Victorian Turkish Baths
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victurk.bsky.social
Victorian Turkish Baths
@victurk.bsky.social
590 followers 530 following 760 posts
Malcolm Shifrin FRHistS—"Victorian Turkish Baths": 'a major act of historical recovery', 'readable', 'scholarly', 'something in it for everyone'. Profusely illustrated. worldcat.org/title/931082056. Complementary website http://www.victorianturkishbath.org
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victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday, 1 December 1879, John Plowman opened #TurkishBaths with swimming pool & fives courts in Merton Street, #Oxford. It remained open, under several owners, till 1924. The baths feature in G S Street's novel 'The Autobiography of a boy' (www.victorianturkishbath.org/_3TOPICS/Ato...) 🗃️ #C19th
Prices and opening hours from an inside page of a four page leaflet published in 1887. The Prince of Wales, later, King Edward VIII, bathed at Dolley's Turkish Baths when he was up at Magdalen College.
December 1, 2025 at 3:35 PM
victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday, 1 December 1860, Dr T Airey opened 1st #Liverpool #TurkishBaths in St Anne St. Bad review in Lpool Daily Post led to reduced prices & David Urquhart's FAC member, secularist Thos Wilcock, was appointed Manager. But—badly designed & built, the baths had closed by June 1862. +ALTs 🗃️ #C19th
Advertisement running during December in the Liverpool Daily Post, Northern Daily Times, and the Welsh paper Baner ac Amserau Cymru. Names proprietor and lists charges and opening times. Advertisement for the baths in the Liverpool Mercury (11 September 1861) after the appointment of Thomas Wilcock, who had earlier worked as Manager at the FAC baths in Leeds Road, Bradford. Shows reduced prices, opening hours, and three positive comments from bathers—including even one extracted from the bad review in the Liverpool Daily Post. Head and shoulders portrait of William Ajax (1832-1899), a Welsh convert to the #Mormon Church. He visited the baths on 13 March 1862 shortly before leaving to live in Salt Lake City. He did not enjoy his visit… …and recorded his experience in his journal which survives within a 251 page photocopy of a typescript of the original held at the University of Utah Marriott Library, Manuscripts Division. He wrote: Went about 1/2 past 7 this evening with bro. John M Kay to a Turkish-Bath, in St. Anne-street. The first room we entered into was somewhere about 20 feet long by 15 feet wide, and its temperature was rather [blank space] There were six or seven couches here resting on iron-frames, and covered with unbleached sheets of calico. We had to undress here; and, after we had secured each a piece of calico to put around our waists, we proceeded to the bath. On leaving this room, we entered into a kind of a lobby, about 1 yard in with and about 8 feet in length, in the left side of which were some cold and hot water taps. As we left this, we were in a small apartment about as long as the lobby, but about 5 feet wide. We felt it very hot in the lobby, but it was much hotter here. We sat here for a few minutes, and then went into an adjoining apartment, about 8 feet each way, or less. This was the hottest place, and it was a hot one, without any mistake. It was only divided from the other by a small partition of either boards or slabs of stones. We sat here about 15 minutes, about which time I had to leave. I would have fainted, had I remained there 2 minutes longer. I was very weak, so that an oppressive heat of the kind had much effect on me. I did not sweat but very little, which was the great cause of my fainting tendency. The others sweated very freely, and they had not the least tendency to faint. We were 5 in together, and one was coming out when we went it. I went from this into the first apartment, which, although I felt ^it exceedingly hot when I first entered it, I experienced rather cold by this time. I lay here for a few minutes and then I became better. I sweated considerably in the other apartment, but not so much as I should in such a heat… [page 54]
December 1, 2025 at 3:07 PM
victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday, 30 November 1868, a Dr Smith opened #TurkishBaths in #Brisbane on Albert St between Adelaide and Ann Streets. Smith soon went bust, & baths bought by Ebenezer Lethem who rebuilt them as shown in much later image. Lethem & Bird (1894 onwards) both ignored actual foundation date. 🗃️ #C19th
Coloured image of the baths as rebuilt in 1868 by Ebenezer Letham. Date of establishment opening is incorrect. Shows two-story building, flying a star and crescent flag. (From the “Views of Brisbane” supplement in “The Telegraph” of 22 December 1894 — based on a photograph taken by Paul C. Poulsen )
November 30, 2025 at 1:48 PM
victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday, 28 November 1799, Vincenz Prießnitz (Priessnitz) died aged 52. Originally a peasant farmer, he developed the water cure (hydrotherapy) & nature cure (naturopathy.
