Dr. Barter and the “Improved” Turkish Bath in Ireland

TURKISH AND OTHER vapor baths were amongst several hydropathical processes developed as alternative forms of medical treatment during the nineteenth century. Dr Richard Barter (1802–1870) is attributed with the introduction of the vapor bath to Ireland, having come under the influence of David Urquhart's account of hot air-baths in The Pillars of Hercules (1850). Born in Cooldaniel, Co. Cork, Richard Barter qualified as a medical doctor at the London College of Physicians. He returned to Cork as a dispensary doctor at Inishcarra, continuing to work there during the cholera epidemic of 1832. Between 1842 and 1843, Barter established St. Ann's near Blarney, Co. Cork, a hydropathic venture which experienced considerable success, and which shared a place with the plethora of other rest-cure establishments appearing throughout Europe. In 1856 Barter set about investigating the possibility of including a vapor bath (also referred to as steam baths, Turkish baths, and so on) as part of the medical treatments being offered at St. Ann's. Although such baths were already an established feature of hydropathy in Europe, it was at St. Ann's that Barter, in conjunction with Urquhart, developed the “improved” Turkish Bath. This was a hot air bath in which steam was reduced to an acceptable minimum and was to become the blueprint for Turkish baths established throughout the rest of the nineteenth century. Indeed, it would seem that this was the first such bath using this system to be established in Europe. Urquhart went on to be instrumental in establishing several baths in England, including one in Manchester (1857) and one in Jermyn Street in London in 1862 (Shifrin 2003). Barter continued to promote the system in Britain and Ireland and was involved in establishing Turkish baths in numerous places, including two of the first in Ireland. These were in Dublin (1860) and in Bray, Co. Wicklow (1859). By 1908, Barter's system was included in Steiglitz Municipal Baths in Berlin, where it was described as a Roman-Irish bath.

As such establishments became part of the general move towards commercialized leisure, rather than simply a medical treatment, the Turkish bath became an increasingly comfortable and pleasurable activity. Durie describes a situation in England and Scotland where many hydropathical establishments offered an increasing array of services and amusements alongside the medical treatments themselves (39). This is also evident in descriptions of the baths established by Barter in Ireland. Initially, coffee and smoking, perceived to be part and parcel of the bathing experience in “the East,” were considered by Barter to be enjoyable for the healthy, but unsuitable as part of a cure for the sick in Blarney. By 1862, however, coffee and “chibouk” were available in the baths in Lincoln Place while more substantial refreshments were available in the adjacent restaurant. At a bath opened on St. Stephen's Green in 1878 these facilities had been extended to include a refreshment bar offering an eclectic menu of soup, coffee, wine, and biscuits. Also available on these premises were the services of a hairdresser, a comfortable drawing room, and a “small and select library” (Dublin Journal of Medical Science 187). It would seem that non-residential bathing complexes increased in size over time to accommodate ancillary activities that became more varied and perhaps eventually expected by the consumer.

