice of showers (rose, douche, needle, or spiral douche) after which there was a cold plunge pool, 30ft. long and 5ft. deep, lined with marble, mosaic, and tiles, with a decorative frieze. [Diane Duane]

💠 From the earliest days of the Victorian Turkish bath, provision was made for three special categories of bather: hospital patients, the mentally ill in asylums, and animals, especially cattle and racehorses.

In 1860, Sir John Fife installed the first Turkish bath in an English hospital at the Newcastle-on-Tyne Infirmary where, according to the hospital’s annual reports, it remained in use until the end of the century. And Leared has described how, in 1861, after encouraging results from trials with 20 phthisis (tuberculosis) patients in the not yet completed London Hammam, Urquhart installed a Turkish bath at the Brompton Consumptive Hospital.

The first recorded use of the Turkish bath in the treatment of mental illness was also in 1861. ...it is undoubtedly true that the Turkish bath was speedily adopted in many Victorian asylums. Modern sensibilities may wonder at the means of its experimental use on the mentally ill. It is clear, however, that the patients themselves favoured it and, where previously the alternative had been a hosing down by an attendant, they found the Turkish bath restful and, perhaps more important, totally unthreatening.

In 1859, Robert Wollaston visited St Ann’s Hydropathic Establishment. Noting that in addition to the patients’ baths (also used by those who worked at the hydro) and one specially erected for the poor of the area, Dr Barter had built special baths for sick horses, cattle, and dogs from the hydro’s home farm. Wollaston wrote of the animals that… I witnessed the curious spectacle of seeing two horses submitted to the process, with the perspiration rolling off their bodies, afterwards washed with tepid water, and then groomed or rubbed down with brushes steeped in cold water. The animals seem always brisk and gay after the operation. It is difficult to imagine today how important horses were to the smooth running of everyday life in the nineteenth century. Simmons has estimated that even as late as 1913, the twelve largest railway companies alone were still using around 26,000 horses, mainly in cartage and shunting. Relatively inexpensive facilities which helped to keep working horses working, and in good health, were a good investment. [Malcolm Shifrin]

💠 Portable Turkish baths in hospitals: The bath was designed so that the height of the seat could be adjusted. The front of the cabinet opened to allow the patient to enter. A footrest was provided and the patient sat with his or her head outside the cabinet, a position achieved by the use of a somewhat terrifying device reminiscent of a horizontal guillotine. A small flap at the side of the cabinet allowed a hand to be extended to enable an attendant to take the patient's pulse, and a thermometer was also attached to the bath.

The air was heated by one of three recommended methods. The first Price's Laconicum candle utilised a special candle heater known as the Laconicum, or Air-bath Heater manufactured by Price's Patent Candle Company… More common, though, was a methylated spirits lamp where the length of wick determined the amount of heat produced. In either case the heater was usually placed on a small tile at the base of the cabinet. If, however, a supply of gas was available, a small heater with a number of gas burners and a control tap was placed outside the cabinet, and was the cheapest means of heating the air.

Heat was seen by Dr Richard Barter to be an effective therapeutic agent in the alleviation of, for example, rheumatic pain...

Ewart's Hot Air Bath was a commercially developed version of this design but it is not known how many were actually sold or used in the home… [Malcolm Shifrin]

💠 Mobile Turkish bath for hospitals: The first hospital to build a free-standing Turkish bath in England was the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Infirmary in 1860 and a number of hospitals followed suit in the ensuing years. In 1873 the British Medical Journal's column on descriptions of new inventions carried a report of a new portable Turkish bath designed for hospital use. The idea was to enable the bath to be taken to the patient, rather than the patient being required to go to the Turkish bath… [Malcolm Shifrin]

💠 Portable Turkish baths in the home: In the home, too, portable Turkish baths were increasingly popular amongst those who could afford them. Cabinets were upright with an inbuilt seat or, more usually, were designed to enclose a chair to be provided by the purchaser. Two forms of enclosure predominated, the first being a type of crinoline which was worn cloak-like by the bather. The second utilised a frame which was attached to the bather's chair (sometimes called the 'crinoline frame') and was similar in construction to that used in the hospital hot-air bed bath...

Spirit and gas lamps were still the favoured form of heater, though by now all but the least expensive models placed the heater outside the enclosure, the hot air being funneled through a duct into the space beneath the bather's chair. Gas heaters were considered the most convenient since it was easier to control the temperature and the cabinet warmed up more speedily. At this time, better off homes were lit by gas and among the many Turkish bath cabinets manufactured by the Gem company was one that plugged into the light socket. [Malcolm Shifrin]

💠 Opening times for women [at Turkish baths] were… generally restricted, though some of the larger establishments did provide separate facilities.

At least twenty-one of London's Victorian Turkish baths made some provision for women bathers. Ten of these had separate women’s baths adjoining the men’s, ten shared the men’s facilities for a day or more per week, and one short-lived establishment—about which very little is known—had no male counterpart. Hot-room temperatures were usually lower in women’s baths, though whether this was actually preferred by women, or merely cheaper to maintain, is not known.

From the start, however, women were involved in every aspect of the Turkish bath: as patients and bathers, as attendants and shampooers, as managers, shareholders and even proprietors, though I [Malcolm Shifrin] have yet to find, even after the 1884 Married Women’s Property Act, a woman proprietor who was not the legatee—be she widow, daughter, or other relative—of a deceased male proprietor. [Malcolm Shifrin]

💠 When the London Hammam [in Jermyn Street] was opened in 1862, it was… charging 3/6 for male bathers and 5/- for females, while at the same time, a shampooer was being paid 25/- per week. Urquhart was repeatedly at odds with his fellow directors over admission charges. For as well as arguing on behalf of the bath as a curative agent, he felt no less strongly that, in an age when most people were still without indoor water supplies, let alone bathrooms, the Turkish bath, as the most effective cleansing agent, should be available to all as inexpensively as possible.

