Public Baths

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PUBLIC BATHS.

In the New York Board of Aldermen, last night, a message was received from the Mayor¹ transmitting a petition from the Special Committee of a society which has been formed for the purpose of providing gratuitous and safe public baths for the residents of that city.

The petitioners call attention to the fact that we daily hear of the drowning of youths who in default of a well established, well inspected public bath, expose their lives to delusive water-depths. They speak of the great and well known advantages of bathing and of the needs of the public in that connection. In all the great cities of the Old World, say they, these wants of the people are much better cared for than in the Metropolitan cities of the new and the free world. The principles on which they propose to act are to distribute gratuitous tickets to as many people as the space of the establishment will allow; to give free lessons; to preserve the best of order and decorum; to pay special regard to the youth of the Public Schools, under the care and inspection of their respective teachers.

We would recommend this new movement to the attention of our own citizens. Mayor Tiemann says in his message transmitting the petition:

The great benefit to the public of free river baths, when properly constructed, as it is proposed these shall be, must be admitted. Besides, no city is better situated to afford its inhabitants the refreshing and healthful pleasures of river bathing than our own. Bounded by two noble rivers which afford every facility for locating baths, they should before this have been established. In the earlier periods of our city, the many secluded places along the shores of these streams of themselves provided these advantages. The rapid increase, however, of our population and the consequent construction of wharves for the accommodation of our commerce have long since deprived those desirous of salt water bathing of their former facilities, and now it cannot be had except in a few private baths inaccessible to the mass of the people.

Much of this extract is also applicble​ to Brooklyn. Again and again we have contended that our people should be afforded this precious boon so necessary to cleanliness and health, but the masses and their representatives seem strangely apathetic about it. The petition of the New Yorkers was referred to a committee, and that will probably be the last of it. It would be a glorious thing if Brooklyn should take the initiatory in the matter and secure for the inhabitants of the most religious city in the world the reputation of being also the cleanest. Let this movement in New York be pondered over, and let our Brooklynites take the cue and speak out.

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