Metadata
WORK ID: YFA 3684 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| ROYAL BATH TREATMENTS | 1931 | 1931-01-01 |
|
Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Black & White Sound: Silent Duration: 10 mins |
| Summary This film shows various methods of treatment and therapy at the Royal Baths and Spa in Harrogate. |
|
Description
This film shows various methods of treatment and therapy at the Royal Baths and Spa in Harrogate.
The film opens with a man in a shirt and tie lying on a bed with a towel over the top. A brief shot of the bar of the Pump Rooms is followed by another scene in the Royal Baths where a man is being massaged by an attendant. He is then towelled down and covered up as if primed for mummification.
Another patient undergoes treatment in a wooden heat cabinet and is given a drink of water from a...
This film shows various methods of treatment and therapy at the Royal Baths and Spa in Harrogate.
The film opens with a man in a shirt and tie lying on a bed with a towel over the top. A brief shot of the bar of the Pump Rooms is followed by another scene in the Royal Baths where a man is being massaged by an attendant. He is then towelled down and covered up as if primed for mummification.
Another patient undergoes treatment in a wooden heat cabinet and is given a drink of water from a small teapot. The lid is removed and the man re-emerges from the cabinet.
Back at the Pump Rooms, well-dressed gentlemen in suits and fedora hats are seen reading newspapers, whilst other customers are served water by the waitresses at the bar.
At the Baths, there is a brief glimpse of an electric blanket before a patient is seen lowering himself into a hot bath that is bubbling like a Jacuzzi. Liquid is poured into the bath to make it foam and it is stirred with a thermometer. The man in the bath appears contented with this situation and blows the bubbles that surround him.
The final scene shows a female attendant operating equipment that she then uses to irrigate a patient's nose and mouth. The nozzle is placed up the nostril and water is spurted upwards in order to clean the nasal passage.
Context
This is one of five films about the Royal Baths and Spa in Harrogate from the 1930s likely made by A.R. Baines (see also Spa Treatment Harrogate Pump Room and Electrical Treatment) as commercial footage to promote the baths (see Royal Bath Treatments 3445 and 3861, also produced in 1931).
Hydrotherapy, or hydropathy, and public bathing have existed for thousands of years in ancient civilisations; examples include the Roman thermae and Japanese onsen. In these times bathing was a social...
This is one of five films about the Royal Baths and Spa in Harrogate from the 1930s likely made by A.R. Baines (see also Spa Treatment Harrogate Pump Room and Electrical Treatment) as commercial footage to promote the baths (see Royal Bath Treatments 3445 and 3861, also produced in 1931).
Hydrotherapy, or hydropathy, and public bathing have existed for thousands of years in ancient civilisations; examples include the Roman thermae and Japanese onsen. In these times bathing was a social activity and focussed on hygiene and the therapeutic and sensory pleasure which it provided, particularly in Rome where a trip to the baths often included the cleaning process known as ‘scraping’ as well as massages with cleansing oils. Additionally, in Japan, social bathing was associated with ‘skinship’; a valuable way of deepening relationships on an emotional and familial level. By the middle ages public bathing was regarded as indecent and many public baths were shut down. Common perceptions of the properties of water had also changed and many people believed that prolonged exposure to water had negative health effects and sapped the body’s natural strength. Public baths began to reappear in the eighteenth century as the common ideas of water had yet again changed and water, cold in particular, was now seen as classically virtuous; cold plunge baths, as once used in Roman baths, became popular and it bathing in them was linked to classic Roman stoicism. As scientific and medical advancements in the nineteenth century included the understanding of human physiology and germs and contagions, a focus on hygiene and fresh air was common in the treatments for varying maladies. A popular Victorian ‘cure’ (particularly for the wealthy) for many of these illnesses was a ‘change of air’ that usually involved a prolonged trip to the coast or a spa town, such as Harrogate. It is thought that Harrogate’s natural springs, rich in iron and sulphur, were discovered in the 1600s but weren’t commercialised until Victorian times when treatments at spa towns often included hydropathy as well as the promotion of drinking the mineral waters from local springs. The water was believed to have health benefits and with the rise of the medicinal industry the Royal Pump Room in Harrogate was built over the Old Sulphur Well in 1842. The Pump Room sold the mineral water and, in a parallel of ancient public bathing, simultaneously provided a social space and also had a sulphur tap outside for the use of the poor. The Royal Baths opened in 1897 as a medical and therapeutic supplement to the Pump Room and was “designed to provide a luxurious setting for specialist hydrotherapy treatments to compete with other European spas” (Harrogate Council website, references). The “luxurious settings” certainly appealed to the target audience, the Royal Baths were popular with several members of European royalty including Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Despite 1920s government recommendations of the use of spas in the treatment of rheumatism and skin conditions, public baths struggled to turn a profit after the economical crash of 1929. After the introduction of the National Health Service, and its free, more medically sound treatments, public baths went further into decline, and the Pump Room closed, it was reopened in 1953 as a museum. However, the Royal Baths remain as a popular and widely renowned Turkish baths and Chinese restaurant. ‘Treatments’ at the Royal Baths included heated cabinets, physiotherapeutic massage, various irrigations, the example in this film being nasal (see Royal Bath Treatments, 3861 for other, more unpleasant examples), massage and rubbing, and sulphur baths. The mineral water at Harrogate was thought to have healing qualities, and bathing in it could cure a number of ailments such as gout and eczema and steam baths, heated cabinets and body wraps could ease the symptoms of lumbago and joint pain while other treatments, such as the irrigations, dealt with internal hygiene and constipation. References: Jean Barclay, In Good Hands: The History of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy 1894-1994, Butterworth-Heinemann, 1994. W. Haythornthwaite, Harrogate Story from Georgian Village to Victorian Town, The Dalesman Publishing Company, 1954. Julia Twigg, Bathing – the Body and Community Care, Routledge, 2000. Harrogate’s Spa History Royal Baths Harrogate Health & Medicine in the 19th Century |