In home-town Gräfenberg (Lázne Jeseník) nr Freiwaldau (Jeseník), now in Czechia, he established a world-famous spa. 🗃️ #C19th
Portrait of Vinzenz Priessnitz Contemporary 19th century greetings postcard showing the exterior of the Prießnitz Sanatorium in Gräfenberg. The frontispiece of Captain Claridge's influential book 'Hydropathy' with six images showing four forms of treatment. A card from one of several series of humorous postcards often sold at the hydros. In this one, the betowelled patient is in a sitz bath at 6 o'clock on a winter's morning saying "This is delightful, very!!!"
November 28, 2025 at 3:58 PM
victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday, 28 November 1878, the #CamdenTown #TurkishBaths designed by Henry Hewitt Bridgman, FRIBA, opened at 11A Kentish Town Rd.
'Of all the Turkish baths I've seen
In various countries I have been,
There's none for comfort & renown
Like the Turkish bath in Camden Town'
Closed 31.3.1916 🗃️ #C19th
Longitudinal section through the baths building (Building News, 29 November 1878) Ground floor and first floor plans of the baths (Building News, 29 November 1878) Two sections of staircases within the building, and a drawing of the entrance to the baths (Building News, 29 November 1878) Outer unfolded view of coloured advertising card showing on its four panels (from right to left): 1. Details of The Camden Turkish Baths - Turco Roman Baths with its address, architect's name and names of those connected withthe baths and brief list of facilities, all over a large star and crescent design; 2. coloured drawing of the entrance to the baths; 3. coloured drawing of the spacious marble cooling-room; 4. drawn map of the area, with main railway and underground railway lines and stations. (Image courtesy Amoret Tanner)
November 28, 2025 at 2:48 PM
victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday, 27 November 1893, #Batley Corpn added #TurkishBaths to its Public Baths opened earlier in the year. Hottest room could be raised to 220°F. Manager William Lister earned 24/- per week. In 1895, Ald. Colbeck told baths committee the Turkish was popular with doctors & parsons. +ALT 🗃️ #C19th
Later addition to the main Public Baths building. I'm not 100% certain this was the Turkish bath extension but it seems most likely. Can any Batley resident help confirm this, or correct it? Typographic advertisement from the Batley News (24 November 1893) giving the opening times and charges. Available for Ladies on Wednesdays after noon at the 1st class price of 1/-. Otherwise baths on Fridays and Saturdays cost 6d.
November 27, 2025 at 9:34 AM
victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday, 25 November 1872, #TurkishBaths opened as annexe to Philp's Cockburn Hotel, #Edinburgh. Leased by Alexander M'Donald of Leith Walk Tbs, & then to W A Bruce of Waverley Hydro who bought them in 1885 re-opening as Bruce's Turkish baths. Closure date unknown but long B4 hotel +ALT 🗃️ #C19th
Typographic advertisement in The Scotsman (23 November 1872) announcing the opening of the Turkish baths by the Lord Provost, and an inauguration dinner at the Cockburn Hotel afterwards (Dinner tickets 5/-) Local 1881 directory advertisement for the Edinburgh Philp's Cockburn Hotel. Text mentions connection with the Cockburn Hotel in Glasgow, and that there were 'Excellent Turkish and other Baths in both Hotels'. The Edinburgh baths comprised a cooling-room seating ten, hot rooms at 160 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit, and a shampooing room at 130 degrees. A more recent image of the building during the time when the building was home to the local planning office. (Courtesy Colin Myers Photography) Close up of the hotel name carved into the exterior stone wall suggests that PHILP'S in the 1881 advertisement illustration may have not existed. It may, of course, just have been changed. (Andrew J L Ansell's 2007 photo courtesy Capital Collections)
November 25, 2025 at 7:18 PM
victurk.bsky.social
🗃️ #C19th Text from my website is often stolen to appear in AI responses on Google. I'm wondering how AI would determine how much of the attached text it would consider factual & regurgitate if I were to copy it onto my site under, eg, Turkish baths in prisons. (E Cornwall Times) 7 Sep 1861 via BNA
Newspaper clip relating to Alfred de Vidil's imprisonment in Bodmin Prison (rebuilt 1859-1861) which, compared to the earlier prison on the site, had better facilities and was therefore widely known to locals as the Belvedere Hotel.
