Victorian Turkish baths : their origin, development, and gradual decline : Malcolm Shifrin's information exchange
Description:
The history of the Victorian Turkish bath is virtually uncharted, so the website is an attempt to interest historians in an aspect of Victorian life which has been almost totally forgotten. David Urquhart's reintroduction of the so-called Turkish (actually Roman) bath into the British Isles in 1856 was largely achieved by the Turkish Bath Movement allied to his Foreign Affairs Committees and promulgated in the "Sheffield Free Press" and the "Free Press". Created by a retired media resources librarian and historian who has been interested in the subject since 1990, this comprehensive site has six main sections: Introductory; History of the Turkish bath; Turkish bath topics (e.g. caricatures and cartoons, hydropathy, the earliest Turkish bath photos); some Turkish bath personalities; Turkish bath companies; Turkish bath directory (listing more than 600 establishments and with brief articles about an increasing number of them). In addition there are over 400 illustrations in both thumbnail and enlarged versions, footnotes, bibliography, illustrations index, and two-way acknowledgments. There is also a listing of the 21 Turkish baths that are still open, with contact numbers and addresses, and a Stop Press column of recent news. The site is fully searchable and is updated fairly regularly. This website does use frames, but a no-frames version is also available.