The siting of the baths is important in the context of their role as a leisure pastime. The hydropathic establishment in Blarney was the first of Barter's Turkish baths to take form. The complex as a whole was described by one visitor as being a place in which one could experience “room to breathe … uninterrupted sunshine and pastoral repose,” and enjoy the “golden gleam” on the ruins of Blarney Castle (A Glimpse of St. Ann's 5). Another pamphlet comments on its proximity to Cork city while emphasizing its hilltop site, “magnificent prospect” and surrounding walks and woodlands. Similarly Dr. Edward Haughton, a medical doctor, advertised his own hydropathic establishment at Galtrim House, Bray in 1860 by referring to its proximity to Barter's bath, “the largest Turkish Bath yet built in Great Britain.” He describes the benefits of its location “near Dublin, amidst beautiful scenery … easily accessible by railway.” Bray's status as the premier seaside resort in Ireland was a significant factor in attracting business. Indeed, the building of a Turkish bath there was perhaps intended to enhance the town's image as a fashionable watering place. As the town was modeled on Brighton, the inclusion of a structure vaguely reminiscent of the Eastern inspired Brighton Pavilion may have seemed essential to its success. The baths were located on the newly developed Quinsborough Road, one of the principal roads in the new resort, adjacent to the Carlisle Grounds, a pleasure garden opened in 1862 and in close proximity to the railway station, the seafront, and three of the town's largest hotels. Furthermore, because of their location amidst the impressive scenery of Co. Cork and Co. Wicklow, Blarney and Bray benefited from the contemporary search for objects that would fulfill the desires of the “romantic gaze,” a pre-occupation of the Victorian bourgeoisie (See Urry). The location of the baths in Lincoln Place is significantly different than those in either Blarney or Bray, being situated close to the center of the city, rather than in any picturesque surroundings which would appeal to Victorian romanticism. However, the site of the baths was opposite Trinity College, close to Merrion Square, home at that time to many successful doctors and members of other professions, and accessible to work places and developing suburbs, home to much of the city's burgeoning middle class. A location close to the daily routines of its customers must have contributed to its success, given that it appears to have functioned for forty years in comparison to a mere six or seven years in Bray. All three locations are significant sites of bourgeois social activity. The appeal of the baths to this class is key to the understanding of them as a form of cultural expression.

Leisure and the Middle Classes

ERIC HOBSBAWM PERCEIVES the nineteenth century as an age of triumph for the bourgeoisie. He describes it as “ … a drama of progress, that key word of the age: massive, enlightened, sure of itself, self-satisfied but above all inevitable” (16). The nineteenth century had seen the entrenchment of the middle classes as a dominant force in the creation of modern society. Donnelly and Miller have asserted that in Ireland, “a bourgeoisie … had emerged triumphant, culturally as well as socially” (Donelly and Miller xii). This was particularly the case during the 1860s, the period in which these baths were operating, when economic stability prevailed in Ireland. This class was not a singular homogenous group and there were differences in status between these sub-groupings. However, several authors have referred to a shared middle-class culture, consciousness, or set of values in general terms (Altick; Reader; Best; Montague) and in relation to their leisure practices in particular (Bailey). This culture believed that, while a world of material plenty was being established, this went hand in hand with a deep sense of morality in which the idea of progress, that leitmotif of the Victorian age, played an important part. This concern with morality and progress enacted in a variety of arenas including leisure. Indeed, the idea of engaging in leisure pursuits in itself indicated that one had achieved a particular social status. They were expressions of a sense of one's own advancement and progress, as well as that of society more generally. While the hierarchies within this culture may have been articulated – in seating arrangements or pricing structures, for example (Altick) – the core values being expressed in engaging in the activity were similar.

Health, Hydropathy, and Tourism

THE RE-FASHIONED LEISURE WORLD of the middle classes involved activities associated with health and physical fitness, the arts and sciences, travel and knowledge, and it is against this backdrop that the improved Turkish bath must be understood. Public health and cleanliness became central concerns during the nineteenth century, evidenced by the attention they received from numerous public enquiries and acts of reform. Epidemics of cholera and typhoid, amongst other deadly diseases, caused widespread anxiety and as Porter states, “anyone might die … and the social fabric was under strain with revolution in the air. Surrounded by the great unwashed and threatened by cholera, jittery members of society feared that disease might spark insurrection – or might spread to them” (405). After all, poverty, overcrowded urban slums, and underdeveloped water supply systems left much of the population open to such disease, and cholera outbreaks took place on a regular basis. In addition to this, both producers and consumers of the Turkish baths in Ireland would have witnessed, or have been aware of, the horrors of the Great Famine in the mid 1840s; images of a diseased and weakened people cannot have been far from their minds. The Health of Towns Act of 1848 saw improvements made to both water supply and sewerage systems, as well as the building of public bathhouses. Dixon and Muthesius note with regard to the English context that as a result of this act “cholera did not break out again after the 1860s, and cleanliness and respectability became synonymous” (Dixon and Muthesius 109).