November 20, 2025 at 11:20 AM
victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday, 14 November 1999, I posted the 1st page on my Victorian Turkish Baths website www.victorianturkishbath.org. It is now 22 years old.
It may look a bit clunky, having preceded CSS standards, but it includes over 400 articles & more than 1400 images, including many not in my book. 🗃️ #C19th
Photo of a Meg Rivers chocolate-coated birthday cake, awaiting its 22 candles.
November 14, 2025 at 11:23 AM
victurk.bsky.social
That looks an exhausting itinerary. Never mind. You will probably find balnea or thermae at the end of some of them!
Part of the Roman bath at Billingsgate, London
November 12, 2025 at 11:00 AM
victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday,12 November 1894, #TurkishBaths costing £506 10s. 6d. were added to the Cable Street Baths in #Lancaster. 5 years later, electricity costing £15 was added. Apart from the façade, the baths were demolished in the early 1980s but it is not known when the Turkish baths closed. +ALTs 🗃️ #C19th
Typographic advertisement from the Lancaster Standard (26 Oct 1894) announcing the opening of the Turkish baths. Initially open only on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, there were, nevertheless, two classes of bathers. According to the time of day, they were charged 2/- or 1/-. Some time after the baths closed, the façade was dismantled and, piece by piece, with painstaking numbering, it was put aside for incorporation into the entrance to the new Sainsbury’s store to be built on the site afterwards. For more about the baths, see: https://www.lostlidos.co.uk/1998/06/06/lancaster-baths-cable-street/
November 12, 2025 at 10:30 AM
victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday, 10 November 1965, one of the last Victorian-style #TurkishBaths to be built was opened at the Derby Public Baths in #Blackpool by Lord Derby. His grandfather should have opened the swimming pools in 1939, but the war intervened. They were closed and demolished in 1990. See ALTs 🗃️ #C19th
Exterior of the baths with a sign on the canopy reading TURKISH & REMEDIAL BATHS. There were three hot rooms, two complementary vapour rooms and two saunas. This photo shows part of the cooling-room with its 27 cubicles, each with couch and wardrobe. In the background is the entrance to the showers. The spacious shampooing room with five marble slabs and (unseen) basins, together with needle showers. Two Aeratone showers, with a hoist for disabled bathers. For more about the Aerotone baths, see: https://victorianturkishbath.org/F0GLOSSARY/SFglossPages/Aeratone_w.htm
November 10, 2025 at 11:50 AM
victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday, 9 November 1861, Mr J Wilson opened #TurkishBaths at 15 English Street, #Downpatrick, Ireland. Little is known about them apart from what is in the advert announcing their opening. The town may have been too small to support them for they seem to disappear from view after 1863. 🗃️ #C19th
Typographic advertisement in the Downpatrick Recorder (9 November 1861) announcing the opening of the Turkish baths. Details opening hours for men and women, and charges for different times of day ranging from 1/3d down to 6d. In the ladies bath, children under 10 were charged at half price, and those under 4 were admitted free. Shampooing cost 3d. extra. [The baths were not, of course, open on Sunday.]
