WHEN BATHING REGULARLY BECAME FASHIONABLE AGAIN AFTER 1400 YEARS

Queen Elizabeth I famously had a bath once a year, 'whether she needed it or not' during her reign in the 16th century. By the Georgian era 150 years later, advances in ceramics and the delivery of cleaner water allowed the better-off classes to be more fastidious in bathing, leading eventually to development of spa towns like Epsom, Bath, Leamington, Cheltenham and Harrogate. However this new health fad could also be used as a cover for more licentious activities. 

Ian Betts is the Museum of London archaeology expert on building materials and ceramics. Speaking at the Letherhead Institute on 20 September, he explained that he had become interested in Georgian baths through noticing tile work in some of the buildings he visited, then got funding to study the subject seriously.

The Romans had a sophisticated system for bathing, he began. Oil was applied to the skin and bathers went into hot and cold plunge pools to make them sweat the dirt from their pores This was scraped off and they were then massaged. Once the Romans left Britain, their baths were abandoned. Anglo-Saxons bathed in rivers, if at all, and sometimes these were dammed to create a bathing pool, but by the 13th century there are only a few references to wooden tubs used for bathing.

The Dark Ages arrived in Britain in the fifth century and the rest of western Europe but the Roman Empire survived in the east, based at Byzantium (Constantinople). The Islamic communities that superseded that picked up the idea of Roman-style baths from there. In the early 18th century elements of Islamic life became fashionable in western Europe and Roman-style bathing returned in the form of Turkish baths, using the same system of hot and cold pools.

In England, the first modern baths were found in country houses such as at Carshalton and Claremont. Some had a single pool, others both hot and cold. In London, commercial bagnios, as they were known, were established around Covent Garden. The Italian 'bagnio' was quickly anglicised to 'bendigo'.  Covent Garden became a hotbed of creativity with artists, artists' suppliers, booksellers, bookbinders, printmakers, theatres, actors, writers and a booming sex industry. The bagnios were aimed at the rich, with fine furnishings, high-quality tableware and steep prices. They catered for both sexes and upstairs rooms could be rented by the hour or the night. 

Many were really of course just fronts for brothels and famous London madams established their own bagnios.  Hogarth produced a picture of the notorious Betty Careless being carried home drunk from hers in a sedan chair.  She ended her life in the poor house but others did very well out of the trade. The Harris List, a periodical of the day listing London's prostitutes, said the bagnios 'provide both sexes with pleasure'. Others promoted a more respectable image, with men and women admitted on different days and some advertised that they could cater for a whole family and their servants.

Spa towns developed separately from the bagnios. These involved drinking health-giving water as well as bathing in it, usually fully clothed. They were modelled on other European spas as at Baden Baden. The city of Bath, with its natural hot springs and rediscovered Roman bath, was an early example.

Bath was followed by others such as Harrogate, Leamington, Cheltenham and locally Epsom. The spa experience also involved eating and drinking far too much and gambling. Sea bathing also became fashionable later with the coming of the railways.

The 19th century bought high-pressure steam-driven pumps and iron pipes to stand the resulting loads of water, and local authorities were empowered to supply all homes. Few then had bathrooms so councils built public baths with individual slipper baths, wash houses for washing clothes, and later swimming pools. Urban lower classes were able to keep themselves clean for the first time. These facilities, and pressure from the Society for the Suppression of Vice, killed off the remaining bagnios although some buildings survived as wash houses. There are a very few remnants left in London.

Ian's talk was based on a paper submitted to Transactions London & Middlesex Archaeology  Society which is due out next year when L&DLHS members will have access to the full text.