BATH COSTS A NICKEL NOW.
Personal Ablutions Almost Prohibi-
tive Luxury in McClure Flats.
They're bathing less in the McClure flats. Private bathtubs have always been an unknown luxury there. Personal ablutions formerly were performed by most of the residents at the bathhouse provided by the United Jewish Charities at 1820 Locust street. There a child could get a bath, including the use of a towel, for the sum of one penny. An adult might bathe for a nickel.
More aristocratic people went to a private bathhouse at 310 East Nineteenth street, where children paid a nickel and grown ups 15 cents. Each of the bathhouses had five tubs, but only the penny shop was ever crowded, for there are few in the neighborhood that can afford to pay a nickel to have their children washed.
Since the opening of the beautiful new Jewish charities building on Admiral boulevard, the bathhouse on Locust street has passed into private ownership. Free baths are furnished at the new charities building, but it is very far from McClure flats.
With the passing of communal ownership of the bathhouse passed the penny baths, and now the price is a nickel for every child, and 15 cents for adults.
Therefore is McClure flats abstaining from baths, and is likely to partake of them sparingly until the completion of the free public bathhouse in Holmes square.
Yesterday afternoon a member of the park board stated that it would be August 1 at t he earliest before the bathhouse at Holmes square is completed. Work has been delayed from unavoidable reasons.
"A few of the children more strongly imbued with the gospel of cleanliness than others make an occasional pilgrimage to the bathhouse on the Paseo when it is warm," said Mrs. J. T. Chafin, wife of the head resident at the Franklin institute. "But for most of them the walk is too long, and many who need the bath most are too young to march such a distance."
In the McClure flats district there are not half a dozen private bathtubs. An investigating committee last summer estimated that there were approximately 10,000 people in the city who had not the use of a bathtub.