November 9, 2025 at 2:32 PM
victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday, 8 November 1884, Alfred Butler Clarke is thought to have opened #TurkishBaths in Gladstone Road, Scotholme, #Nottingham. Men's & women's sessions. Physician attended daily. With medicated, vapour, electric & hot & cold slipper baths. Like many others, closed around start of WWI. 🗃️ #C19th
Cut of an axonometric drawing of the exterior of the baths heads an advertisement in the Nottingham Evening Post (19 June 1886) for the baths in their second year, after a swimming pool had been added. Detailed list of opening times, charges, etc.
November 8, 2025 at 10:55 AM
victurk.bsky.social
‪Struck a blank on 1st CD, but remember in 1952 standing outside a long-gone shop in Liverpool's Taggart Avenue waiting for it to open at 9.00 to buy the first LP on launch day. A 10" LX3001 which with all subsequent purchases, I still have. It cost, I think, 30/- & I couldn't afford 40/- for a 12".
November 4, 2025 at 12:47 PM
victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday, 1 November 1929, #Glasgow Corporation opened two Victorian-style #TurkishBaths at Elvan St, Shettleston (closed c.1971—about which little is known), & Calder St, Govanhill (Closed 2001 despite intensive protests). Govanhill Community Trust aims to re-open as a wellbeing centre. 🗃️ #C19th
Exterior of Shettleston Baths after closure. Exterior of Govanhill Baths in 1920 Plan of Govanhill Turkish baths Sign reading, "COSTUMES MUST BE WORN IN THE TURKISH SUITE AT ALL TIMES", installed some time after the baths opened.
November 1, 2025 at 4:44 PM
victurk.bsky.social
Not necessarily.
Three nights getting shorter.
October 29, 2025 at 11:36 PM
victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday, 29 October 1891, #Tunstall #TurkishBaths were opened, though the swimming pool & slipper baths had opened the previous July. A 1st Class Turkish cost 1/- & 6d for 2nd Class. The baths closed in 2011—Council cost-cutting—though the Turkish baths may have closed as early as 1918. 🗃️ #C19th
Exterior of the baths in 1964 (Photo courtesy Bert Bentley)
October 29, 2025 at 10:47 AM
victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday, 28 October 1884, Nevill's opened their flagship #TurkishBaths in London's Northumberland Ave—with adjoining women's baths round the corner. These baths were frequented by #SherlockHolmes & Watson, #Raffles & Bunny, & #Psmith, as it was by authors Doyle, Hornung, & Wodehouse.+ALT 🗃️ #C19th
Exterior of the building in the 1990s, around 50 years after the baths closed. The entrance to the women's baths is down the passageway behind the pedestrians. More about the baths can be found at https://www.victorianturkishbath.org/_6DIRECTORY/AtoZEstab/London/NorAv/MEng.htm Ground floor frigidarium with part of 1st floor balcony. A decorative fountain is at the rear behind which three windows overlook the internal passageway between the men's and women's baths (see plan following). Looking up at the decorative ventilator grille leading to a cupola on the roof. Plans of the baths from R Owen Allsop's book 'The Turkish bath: its design and construction' (1890). I have tinted the women's baths yellow to emphasise their size relative to the men's baths. More about these baths at https://www.victorianturkishbath.org/_6DIRECTORY/AtoZEstab/London/NorAv/FEng.htm
October 28, 2025 at 12:50 PM
victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday, 26 October 1900, the Princess Henry of Battenberg opened the new Diamond Jubilee Pavilion at #Edinburgh Royal Infirmary where the basement includes #TurkishBaths with 3 hot rooms, cooling-rm, douche-rm, with vapour, needle, sulphur, electric & other medicated baths—Closed c.2000 🗃️ #C19th
Drawing of the proposed new pavilion from Edinburgh Evening News (29 Oct 1897)
October 26, 2025 at 6:44 PM
victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday, 26 October 1886, Thomas Fleming, owner of men's #TurkishBaths in Princes St, #Edinburgh, opened a suite for Ladies at 12 Stafford St www.victorianturkishbath.org/_6DIRECTORY/... This was open to men also in 1888 after a fire destroyed his only partly insured Princes St business. 🗃️ #C19th
Advertisement from an 1888 local directory for the baths. The ad includes a cut of the cooling-room and plunge pool, and states the opening hours for men and women. Fleming had been unable to continue the baths after his financial loss due to the Princes Street fire, and by this time the Stafford Street Baths had been taken over by Mr & Mrs Fielding.
