On your right, Victoria Baths ranked among the grandest public baths in the country: two hundred and fifty thousand gallons of sea water, six pools, an Italian style stone front, and a bill of forty thousand pounds in eighteen seventy-one - around four million pounds now. Horton and Bridgford of Manchester gave it the grand face, but hidden hands kept it going. This was Southport’s Victorian and Edwardian seaside economy: visitors took the cure, while workers heated the Turkish suite, pumped and filtered the water, handed out linen, scrubbed slipper baths, and watched the pools. Inside, class and sex shaped everything - first and second class bathing, separate men’s and women’s facilities, and a gymnasium for men - and the Turkish baths lasted until nineteen seventy-eight. Outside, sand yacht clubs worked the beach here, and bath-chair men pushed invalid visitors past this facade each day. Picture one attendant with her linen basket at the foot of the Turkish stair... she kept the polite illusion running
Stop 11 of 13
