HELPING HAND PLANS
BATH FOR NORTH END.
Public Showers From Fire Plug Will
Be Suspended Over Gutter -- Is
Superintendent Brig-
ham's Idea.
The "Brigham Bath" for North End Youngsters.
Large numbers of children living in the North End have been without necessary baths for many moons. With the approach of hot weather the demand for some place where the youngsters of Little Italy and adjoining districts can get enough water to clean and cool their skins has become an imperative, and the Helping Hand institute proposes to come to the rescue with a novel device for free public baths on the street corners.
"The old swimmin' hole is a thing of the past," said E. T. Brigham, superintendent of the institute, last night. "The river is too swift for swimming and free public baths for the North End exist only in the minds of theoretical social workers, as yet, so that some substitute must be found. I have conceived the idea of putting up a half dozen public shower baths where the little ones can get their skins soaked nightly and have a great deal of pleasure besides."
Mr. Brigham has in mind a contrivance which he hopes will answer all the purposes of a miniature Atlantic city for Little Italy. An inch iron pipe will conduct the water from a city fire plug to a point seven feet over the gutter, where a "T" will be formed, the branches containing five horseshoe-shaped showers.
One of the portable baths has already been constructed and will be tried out tonight at Fourth and Locust streets.
Bathers will be expected to wear their ordinary dress, that is, a single garment, which is the mode for children in the North End. Thus the shower will serve the double purpose of a recreation and a laundry.
For years something in the line of this free, open-air public bath has been in operation at Nineteenth and McGee streets in the vicinity of the McClure flats. Nightly during the summer the children collect when the fire plug is to be turned on to flush the gutters, and stand in the stream. The stream is too strong for them to brave it for more than a second at a time, but many of them manage to get a bath which they probably would not get any other way.
"Children are naturally cleanly," said Mr. Brigham. "Although they like to get dirt upon themselves, they also like to get it off. I think the shower bath on the street corner should prove one of the most popular institutions in the North End."