Also during this period, homeopathy had developed as an alternative to drug-based medicine. Porter suggests that: “Homeopathy's lasting appeal has stemmed from its stress on purity and the attractive idea of the body striving to cure itself” (391). Hydropathy, the treatment of illness using water or vapor baths, clearly falls into this category of medical care. Vincent Priessnitz (1799–1851) rekindled the interest in vapor baths at Graffenberg in Austria. His cure was based on the belief that foreign matter entering the body's system caused illness. The combination of steam baths to encourage perspiration, cold water baths to close the pores, and sometimes the use of wet bandages and shampooing or massage was believed to expel the poison from the body thereby leaving the patient both well and rested. Sir Alfred Tennyson described his treatment at one such establishment in England by saying “Of all the uncomfortable ways of living sure an hydropathical is the worst: no reading by candlelight, no going near a fire, no tea, no coffee, perpetual wet sheet and cold bath and alternation from hot to cold: however I have much faith in it” (qtd. in Porter 393). It is entirely likely that, until the invention of the “improved” method, bathing in an Irish context was similar. Despite descriptions of water-cures as being rather unpleasant affairs, they were associated with leisure from their inception. The use of spa wells and sea bathing, particularly popular with the aristocracy in the eighteenth century, became the preserve of the middle classes during the nineteenth. Barter's “improved” Turkish bath and the increasingly frequent addition of other pleasurable elements as part of the bathing experience, as noted previously, must have come as a welcome relief to Tennyson's painful ordeal. Bathing and bathing establishments became part and parcel of the tourist experience of Ireland, a supplement to the thrills of its sublime scenery. Bathing was clearly associated with both health and leisure practices, and with the vogue for rest-cure holidays. Vapor baths like Barter's were established in response to anxieties about widespread disease and illness, the search for preventative remedies and the demand for services catering to tourists. It can be argued that their use expresses a duality in the way that their consumers conceived of leisure activities. The driving factor in this for the middle classes was a fundamental anxiety that leisure should not be too pleasurable, but that it must serve other serious purposes.

Morality, Recreation, and Pleasure

THE SEARCH FOR LEISURE activities that would support middle-class social ideals and separate them from what were viewed as the rather suspect entertainment of both the working and aristocratic classes was problematic. Traditional forms of popular entertainment and their associated excesses – particularly in terms of the consumption of alcohol – were viewed as a threat to social order. In Ireland, where political and social unrest was fuelled by inequality, the issue of control of such activities was paramount. Pleasure for pleasure's sake could often be perceived as dangerous – the new purpose of recreation was to maintain the moralistic norms necessary for respectable living. One commentator observed that recreational activity should be “an act of duty undertaken for the sake of subsequent power which it generates and the subsequent profit which it ensures” (Bailey 67). This idea of control was bound up with efforts associated with the “improvement” of the lower classes. For example, Elizabeth Malcolm has described the way in which the consumption of alcohol in Ireland was “invariably singled out as the primary cause of the fighting and violence now associated on a grand scale with the staple events of Irish popular culture”(Malcolm ix). This resulted in the exercising of both legal and philanthropic controls. Fr. Mathew's temperance movement, for example, perceived alcohol as one of the chief obstacles standing in the way of social improvement and attempted to create alternative and more respectable attractions. Similar concerns underlie the establishment of popular societies like those of the Mechanic's Institutes and working men's clubs and the extension of access to museums and libraries, all of which were designed to offer an alternative to the “gin palace” and a means of improving oneself. The establishment of bathhouses was also regarded as being a great step towards the purification of the mind and the achievement of moral superiority.

