explore | Grilled Cheese

@moliveiradev.bsky.social Oct 7, 2026, 7:16 PM

Check out our schedule! There's something for everyone!
#research #AnneLister #c19th #conference

@stephanieoffer.bsky.social Oct 6, 2026, 1:31 PM

Has anyone got any idea what this name is? Is it really "Potty Vaughan"? Context is Sarah Grizzell Apthorp's will in 1833 #C18th #Skystorians 🗃 #C19th

A section of an will from 1833 with a name that is hard to read highlighted

@moliveiradev.bsky.social Oct 5, 2026, 5:31 PM

Don't miss out!

#research #c19th #AnneLister

@victurk.bsky.social Oct 3, 2026, 1:25 PM

#onthisday, 3 Oct 1896, William Morris died. Morris, Arts and Crafts movement textile designer, poet, artist, writer, and socialist activist, was a regular frequenter of Victorian #TurkishBaths with his friends Luke Ionides, Philip Webb, & Edward Burne-Jones (who drew these caricatures). 🗃️ #C19th

Lying prone, Morris is being shampooed on his back.

Lying on his back, Morris is being shampooed.

@victurk.bsky.social Oct 3, 2026, 11:35 AM

#onthisday, 3 October 1863, Dr Charles H Shepard added Victorian #TurkishBaths to his hydropathic 'sanitorium' at No.63 Columbia Street, #Brooklyn Heights, #NewYork &, in doing so, opened the first Turkish bath in the USA. www.victorianturkishbath.org/_2HISTORY/At.... The baths closed 1913.🗃️ #C19th

Engraving showing the front of the baths building. Originally the baths occupied only No. 63 Columbia Street (on the left of the building), but in 1867 a new Men's bath was opened next door at No. 65, while the original baths at No. 63 were converted for use by women.

Illustrated cover of a booklet, 'Rheumatism and its treatment by Turkish baths' published by Dr Shepard in 1892.

@victurk.bsky.social Oct 3, 2026, 11:28 AM

#onthisday, 3 Oct 1870, Dr Richard Barter died aged 68. An Irish physician, he built the 1st experimental Victorian #TurkishBaths at his St Ann's Hydro, realising David Urquhart's 30 yr dream of reintroducing the bath to the Br Isles. Barter associated with 9+ Tbs in Ireland, & 1 in London. 🗃️ #C19th

Dr Richard Barter, shortly before his death, standing next to the entrance to the latest of the Turkish baths built at St Ann's.

Portrait bust of Dr Barter by his namesake, the sculptor and architect Richard Barter, who designed all of the doctor's Victorian Turkish baths in Ireland, as well as the one in London.

@victurk.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 3:33 PM

#onthisday, 1 October 1876, the Imperial Bath Company opened a Victorian #TurkishBaths at the rear of the Hollman House Hotel at 7 W 24th St, #NewYork, NY. Hot rooms, marble shampooing room, with "various showers, and the needle-bath", dressing and cooling-rooms for men and women. 🗃️ #C19th

@victurk.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 3:32 PM

#onthisday, 1 October 1860, Dr Barter opened #TurkishBaths for the Working Classes at 43 Little Donegal St, #Belfast. They were actually 2nd Class baths attached to the 1st Class baths opening on 1 November, but entered from 112 Donegal St. www.victorianturkishbath.org/_6DIRECTORY/... +ALT 🗃️ #C19th

Advertisement for the baths shortly after they opened, detailing opening hours and charges. While the baths were never advertised as Turkish Baths for the Working Classes, this is how they were popularly known, possibly because they opened before the first class baths. Newspapers initially referred to them as such, and when Barter opened similar baths in Maylor Street, Cork, they were officially called Turkish Baths for the Destitute Poor and, more popularly as The People's Turkish Baths. (M'Comb's Guide to Belfast: the Giant's Causeway and adjoining districts of Antrim and Down…, 1861)

In 1892 the baths were bought by John North (who had previously purchased Barter's Upper Sackville Street baths in Dublin). He rebuilt them (image above) and renamed them the Belfast Hammam. Under further owners, they remained open till 1936 and were demolished ten years later. (Image courtesy the Belfast Telegraph)

@markcrail.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 2:53 PM

New page on Chartist Ancestors: Barnsley Chartist Peter Hoey's petition to John Fielden in support of factory reform
#Chartism #FactoryActs #C19th #Barnsley #History
www.chartistancestors.co.uk/peter-hoeys-...

@goldenageofpiracy.bsky.social Oct 1, 2026, 1:28 PM

Archaic word of the day:

lucifer - a friction match (originally a trade name for a match manufactured in England in the 19th century)

#englishlanguage #history #c19th

This 1830 Lucifer match box sold for $3750 in 2015.

