Bath Under Beau Nash Author:Lewis Saul Benjamin General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1907 Original Publisher: E. Nash Subjects: Bath (England) Bath, England History / Europe / Great Britain Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of... more » this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IX THE BATHS It has already been shown it was the springs that brought Bath into prominence in the seventeenth century; and even in later years, when the faculties for amusement drew the fashionable world and its parasites to the city, the waters were still the excuse for resorting thither. " The bathing," said Defoe, " is made more a sport and diversion than a physical prescription for health." Yet it was long before the comfort, or even the convenience, of the bathers and water-drinkers was studied, although so early as September 1646 the Corporation, in the interests of decency, framed a set of by-laws. " Touching the regulations of the Baths," Wood has recorded, " it was established and decreed, that no man or woman should go into any one of the baths, by day or night, without a decent covering on their bodies, under the penalty of three shillings and fourpence. That no person shall presume to cast or throw any dog, bitch, or other live beast into any of the said baths, under the like penalty of three shillings and fourpence. That no person shah1 thrust, cast, or throw another into any of the said Baths, with his orher clothes on, under a penalty of six shillings and eightpence. That no person or persons shall disorderly or uncivilly demean themselves in the said Baths, on, pain of forfeiting five shillings." Many years later this code was supplemented by another regulating the fees payable by the bathers : " Tour Thro' Great Britain." " Description of Bath." t "Bath and Bristol Guide."...« less