The activity of bathing can be placed within discourses that are central to our understanding of the Victorian world, particularly the discourses that surround the concepts of improvement and progress, leisure, and recreation. These concerns certainly form at least part of Barter's motivation: “Other heroes have won their laurels upon the battlefield. I rejoice that my war has been a war of peace; it has been a war against prejudice, a war against intemperance, a war against disease, a war shedding happiness in its course, a war calculated to diffuse pleasure and hope and joy” (15). Others involved in the promotion of the Turkish bath also use the rhetoric of progress. A Dr. Haughton penned an “Ode to the Turkish Bath” in which he states, “Soon in each town shall stately piles appear, to show the hand of progress has been there” (Haughton, 420).²

There may also have been an anxiety surrounding the recognition of class identity when one of the principal markers of this – clothing – was being abandoned. Although no evidence of this has come to light in the Irish context as yet, Anthony Trollope gives a wonderful sense of it in his short story, “The Turkish Bath” (1869). Having entered the Jermyn Street Turkish baths in London, the narrator of the story (the editor of a periodical) is befriended by a fellow bather, a Mr. Molloy. The narrator thinks him a fine fellow, until he realizes that the friendly advances made by Molloy are in fact a ruse for Molloy's real purpose, which is to ensure that the editor will read his manuscript with a view to publication. When the two meet again at the narrator's office, he is further appalled at Molloy's shabby dress, which clearly marks him out as being socially beneath him. Mark Turner has remarked that such a fear of mistaken identity was indeed a feature of an expanding urban world (204).

Something also needs to be said here about the expression of social hierarchies internal to the middle classes, touched upon earlier in the article. As in the English and Scottish contexts, rich evidence pertaining to the clientele of the various establishments with which we are concerned is scant (Durie 45). However, pricing structures for Barter's residential hydropathic establishment in St. Ann's and one of the most extensive of those in England, Ben Rhydding, can be compared. In 1861 a patient at St. Ann's was charged £3, 5s per week for their treatment, and basic board and lodging in a room of superior quality. A further £1, 1s was required for an initial consultation, and an extra 3s for the use of the Turkish baths there. For another patient to be accommodated in the same room, one would pay £1, 12s 6d, and £1 for a servant to occupy a separate room. Thereafter, one could opt to pay £1, 7s 6d per week for a private sitting room or to take meals in one's own room for 7s for the same period (Barter, “Descriptive Notice” 27). Social identities may have been established in this way at St. Ann's – those who felt themselves to be a cut above other guests may well have opted to dine privately or to have kept to themselves in a private sitting room. It seems that some baths may have been chosen over others to express the same concerns. The prices at Ben Rhydding for the same year appear to have been significantly higher than those at St. Ann's. For example, one could expect to pay £3, 13s 6d for board and lodging and a further £3 for a medical consultation. Those who attended this establishment were drawn from the upper middle class and included lawyers, landed proprietors, farmers, merchants, and colonials (Durie 45). The difference in costs between these two establishments may indicate that Barter's clientele in St. Ann's were drawn from lower down on the social scale.

The association of the Turkish bath with the movement towards rational forms of recreation in contrast to uncontrolled popular entertainment, and the relationship between this and the social dominance of the middle classes indicates that the expression of class identity is central to our understanding of this cultural form. The promotion of the Turkish bath was full of the rhetoric of progress and improvement. These included ideas about morality and the relationship between this and physical health. The bath was regarded as a tool for the moral and physical advancement of society and was seen to play a part in the civilization of the “masses,” and in turn the maintenance of the status quo. This was not simply about the shaping of their own class culture, but was also about the control of others, an assertion of middle-class cultural dominance. It is the maintenance of bourgeois identity that is very clearly expressed in relation to the production and consumption of the Turkish bath in Ireland. Furthermore, this class shared the preoccupations of their social equals in England and the rest of Europe.

