Baths for the workers – a Victorian Preston innovation

May 26, 2025 ~ Peter Smith

Work in Preston’s Victorian mills meant long hours for men, women and children in often filthy conditions. They returned home exhausted and dirty to houses with no hot water and no bath.

One Preston mill owner, Paul Catterall, responded by providing public baths for his workers at his Park Lane Mill off North Road.

I learned of this in an article in a weekly publication, ‘Eliza Cook’s Journal’, headlined The Health of the Skin, which argued for the provision of public baths for workers in industrial towns. Published in 1849, it included the following:

‘Already several large manufacturers, anxious to promote the health and comfort of their workpeople, have erected baths for their accommodation. The Messrs. Catterall and Co., of Preston, recently opened a series of spacious baths in connection with their works. There are three baths, each forty-seven feet long and twelve wide, one of which is for men, another for women, and a third for children.’

The writer pointed out that cotton mills had a ready supply of hot water from their steam engines, which would otherwise be pumped into the mill reservoir.

Eliza Cook portrait — Eliza Cook: ‘This portrait of Cook shows her “boyish” hair and “mannish appearance;” c. 1850s’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliza_Cook)

The journal was published by Eliza Cook, an early feminist who dressed in male attire. She was a close friend of the Preston historian Charles Hardwick, and must have visited the town, for in some of her articles she displays a knowledge of the town and of the conditions in its poorest districts.

When the Preston prison chaplain, Rev John Clay, attacked the town’s working-class mothers, accusing them of murdering their infants to claim burial insurance, he faced the wrath of Eliza Cook.

In an article in her journal, she sprang to the defence of Preston’s mothers, demonstrating the ridiculousness of his accusation, and demolishing the dodgy statistics on which he based it. She was supported by Charles Hardwick in an article in one of the town’s papers.

Excerpt from the public baths article

The bath is as yet far too little known in England, where, on account of the humidity of our climate, its general use would prove of great public benefit.

No where are these necessities of healthy life more required than in our large towns and cities; for there the immense quantities of soot and smoke with which the atmosphere is impregnated, seek their way through the clothes, defiling the linen, flannel, and skin, and rendering frequent and regular ablution necessary in order to secure any ordinary degree of purity and cleanliness.

The occupations of large numbers of our operatives, also, are necessarily among materials which defile the skin; and, in many cases, they work among matters that are decidedly poisonous if absorbed into the system.

It is far from being a reproach to the workman that his hands and his body bear the indications of his honest labour; there is honour, high honour, in industry of all kinds, no matter howsoever it soil the skin. But, after all, this is only one of the accidents and accompaniments of labour; and after the hours of daily toil are over, the defilement is removable.

The hands and the skin may be washed, and for this purpose abundance of pure water, and cheap and easy access to public baths, ought to be within the reach of the operatives and artisans of all large towns.

Nothing would be easier than to establish baths in connection with most large workshops and factories. In almost all of them there is a steam-engine and plenty of hot water, which is at present allowed to run entirely to waste. This might easily be saved for the supply of warm baths for the workpeople, which might be con structed at a very small expense.

Already several large manufacturers, anxious to promote the health and comfort of their workpeople, have erected baths for their accommodation. The Messrs. Catterall and Co., of Preston, recently opened a series of spacious baths in connection with their works. There are three baths, each forty-seven feet long and twelve wide, one of which is for men, another for women, and a third for children.