While most establishments were as cheap (or cheaper) than Nevill’s, no-one was providing much-needed Turkish baths at something approaching cost price. Locating London establishments on Booth’s 1889 poverty map shows that they were rarely in the poorer areas where they were most needed; preferred locations were more often adjacent to railway stations used by commuters travelling home to the suburbs…

Only one establishment provided free Turkish baths for needy Londoners. In the mid 1860s, Richard Metcalfe set up a hydropathic dispensary and Turkish bath in the deprived Potteries area of Notting Hill as part of Mrs Bayley’s Ragged Castle and Workmen’s Hall. Mrs Bayley, more concerned with healthy souls than bodies, saw the bath as part of her armoury in the battle to convert the unwashed to temperance and Christianity. Her landlord, on the other hand, saw it as a fire risk and had it closed down.

When the first Baths and Wash-houses Acts were passed in 1846 and 1847, Turkish baths did not exist. This was very widely interpreted to mean that they could not legally be provided by local authorities, so none [no publicly funded Turkish bath] was built in London during the Victorian period. But outside London, local politicians were occasionally more subtle. Southampton Corporation, for example, provided publicly funded Turkish baths by the simple, if risky, expedient of calling them—inaccurately, but pragmatically—vapour baths, and these were permitted under the Acts. But there was a downside to this ruse: under the Acts, they had to provide First and Second Class Baths… Urquhart had seen the Turkish bath as enabling different classes to mix and get to know each other. But most private bath owners, though not covered by the Acts, voluntarily chose to distinguish first and second class bathers so as to enlarge their potential clientele.

Working class bathers faced another problem in some parts of London. As William Bishop, owner of the Putney Turkish baths, complained, pressure from Church and Chapel prevented his baths from opening on Sunday—the only day the working classes had sufficient time to use them. [Malcolm Shifrin]



Some useful resources:

The Victorian Turkish bath: its origin, development, & gradual decline By Malcolm Shifrin. [This is the big one - pretty much all other pages about Victorian era Turkish baths link you back to here.]

London: 25 Northumberland Avenue On Malcolm Shifrin’s Victorian Turkish Baths: their origin, development, & gradual decline.

Victorian Turkish Baths: their origin, development, and gradual decline By Malcolm Shifrin, on the Victorian Web.

Victorian Turkish Baths On Muslim Museum Initiative.

Take the plunge at Portobello's Turkish Baths By leilappetit, on Time Out: Edinburgh.

Turkish bath On Wikipedia.

Turkish Baths and the Perfume of ‘Hammam Bouquet’... By Essie Fox, on The Virtual Victorian.

The Turkish Baths in Jermyn Street, St James. On Another Nickel In The Machine. History up until the last baths closed in 1975, but does contain a Victorian era section. (The included photographs in the post obviously contain nudity.)

Keeping Clean: Victorian Public & Private BathsBy Michelle Higgs, on A Visitor's Guide to Victorian England.

Cupid Out of Sorts—Is Advised to Take a Turkish Bath By Anne Garner, Curator, Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health, on Books, Health, and History: The New York Academy of Medicine.

Victorian Era Baths By Diane Duane, on Tumblr.

Review of Malcolm Shifrin's Victorian Turkish Baths By Jacqueline Banerjee, Associate Editor, on the Victorian Web.

Turkish Baths On The Dictionary of Victorian London.

Victorian Turkish Baths: Victorian Advertising An advert in a yellowback novel published by Routledge, circa 1884. By Jennifer Carnell, on The Sensation Press.





Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.

Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.

Comments

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Good choice of topic, and fascinating.

I'd made a whirlwind study of the Victorian Turkish Baths last year for research to complete a 24-hour-deadline story prompt (not unlike Watson's Chinese Pottery cram-school). The result can be found here: Anything Stirring (https://archiveofourown.org/works/6177757).

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

When we were discussing topics we knew we had to include Turkish baths!

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

I do remember your fic - I particularly remember how excited Okapi was about it ^___^

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Yea! All wonderful! Thanks so much! I feel like it's my birthday!

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

I knew you'd like this one ^___^

Malcolm Shifrin's site is brilliant, isn't it? ^__^

[debriswoman]

I visited a refurbished Victorian Baths, in Harrogate, a few years ago. ("Mixed session...bathing suits compulsory") Would recommend it...or add it to a challenge list for someone looking for new things to try:-p

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

I think you should definitely encourage Small Hobbit to include this as a late entry ^__^

[sanguinity]

My word. Racehorses. And apparently draft horses, too?

And I'll just BET asylum patients preferred Turkish baths over a hose.

Interesting to know that the clouds of steam in all the visual adaptations are not right, that these baths were more like saunas. And I'm obvs going to have to find a source on the evolution of public baths in the 20th c. to becoming gay cruising grounds: I know something about the fight over bathhouses during the AIDS crisis (at least as it went down in San Francisco in New York), but nothing of the intervening history.

The Shifrin website is gold. (The guy suing because his nose melted!) AND LOOK TURKISH BATHS ON PASSENGER LINERS. Which, on inspection, wasn't all that many liners, and the dates suggest they'd be mildly anachronistic for introducing a pterodactyl to (HAHAHAHA, as if any other anachronism can be taken seriously in the face of a screeching great pterodactyl) but a girl can dream. :-)

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

I'd missed the Turkish baths on liners part. ...but a girl can dream. :-) You do have the most peculiar dreams, it has to be said ^___^

[sanguinity]

C'mon, are you telling me you don't want to see them trying to give Hélène a bath? I'm sure they'd have Very Important Reasons for it.