Style and Meaning

THE MATERIALITY of the baths is an important factor in understanding the meanings that surrounded them. All of the Irish baths appear to have adhered to a similar plan, despite their diverse locations. A central chimney disguised as a tower was flanked on either side by separate but identical apartments for men and women. The chimney was essential to Barter's “improved” method, given that it carried excess steam away from the bathing chambers. The internal layout of the baths was dictated to some extent by the order in which activities took place there. The divan was the first room entered by bathers who would divest themselves of their clothes in dressing rooms or stalls. From here, the bather proceeded to the tepidarium, intended to allow him or her to acclimatize to the high temperatures necessary for the bath, and from here to the vapor bath apartment or caldarium itself. This room or one adjoining also contained a plunge pool necessary for the treatment. The bather was required to pass back through the tepidarium and into the divan in order to finish the treatment and exit the premises. The principle requirement of the baths in terms of their interior decoration was that they should use surfaces that could withstand the high levels of steam required in the treatment of patients. However, the interior and exterior decorative style of baths became increasingly important as they became a part of the commercialized leisure world. This opinion was expressed later by Robert Owen Allsop when in 1890 he wrote, “with the public, the best bath will be the most elaborate and most flashily decorated, and the moth and candle principle comes into play” (14). Decoration had also become an important tool in the forging of middle-class identity during this period. The influential factors on the choice of styles in the decoration of Turkish baths can be understood to relate to the function of the building as a leisure attraction, and to the perceived origins of vapor baths. A discussion of this requires us to consider the decorative styles that were used, and the needs or desires their use may have reflected.

Engraved illustrations of the complex of St. Ann's as a whole at Blarney show a largely classically inspired exterior in romanticized, picturesque surroundings. The Turkish baths themselves, however, photographed prior to 1869, adopt orientalist fretwork, tracery, and arched doorways which became the idiom most associated with such buildings. The baths in Bray and Dublin, the next to be built, were far more exuberant in their use of this stylistic language. Indeed, the description of the exterior of the baths at Bray provided a problem for contemporary commentators. Its arched windows and doors, numerous minarets, and red and white polychromatic facade were described as “bizarre” and a “frequent puzzle for strangers” in one guide book (Doran 25). An illustration of the baths in the official railway handbook of 1860 shows a central square section tower – decorated with applied ornament – rising from the center of the building, which seems to match the impressive fifty foot high chimney shaft of the baths in Lincoln Place. Absent in Bray, however, is the eighty-foot high onion dome that dominated the city bath. The facade of Lincoln Place was largely decorated with plasterwork rather than brick, a series of masques crowning the pilasters placed at regular intervals above and at either side of the ticket office. The minarets, fretwork, and half-moon apertures were “novel,” “agreeable,” and “surprising” to the Dublin Builder who cited them as the first example of the oriental style in Dublin (“New Baths” 176).

A series of illustrations of the baths at Blarney give a rare glimpse of their interior schemes. Interestingly, the illustrations do not suggest the use of the oriental style that had been employed for the exterior. In the tepidarium, male bathers recline against a classically inspired column topped with an urn and fountain, while in the view of the Divan, female bathers are shown wearing toga-like robes in an interior which seems to resemble a cathedral more than a hammam. A fountain in the center of the room seems to be largely constructed of naturalistic ornament and neither floors nor walls appear to be patterned. The saracenic windows shown in this illustration are clearly visible in photographs of the exterior of the earlier scheme, but are absent from the largely classical building opened later in 1870. Despite the “exceedingly classical and imposing effect” of this later building, expressed through the use of a central cupola and renaissance style porch, the Irish Builder maintained that the use of mirrors, stained glass, and tapestry gave it “internally, quite an Oriental appearance” (170). The divan in Bray, like that in Blarney, had an arched roof and stained glass windows. Perhaps the most atmospheric elements in its decoration were a circular ottoman out of the center of which rose a mirrored octagonal pillar crowned with globes and stars “for effect at night” (Dublin Builder, “Notes” 8). Showers in the caldarium at Lincoln Place were divided by “oriental arches and coloured bricks” while floors were laid throughout with patterned tiles supplied by Minton's (Dublin Builder, “New Baths” 176).

Oriental minarets, fretwork, and arched windows and doors were used externally, while stained glass, mirror, tiling, and painted woodwork were the elements most frequently used internally. Although the system itself was mainly based on ancient roman bathing places, the bathing experience as a whole was most overtly associated with the oriental world. The decoration of the baths reflected this duality in the eclectic mixture of Eastern and historical, Western styles that were used. These styles would have contributed to the meanings attached to them by producers and consumers, as they did in other contexts.

