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Patricia Prime

The Public Baths

half moon
from the corner shop
a penny ice block

The slipper baths were a Saturday night ritual when I was growing up. They were in London after the war, and such places are now non-existent or have been transformed into museums, art galleries, trendy boutiques or cafes.

The baths were established in the Victorian era for the benefit of the working classes whose small terraced houses had no bathrooms and only outside lavatories. The publicly funded baths had been erected so that people could access clean water for washing themselves and their clothes in an effort to fight disease. “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” was an old adage of Victorian times. Our local baths comprised a wash-house for clothing and linen, and three separate entrances for people wishing to bathe. The doors were inscribed with the words: “Men First Class”, “Men Second Class” and “Women.”

On Saturday evening, before Mass on Sunday, my family marched off for the ceremonial cleansing. We each carried a towel, clean underwear and a sliver of soap that mum carved from a large yellow bar. The “heels” from the soap were later collected, boiled and put in a jar by the sink to make a jelly, handfuls of which were used to wash clothes or as a shampoo. We walked home after the bath with our wet hair wrapped in towels.

In the evening, mum combed my sisters’ hair and tied it in strands with strips of paper and rags. Next day their hair was beautifully curled. I didn’t have to undergo this torture as my hair was naturally curly. By the time we got home from Mass on Sunday our hair was usually tangled, our frocks dishevelled and our hands grubby from the pennies we carried to put in the collection plate.

chink of coins
taking out more
than we put in

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Patricia Prime is co-editor of the NZ haiku journal Kokako. She is the articles editor for contemporary haibun online and also a reviewer for Atlas Poetica, Takahe, and other journals.