Mexborough and Swinton Times July 10, 1937
New Pithead Baths
Impressive Addition to Manvers Main Amenities
Last Word in Modernity
“A colliery,” said Commander H.H.G.Begbie, Welfare Officer of the Manvers Main Collieries Ltd., “Is like a ship. And a smart ship is a good ship.”
We had just completed a tour together of the Manvers Main Pit head baths, which are to be opened tomorrow (Saturday) by the secretary for Mines, captain H.F.C. Crookshank, and I had remarked (writes a “Times” reporter) the bright flowerbeds in red, white and blue designs. The Commander went on to tell me about his Company’s attitude towards cleanliness and modernity.
“We set the pace in south Yorkshire, he said, “for we do not regard it as a waste of time and money to keep the place decent. A clean colliery is vital to the men’s morale. There is no need for ugly dumps in mining districts; they have a bad psychologic effect on the workers.
All this made an apt epilogue to our excursion. For those few sentences contain the distilled philosophy that has brought Manvers Main into the foremost rank, not only of the mining industry, but of industry as a whole.
The philosophy that nourished the 1920 scheme for providing the first pithead baths in Yorkshire, perhaps (neither the Commander nor I can say this is definitely) in Great Britain. The philosophy that has given Manvers Main and Barnburgh employees unexcelled welfare services. The philosophy that has given Manvers lusty life while other pits have fallen into pitiful decay.
There are many amenities and welfare services which could be mentioned in proof of Manvers pre-eminence in the mining industry. For example, the Jubilee and Coronation cottages for selected pensioners and their families. The immense sports meeting held at Bolton last month when some 15,000 spectators saw 1300 competitive in action. A tea and entertainment on that occasion to 500 pensioners. The annual trip of 6000 workmen and others in 12 special trains to Blackpool and so on
Chief Amenity
But chief of all these amenities must now rank the new pithead baths, which from Monday onwards will replace the original baths of old and cramped design. The baths have been built on a site given by the Company to the Central Miners Welfare Committee out of the Miners Welfare Fund, which is made up of ½d a ton levy on the output of every coalmine, and the levy of 1/- on every £1 of royalties.
The baths are being constituted as a trust, to be managed by four Trustees representing the Company and the men – Messrs PH Lloyd, L R Honeywell, T J Critchley and G Palmer.
The costs of the bars themselves have been about £27,000, and the Company itself has spent approximately another £9,000 in the erection of a new lamp room, cycle shed, rescue room etc. All the building has been cleverly designed and grouped so that the underground workers deposit their lamps and pass through to the dirty locker room, into the baths, out to the clean locker room and canteen in the space of a few yards.
There are 1248 pairs of lockers (one for the collier Street close, the other for his pit clothes), all made of steel and numbered. There is a constant current of warm air so that the clothes may be put in wet and taking out dry.
There is a block of 84 shower cubicles, with a supply of water at 3 degrees, hot, tepid and cold; the temperature of the bather himself determines by the simple regulation of a knob. Each cubicle has a coloured tile corresponding to a locker,; and by this device it is hoped that rushes and congestion will be avoided.
Typical Case
Let us follow a typical miner from cage to bus.
He comes into the building by the pit entrance; clean his boots on revolving brushes to remove the cold dust before he enters the pit locker room. At his locker he dresses and handgs his clothes. He then takes his towel, soap tray and locker key to the bathroom. He turns on the water, say to tepid. Immediately he is enveloped in a white spray. Now hot. Cool. This is grand! Now he turns on cold to liven up the bloodstream. And so to the clean locker room. And he puts on a street suit and probably nips across to the canteen. Then he is all set to go straight off to the pictures.
The buildings are typically modern in every detail. All the 1937 gadgets that made for comfort, utility and speed have been incorporated, and the keynotes of simplicity and neatness. Where ever possible shining white tiles are being used, but skills prevented the all too common institutional appears that usually follows.
The Canteen
The Canteen is a new feature, and again we find modernity not merely in point of design but in regard to the provisions to be supplied. Alcohol is barred. Heavy meals are barred. This is the sort of thing that will happen:
Miner (clean, very clean): a glass of milk and a packet of biscuits sir.
Attendant: milk and biscuits? Yes, nice head on the milk this morning sir. It comes from a very good barrel.
The Commander seemed to misunderstand my question about the milk. He hastened to persuade me that the Trustees and the management committee were not being excessively hard on the men. “They’ll get used to the milk,” he said. “We are giving a free bottle to each man on the first day to accustom them to it.”
Everything that can be made for the safety and comfort of the underground men as be thought of and provided. There is a device, for instance, whereby a cage load of men can at the same time have their pit boots well brushed without their handling a brush or even troubling to stoop. They simply loll against a iron railing, lift their boots to a series of revolving brushes, and let electricity do the manual work. Then out the men will go to a boot greasing room, where again a short mechanical operation will efficiently do the hard work. Similarly there is a room where water bottles can be filled by the dozen in a trice.
The scheme is equally a credit to the company, the Central miners welfare committee, their architect Mr C.G.Kemp and the builders, and the men of the day shift with whom I talked on Thursday, as they were being given their locker keys by the Baths Superintendent, left it in no doubt that the new facilities are immensely appreciated.