Identity, Authenticity, and the “Other”

THE LAST THIRTY YEARS have seen considerable debate surrounding the use of motifs and subject matter inspired by the East at this time. It would seem that two principal strands of thought have emerged from this debate. The approach adopted by Edward Said (1978, 1993), for example, views representations of the East by the West as a way of reinforcing attitudes of racial dominance in an imperialist context. The representational strategies used by Western cultures in the depiction of the East were based on crude, reductionist, binary oppositions between the rational, mature, civilized West and the irrational, immature, and uncivilized East. In this way, Western cultural forms constructed the East as the inferior of the West and occidental power was maintained in political and economic arenas. The gendering of East and West in cultural products is also pertinent to this viewpoint. Indeed, many interpretations of such artifacts find a parallel in feminist modes of analysis by connecting expressions of patriarchal dominance with those of racial dominance. For example, Nochlin's analysis of the works of orientalist painters focuses on the depiction of Eastern women as passive objects of a Western male gaze. This type of dynamic was reinforced in a more generalized context by mixing motifs from diverse Eastern cultures, both in terms of props for paintings and the design of objects and interiors for a mass market, thereby negating the existence of distinct cultures under the expansive umbrella term of “the orient.” This is clearly a very compelling and important argument about how power is created and maintained through cultural forms. It has been invaluable in the consideration of colonial discourse other than that pertaining to the East. Indeed, many studies of nineteenth-century Ireland adopt this framework (for example, see Philip 289–302). However, this approach may present a rather limiting framework for understanding the very wide variety of cultural forms produced during the nineteenth century that might be described as being concerned with the representation of the “Other.”