October 26, 2025 at 1:45 PM
victurk.bsky.social
My 'to do' lists for today—& tomorrow—totally wrecked by the arrival of 'Songs of Seven Dials' by @tricksterprince.bsky.social A revelation to one whose knowledge of the 20s & early 30s is limited to later Bloomsbury, transforming formal documents into a moving, important story still relevant today.
October 25, 2025 at 4:25 PM
victurk.bsky.social
"A little monologue, entitled The Turkish Bath Attendant by Jack Warner I'm a body basher workin' at the Turkish bath And body Bashin's really my delight I bang their kidney's and their liver, 'til their torsoes fairly quiver And they shout as if I'm putting out their light. (lite) For a uniform I sport a towel and plimsoles 'Cos the plimsoles stop me slippin' on the wet And when I slap 'em with me towel... they let out 'owl after 'owl But it's the finest exercise that you can get. "Actually I started life in a baker's shop kneadin' dough... but as time went on, the more dough I kneaded the less dough I got... and as I kneaded more dough for money, I chucked up kneadin' dough to earn more dough kneadin' human bodies that really needed kneadin' and had the dough to spend on kneadin' if necessary... Of course, you must remember that absent-mindedness in this business is unforgivable... and risky, as for instance, the man working on the hopposite slab to me. He used to work in a fishmongers shop, and one day he shoved a customer's 'ead between 'is legs like a whiting and 'ad 'im half rapped up in a newspaper before 'e realised that 'e wasn't back at 'is old job! So if ever you're goin' to 'ave a turkish bath, keep your 'ead up and your 'eels together... and this advice comes to you from..." A scrubber down of human frames an'd torsoes A torso slapper with a real jujitsu grab Whether dustman, Duke or devil, they're all on the self same level When they're laying there before me on the slab. Now, one day I may go in for hosteopathy That's putting bones back in the place where they belong But until I'm qualified, I'll just be satisfied In helping people lose their hong, bong, pong! "I don't know what that means... but thank you one an' all."
October 24, 2025 at 10:06 AM
victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday, 23 October 1873, Hosie's Turkish Bathing Palace opened at 21 Bourke St E, #Melbourne. 3rd (top) storey was for ladies' #TurkishBaths, the 2nd for men's, & the gd floor was for slipper baths on alt days. Cooling-rooms; hot rms at 100, 135, & 135 °F. The baths closed early 1880s 🗃️ #C19th
Shampooing room at Hosie's in 1877 from the cover of a booklet published about the baths. The water feed for use by the shampooers is an unusual one, there being a flexible hose attached to cold and hot water pipes fixed to the ceiling, each hose serving two shampooers on each side of the room. The address was incorrectly printed and should have been 24 Bourke Street E. The men's cooling-room on the first floor of the baths. From the back of the booklet published by the baths in 1877.
October 23, 2025 at 1:15 PM
victurk.bsky.social
#onthisday, 22 October 1938, #Finsbury MBC opened #TurkishBaths at the Ironmonger Row Public Baths in #Islington (opened 7 yrs earlier). After closure in 2010, re-opened 2012 as part of outsourced much more expensive less multicultural day spa. www.victorianturkishbath.org/_6DIRECTORY/... 🗃️ #C19th
Exterior of the Public Baths. This evocative painting by Suzie Balazs of one of the hot rooms at London's original Ironmonger Row Turkish Baths on a women's day was commissioned by the London Borough of Islington Council. The hot rooms in the refurbished day spa. Just one reaction to the refurbished baths.
October 22, 2025 at 2:56 PM