The History of Baths

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Plumbing, Electrification, and the Shower

The story of how showering has become commonplace is reflected against the backdrops of innovations in plumbing, heating and power. The movement of showering from communal bathhouses, to hydrotherapeutic clinics, to individual homes is only practicable because of piped water into the majority of homes, coupled with electric heating and power systems, which are essential prerequisites for the emergence of private showering

Piped water and the public private status of showering
The first infrastructures of showering were part of public bathing, in ancient Greece with the “shower-bath”, involving cascades of water from overhead outlets. Showering vanishes from the recorded annals of history throughout the middle ages, a period during which the very idea of getting wet in any way was associated with all manner of danger and disease.

It re-emerged in the mid-eighteenth century after the first shower patent was granted to Englishman William Feetham in 1767, but lack of household plumbing made showering a practice to be conducted outside the home. Although a patented shower was in existence it did not itself precipitate any more widespread use. Although a small number of domestic 'hand pumped' showers were produced commercially, showering did not catch on.

Piped water supplies became available within the home in major UK cities during the 1880s, but it was not until the 1930s that middle class homes equipped with hot and cold running water as a standard.

Although most new housing developments has hot and cold running water from the thirties, it was not until the 1950s that the working class had hot and cold water.
The electrification of homes represents a crucial step in establishing showering as routine. The development of point of use water heaters, such as immersion heaters provided the possibility of `safer’ and convenient methods of heating water. Prior to this most of the domestic hot water was produced by kitchen ranges, coal fired boilers or geysers. Once the technology was in place to heat water relatively quickly the capacity to bathe more often than once a week became practical.

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