In contrast, work on the consumption of toured objects in a contemporary context suggests that consumers seek to experience the “Other” as a way of regaining parts of the self lost in the fragmented nature of modern life (MacCannell; Selwyn; Wang). Similarly, some studies of consumption more generally regard leisure practices as the articulation of needs and desires left unfulfilled by other aspects of our lives (Fiske). This does not negate the importance of considering these activities in relation to concepts of dominance and hegemony, but rather admits that consumption is a complex practice which can act both as a site of resistance to dominant ideologies as well as participating in their perpetuation. This may also be true of the consumption practices of the Victorian middle-classes, particularly in relation to their “Others.” Many studies, particularly in the field of material culture and design history, have pointed towards the complex and changing inter-relationships between East and West, colonized and colonizer, that existed during this period (Barringer and Flynn). Mackenzie, an imperialist historian, answers Said's arguments very directly. Without dismissing the Saidan approach out of hand, Mackenzie seeks to create a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between East and West as expressed in a wider variety of cultural forms. Rather than accepting that all consumers and producers of the “oriental” were engaged in the subjugation of the East, he suggests that the ways in which it was received were diverse, depending on the specific contexts in which it was produced and consumed. Mackenzie refers, for example, to the ideal of masculinity depicted in particular types of orientalist paintings and suggests that this provided male consumers with a diverse source of models on which to base their own masculine identities (58). Considering the production and consumption of a range of cultural products, Mackenzie also puts forward an alternative framework in which the appropriation of the East by the West might also be understood as a form of critiquing Western, rather than Eastern, culture. In some contexts, this took the form of a critique of industrialization and its effect on the applied arts. Mirroring the contemporary arguments described above, he also suggests that the consumption of the oriental “Other” might have indicated the expression of a lack of fulfillment in one's own society. This involved the appropriation of Eastern culture in a Westernized form in “a romantic search for the extended and fuller self” (Mackenzie 21). He argues that the reasons for the fascination with the orient at this time were complex, and may well have been open to a series of forces separate to those of a colonialist cause. This view is not confined to the consumption of the East, but has also been applied to the consumption of a range of “Others.” The appeal of the past and of the colonized nations of the West, like Ireland, to the Victorian consumer can be included in this. Lowenthal has argued that the appropriation of the past in this context became “a refuge from the all too new and disillusioning present” created by rapid modernization (xxi). Similarly, while many representations of Ireland in travel literature of the period express colonialist concerns, others emphasized its capacity to “fulfil needs that could not be satisfied elsewhere,” presumably at home or in everyday life (Hooper xxxiv; Coombes). Some orientalist painters, Mackenzie suggests, may have been expressing “both fright at cultural difference and an admiring fascination with characteristics their own society had repressed” (Mackenzie 65) and which they perceived to have been present in their Eastern subjects. One aspect of this concerns gender identities. He partially inverts the gender oriented readings of Nochlin and others, and considers that the depiction of difference in orientalist images may have functioned as a way for male audiences to explore and extend their identities in more depth than their own society would allow. He argues that “through the East, men were rediscovering and re-negotiating their capacity to handle emotion, personal expression and intimacy” (Mackenzie 58). We must also consider the impact ancillary images or descriptions of the East – and the meanings they held for consumers – would have had on their experience of Turkish baths, as Nenadic has done in relation to the consumption of country houses earlier in the century (216). Most consumers were exposed to an increasing number of images of all types, particularly with the growth in availability of periodicals aimed at the middle-class thirst for knowledge and entertainment. Many images and stories based on an imagined East were reproduced in such periodicals. Mackenzie finds little evidence that the consumers of such images were interested in them as “emblems of imperial power, as illustrations of the onwards march of Westernization and technical progress, or as images of a condign cultural destruction and disappearance” (51). Rather, they might be viewed as an extension of romanticism, a desire for the unknown, the exciting, and the sublime. These images may also have played a role in the consumer experience of orientalist architecture, like that of the Turkish baths I have described. Mackenzie also raises the issue of a “demotic orientalism,” a product of popular culture that embraced the orient as a source of aesthetic inspiration, particularly in relation to the architecture of leisure. He acknowledges the possibility that oriental styles were used within this context because of the relationship between their perceived insubstantiality and the marginal importance of leisure in the official life of a nation, but he goes on to argue that several factors suggest that this does not fully explain the use of the oriental in this context. He raises the point that Western styles, or an eclectic mixture of Eastern and Western styles, were also used for a range of recreational buildings or rooms within buildings, and that many leisure activities were associated with a serious purpose, particularly in relation to progress and civilization. This means that it is more difficult to make a simple connection between orientalism, marginality and leisure, as some commentators have done. This view is strengthened by discussions which see leisure, not as a marginal concern, but at least partially as an articulation of those aspects of the self that are left unfulfilled by everyday life and therefore a comment on that life and the society that produced it (MacCannell; Fiske; Selwyn; Wang). If applied in the context of Victorian perceptions of the East, this would see the concept of monolithic identities of colonizer and colonized becoming more fragmented particularly in terms of an intersection between class and gender self-identities. In this case, the relationship between identity and authenticity revolves around the loss of a sense of self in a society that constructed very clear and exclusive gender and class and identities. If this is the case, what is sought out by the consumer is the authenticity of self (Selwyn; Wang). It can be suggested that the “Others” of the Victorian middle-class may have been a source for those aspects of the self that were left unfulfilled in everyday life. The leisure activities concerned with the representation of these “Others” may also have been partial sites of resistance to the middle-class construction of their own world.

It has already been argued that middle-class identity was central to the formation of meaning in relation to Turkish baths. But it is clear that other forms of identity were also articulated, particularly in the context of the perceived origins of the baths. Barter himself describes two principal origins – the ancient Western and Eastern worlds. In a pamphlet extolling its virtues, Dr. Barter includes a verse entitled Dedit Roma, Servabat Asia, Perfecit Hibernia:

