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2.—The provision of large public swimming baths, warmed in winter so as to
maintain a uniform temperature, and to keep them in use all tho year round.
Such baths being provided for two sexes, and two classes. These baths are
intended primarily for healthy exercise, and are with advantage supplemented
by rooms and implements for calisthenic exercises, or by halls and apparatus
for gymnastics. Cleanliness is also served by swimming b:iths, but in a lesser
degree than by single baths. Well-constructed swimming baths are even of
more value to the young in the development of manhood and womanhood
than open spaces: for they cleanse whilst they exercise.
It is only a public Authority that can provide adequate public swimming
baths. Good public swimming baths are greatly valued as a means of recreation,
exercise, and cleanliness, and attract the more vigorous and prosperous
portions of the community to the district. It is therefore greatly to the
interest of all concerned that a public Authority should not hesitate to
improve a locality by the erection of public swimming baths, and thereby
obtain some right to press for the parallel action by house owners installing
private baths.
It must not be understood that a public Authority should not erect any
single baths and washhouses at all, but that single baths and washhouses
cannot be erected in sufficient numbers by the public Authority of a
crowded district, and that the proper place for them is attached to dwellinghouses,
rather than grouped together at a distance.
3.—It should be added that large numbers of places that should be sculleries
and washhouses, situated in out-buildings and kitohens, are converted into
dwelling-rooms, wit h the result that dwelling-houses are overcrowded to a
serious extent. The most beneficial step that might be takon would be to
cause these places to be reconverted to their proper uses, and be set apart
for the washing and bathing of the occupants of the tenement-houses of which
they form part.
The absence of a washing place in a crowded house is a very serious
matter, and the seriuusness appears to be totally unappreciated. In by far the
largest majority of tenemented or made-down houses the occupants have
young families; personal cleanliness is a foremost measure for the preservation
of the health and the development of the vigour of the children,
especially cleanliness of the underclothing and of the skin. How is the mother
of a family of young children living in one or two rooms to do her washing P
She cannot take her children to the public baths and washhouses with her,
and consequently the family washing both of person and clothing has to be
done in a one or two-roomed dwelling (if done at all), under the most adverse
conditions,—conditions educationally bad and most discouraging to cleanliness.
I cannot express my opinion too strongly, —
(1) That in every tenemented house there should be required to be
provided a place where the occupants can do their clothes washing
and person al'cleansing.
(2) That, as St. Pancras contains such a very large number of one
and two-roomed dwellings, the bye-laws for tenemented houses
should be supplemented by a bye-law requiring the provision of
accommodation for clothes washing and personal cleansing.