The former slipper baths
Hidden
inside the Jubilee site, where the Jubilee Library now is, there is a building
which once housed what was known as the 'North Road Slipper Baths'. They were
opened in 1870 and finally closed in 1976.
Research by Dawn Sanders
In 1983
Dawn Sanders of the Lewis Cohen Urban Studies Centre (part of what is now the
University of Brighton) contacted the North Laine Runner to find out
whether we knew of anyone who had used the baths, as she was undertaking a
project about them. We were able to put her in touch with Ernie Longhurst. Dawn
subsequently interviewed Ernie and others who had known the baths when they
were in active use. Here are some extracts from what she wrote as a result of
her research at that time.
Some extracts from Dawn's research
The
opening of the North Road Slipper Baths was the result of the philanthropic
movement organised to provide bathing facilities for the poor. Certain acts
such as the Public Baths and Workhouse Acts and the Towns Improvement Clauses
Act in 1847 were designed specifically to encourage their construction. These
acts particularly emphasised the need for a large ratio of lower class baths to
upper class baths:
"...provided
always that the numbers of baths for the use of the working classes in any
building provided by the commissioners shall not be less than twice the number
of the other baths of any higher class."
What is a slipper bath?
A slipper
bath is a partially covered bath shaped somewhat like a slipper! People from
different classes were kept completely separate and the price of the 2nd Class
bath was fixed low to enable the poor the luxury of cleanliness, for it was
still a luxury for them at that time to enjoy a hot bath. The health report of
1893 maintained that much disease was preventable by extreme cleanliness and
the building of the slipper baths went some way towards the cleanliness needed
to improve the health of the working class. Another attribute of the slipper
baths was the privacy of having a bath on your own, something not experienced
in the overcrowded working class housing in Brighton at that time. A 2nd
Class warm bath cost 2d, a cold bath 1d. The 1st Class baths were 6d for a warm
bath and 3d for a cold bath. In March 1874 the baths had been filled nearly
16,300 times in 6 months.
Closed in 1976
After 106
years of service the North Road Slipper Baths closed in 1976. The building of
the slipper baths represented an improvement in the conditions of the working
class, as important in its own time as the building of baths in private houses
today.
Violet Lewis described the baths
Violet
Lewis, who was the women's section attendant for 20 years, told Dawn:
"When
I first went there it was all stone floor and we used to have to wash it over
on our hands and knees. After that it was lino-ed over with thick lino and that
wasn't so bad."
She said
that before the Whitehawk Estate was built there was often a queue of about 30
people waiting to go in the baths. The ladies' baths were in one half of the
building and the gents' in the other.
Remembering
the time when the baths were due to close, she reminisced:
"A
woman came in and cried because we were closing down. She had been coming there
for a weekly bath for more than 30 years and it was like a home from home. The
older people came for a chat and company as much as for a bath."
Ernie Longhurst's memories
When Dawn
interviewed Ernie Longhurst, he said that people had been allowed to soak in
the bath for half an hour. He also said that some people still [in 1983] did
not possess bathing facilities and would have appreciated the return of public
baths.
A Jewish Mikvah
A special
feature of the baths was a Jewish Mikvah (a kind of ritual cleansing bath). In
this the pipes were straight (no bends to become contaminated) and rainwater
was used.
Lack of documentation
When
undertaking her research, Dawn had been disheartened to find a lack of
documentation (and particularly photographic evidence) about the lives of the
working class in Brighton in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She
thought that the emphasis on documenting aspects of middle and upper class
lifestyles had tended to create a false impression about the totality of life
in Brighton at that time.
By Jackie Fuller
[Previously
published in the North Laine Runner, No 190, January/February 2008]