Cultural identities based on both class and ethnicity have already emerged as being significant here. However, there are still more layers to the relationship between the Turkish baths and identity formation, particularly in the context of gender and the concept of self-identity and authenticity raised by Mackenzie and others. Related to this is the role of the oriental style, or of an activity like bathing, in creating a place apart from the everyday life of its consumers. Given their part in the Victorian experience of leisure, the baths can be interpreted as a clear demonstration of Mackenzie's demotic orientalism. As we have seen, descriptions of the buildings referred to their novelty, the strangeness of their appearance, their effect, and their atmosphere. Indeed, we can argue that by the time these baths were established, the oriental style had become associated with leisure activities. The exuberant use of Eastern motifs externally in the baths in Bray and Lincoln Place clearly set them apart from the buildings that surrounded them, attracting the eye of passers-by who were in search of diversion. In their role as temples of leisure rather than cleanliness, they needed to stand apart from the ordinary and state their claim to the attentions of possible customers. However, direct references to the feelings that either the activity itself or the decorative ambience of the buildings induced are scant. This is not surprising, given the private, reflective nature of these types of experience. That is, while the use of the baths may have been felt in this way, these feelings may not have been articulated as clearly or as freely as others. The activity itself is rooted in a response to bodily sensations. One feels that the experience of the sensuality of scantily clad bodies – particularly in the context of Victorian dress – in a warm, steamy atmosphere is almost inevitable. As Inglis has stated, bathing was “a luscious contradiction, lived in the body,” an activity in which you “might become someone else, someone freed from propriety” (40). Ireland had become the focus for the attention of tourists in search of the sublime, a spin-off of the influence of the Romantic Movement, in which the extension of one's range of feelings was central. Two of the locations of the baths under discussion here – Bray and Blarney – certainly represent this search, but one can only speculate as to whether the Turkish baths themselves also functioned in this way. Fictional accounts, rather than historical documentation, may provide the best evidence for arguing that the Turkish bath offered consumers the possibility of extending their self identities, of achieving some sense of an authenticity of self.⁴

Conclusion

THIS ARTICLE began by stating the importance of identity and authenticity as themes central to our understanding of nineteenth-century Ireland. The Turkish baths established in Ireland during this period were found to be a site where several identities were expressed, including those of class, nation, and gender. The dual concerns of health and leisure were paramount to the formation of the baths. Firstly, the promotion of their redeeming qualities both physically and morally can be read as part of the move towards rational recreation, a movement that expressed a basic anxiety about the experience of pleasure. This anxiety was particularly related to a perception of the uncontrolled pleasures of popular culture that might threaten the very fabric of contemporary society. The representation of the bath as a philanthropic venture to ease the plight of the poor can also be read partially as an anxiety to control the lower classes. This was an assertion of bourgeois dominance and an expression of the identity of that class. Secondly, the decoration and the promotion of the baths drew on both Eastern and Western cultures. This can be interpreted as the desire to place the baths at the center of a “myth of origin” for the middle classes. This myth revolved around the bath as the latest point on a path to progress and a part of the strength of a great Empire. The Irish cultural identity expressed here is one that sees itself as central, rather than peripheral, to the British Empire, as colonizer rather than colonized. Although Britain was accorded power ultimately, the East was included in this “myth of origin,” a testament to its power rather than its weakness and a place akin to the West rather than opposite to it. The construction of a masculinity acceptable to contemporary society was deeply embedded in this image, supporting perhaps the Saidan response to the orientalism of the nineteenth century. Thirdly, the use of the oriental style in relation to the baths as a site of leisure was discussed. In this context, the baths can be interpreted as part of an emerging demotic orientalism associated with an increasingly commercialized leisure world. The use of the style in this context may have expressed the desire to relegate the oriental to the insignificant aspects of life. However, I have argued that its use may also indicate a sense of the style as something very different visually from the everyday existence of consumers, an important signal that one could depart from that life by participating in that leisure activity. This may suggest a desire to participate in something that would restore a sense of the self lost in the confines of everyday life, particularly in relation to the social norms surrounding concepts of masculinity and femininity. The central argument here has focused on consumer desire to pursue an identity that both regains personal equilibrium lost in contemporary society and inherits a legacy of power perceived to have been part of an indigenous past or of non-Western cultures. If this is the case, the producers and consumers of Turkish baths placed themselves at the forefront of an historical/geographical continuum, creating an activity that may have both rooted and questioned their own society. Perhaps Bloom's description of his imagined experience is not so distant from those of his predecessors after all.