The Turkish bath : with a view to its introduction into the British dominions / [D. Urquhart].

  • Urquhart, David, 1805-1877.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Turkish bath : with a view to its introduction into the British dominions / [D. Urquhart]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    charge of attendance being withdrawn from the poorer classes, the expense incurred would amount to one penny for sixteen baths, or four baths for a farthing. Here I am going upon the data supplied by these bathing establishments, where the water is furnished to them at a very low price, namely, fifteen shillings for the one thousand barrels, of thirty gallons, and where the coals consumed are of an inferior quality, at nine shillings a ton; and these are the points in which England and its capital possess such great advantages. In these establishments they can furnish between one and two thousand baths a-day, at an outlay of £15 or £16 a-week • and as the experiment has so far so well sue* ceeded, two hundred of them would supply London, at the rate of a bath to each person, weekly, for which the weekly expenditure would be £8000 or £150,000 per annum, which would occasion a daily use of 126,000,000 of gallons of water. In the Turkish manner, the expen¬ diture of water would be 15,000,000; and taking the proportionate saving in fuel, there would be a saving of one-half the outlay, or £75,000 a-year; but, as the facility thus afforded, and the habits so engendered, would lead in our climate, and in our circumstances, to a much more frequent use of the bath than once a-week, and as it would constantly be had recourse to by the lower orders, without their going through the whole process, the establishments would have to be propor¬ tionately larger, and the expenditure greater. At all events, it is now no longer a theoretical matter: these baths are in use, and are extending; and the question is,
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