@victorianmasc.bsky.social Oct 1, 2026, 8:37 AM

Hungry, hungry hippophagists!?
My grim little article about the time the Victorians tried to make horse-eating fashionable is in this month’s issue of History Today and is free online for seven days. #c19th #foodhistory

@victurk.bsky.social Sep 30, 2026, 10:21 PM

#onthisday, 30 September 1800, was born architect Decimus Burton (son of James Burtonm, designer & founder of St Leonards-on-Sea). Decimus owned 5 shares in the company which built its #TurkishBaths (victorianturkishbath.org/_6DIRECTORY/...). The baths failed but (now) Listed bldg remains. 🗃️ #C19th

The Turkish baths building on a card posted in 1907. The photograph would have been taken some years previously, probably soon after Uplands School completed the building of their swimming pool in 1871. (Photo: Castro collection)

Photo I took of all that remains of the Turkish baths building in 2006, shortly after it failed to find a buyer at auction. It was later sold more than once.

@victurk.bsky.social Sep 30, 2026, 10:03 PM

#onthisday, 30 September 1868, James Bryning opened the #Surrey #TurkishBaths at 191 Blackfriars Road, London. More about the image (with link to more about the baths) at www.victorianturkishbath.org/6DIRECTORY/A... The baths closed in 1888, becoming site 4 the New Surrey Chapel & Schools. 🗃️ #C19th

Contemporary photo of exterior of the baths with three men and a small girl at the door. (Photo courtesy of 'Paul')

Advertisement for the baths in the South London Press (2 January 1869) shortly after their opening, with charges and times.

@moliveiradev.bsky.social Sep 28, 2026, 7:15 PM

Join me for an hour of absolute nerdery!
#AnneLister #research #c19th #cryptgraphy

@victurk.bsky.social Sep 26, 2026, 4:26 PM

#onthisday, 26 Sept 1929, Paddington Borough Council added the wonderful Art Deco #TurkishBaths to the Porchester Baths. A proposal that Paddington Vestry include them in their 1874 baths bldg was unsuccessful although they did agree to set aside space for them—a wait of only 56 years. +ALT 🗃️ #C19th

This baths building is the only one in the world with a direct entrance from the street, through a heat-locked lobby directly into a Turkish baths cooling-room, shown here with its original sign. Since refurbishment and outsourcing, the council refuses to indicate this unique entrance with its original sign, or a replica. Instead the new sign suggests that the entrance is to (a non-existant) "Porchester Spa". So much for a council's respect for its unique historic entrance.

Part of the cooling room with a gallery overlooking the plunge pool.

Poster for the baths produced shortly after its opening in 1929.

Part of a leaflet dating from when the Turkish baths were run by the City of Westminster itself.

@victurk.bsky.social Sep 26, 2026, 4:00 PM

#onthisday, 25 September 1859, Frederick S Rawnsley, Sec. of the St Peter's Foreign Affairs Committee in #Leeds, and Mgr of #TurkishBaths in St Peter's Square, opened his own establishment in Wade Lane. Surviving under several owners for almost 60 years, this early bath closed in 1916. +ALT 🗃️ #C19th

Advertisement in the Leeds Times (17 September 1859) announcing the forthcoming opening of Rawnsley's new bath, below which is an advertisement for Rawnsley's original baths, now under new ownership. Both men were Foreign Affairs Committeemen, and the dispute between the two also had political ramifications. More at https://victorianturkishbath.org/3TOPICS/AtoZArts/Porticos/pix/StPeters_w.htm

@victurk.bsky.social Sep 24, 2026, 9:38 PM

#onthisday, 24 September 1927, #Bermondsey opened its £150,000 Grange Road Baths. Some papers lammed the council for providing 'luxurious' #TurkishBaths on the rates as they were well fitted out for a local authority facility. Gay friendly. Closed 1973—"structural defects". Demolished 1975. 🗃️ #C19th

Main frontage of the baths building in Grange Road, just south of the Thames.

Plan of part of the basement which housed the Turkish baths. These comprised three hot rooms, plunge bath, shower room, shampooing room fitted for two shampooers, and provided with the usual shampoo slabs and bowls. There was also a complementary steam room.

The carpeted cooling-room at the baths, with loungers, tables and chairs, and thirteen cubicles, each containing a couch and small table, etc.

A still from a 1930s Bermondsey Council film 'Where there's life there's soap' promoting their Turkish baths. Can be viewed online, courtesy Wellcome Collection at https://wellcomecollection.org/works/zrgauwtq

@victurk.bsky.social Sep 23, 2026, 12:17 PM

#onthisday, 23 September 1889, died author Wilkie Collins, advised by his friend and doctor, Francis Carr Beard, to visit #TurkishBaths for his health. He wrote to his mother, 'excellent shampoos and great care in attendance.' (Thanks to @paullewismoney.bsky.social) 🗃️ #C19th

Caricature of Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) by Adriano Cecioni. Caption read "The Novelist who invented Sensation".

@stephanieoffer.bsky.social Sep 21, 2026, 7:42 PM

@davidolusoga.bsky.social's new programme Finding Britain's Slave Traders has dropped! 🗃 #C18th #C19th
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...