By the 1850s Newcastle had suffered a couple of serious epidemics of cholera and proper sanitation was still in its infancy. The Corporation was mindful of the need for improved personal hygiene, and embarked on a programme to clean up its citizens. They commissioned one of the town’s leading architects, Thomas Oliver, to design the facilities to do this at Gallowgate, and his fancy stone building was described at the time as being “Elizabethan” in style.
The Gallowgate Baths & Washouses opened for business on June 16th 1859, having cost £5,000 to build and equip. From six in the morning until nine at night, its patrons could take a cold bath at either a penny or tuppence a time, or luxuriate in a lukewarm one for tuppence or sixpence, the price dependant on whether they required a first or second-class experience. There were fourteen “slipper” baths, one vapour bath, and four tepid and cold shower baths.
There were also forty-five separate washing stalls for laundering purposes, each with two fixed tubs, a poss tub and scrubbing board. The water was heated by a furnace designed to consume its own smoke, so that clean washing wasn’t immediately blackened with soot. There was a public house across the road called the Bath Inn, where patrons could relax after the gruelling work of scrubbing their clothes; or maybe summon the courage to go for their annual scrubbing of themselves. This was quite a common arrangement, the public baths on Northumberland Street and Scotswood Road each had a Bath Inn incorporated in the buildings.
An unexpected bonus for the locals was access to other people’s clothes and linen, and the thefts began immediately the baths were opened. Giving evidence at the trial of Mary Ralfe in 1860, who was accused of stealing a shirt, a sheet and other articles from her next door neighbour, Inspector Potts said that “robberies at the Gallowgate Baths were an almost daily occurrence”. She was sentenced to six weeks at the House of Correction.
This wasn’t the only type of crime that kept the local constabulary on their toes. In February of 1866 Mary Brown appeared before the courts, charged with being drunk and disorderly in Gallowgate Baths. A constable was called to persuade Mary and her two friends to put their clothes back on and stop throwing water about, but he was ignored. Inspector Greaves was then summoned to eject Mary. He asked her to take his arm and led her to the door, after which the court was told she “behaved as well as it was possible for a drunken woman to do”. She was fined five shillings and costs.
At least half a dozen people died in the baths, one of them in unusually tragic circumstances. Robert Trotter was a fifty-year old employee of a shipping company, who was deeply troubled by depression and melancholia. He slashed his own throat in one of the bath cubicles, having earlier told his physician, Dr Gibb of Blaydon Races fame, that he was sure he would “destroy himself” if he came near water.
The Gallowgate Baths and Washouses were replaced with a new building a little further up Gallowgate in the 1890s, and the older building was demolished when the street was widened to accommodate the new electric trams. Thomas Oliver’s son designed the lovely building that currently stands in its place on the corner of Newgate Street and Gallowgate.