As part of the Hackney History Festival, BSS Director Gabrielle Reason will be giving a talk at the National Trust Sutton House in Homerton, exploring the origins of collective bathing and sharing insights from the recent bathing renaissance.

Before modern medicine and private bathrooms, public baths developed as a cost effective way to bring hygiene and basic health benefits to Britain’s poor. Using the Eastway Baths in Hackney Wick as a starting point, this talk explores how Hackney’s public baths emerged (and where keen-eyed observers can find the relics that remain), offering hygiene and health at a time when medical care was limited or out of reach. As the NHS arrived and bathrooms moved into the home, bath houses faded from everyday life, replaced by technologies that promised cleaner, easier, disease free living. But that rapid lifestyle change has also brought its own set of new problems, and bathing culture is enjoying a revival as an ancient solution to modern problems. Looking at historical research through a scientific lens, Gabrielle explains how Hackney's public baths help us to understand about humans and their health, and why we should be bringing them back.