Showcasing vintage male photography, mostly nude. You must be 18 years of age or older to visit this blog! If you hold a copyright on any material shown on this blog, notify me, and it will be removed immediately.
Followers
Tuesday, August 8, 2023
Red Pete in the Bath, London 1963
This Peter Samuelson drawing has a title, shown in the heading above.
"Red" is a common nickname for men with ginger hair in England. My father shared a flat with a fellow officer on the Malabar Hills in Bombay during the war called Red, who really was ginger. He didn't turn grey but a sort of pewter.
A lot of the men in my family are redheads, and according to my DNA testing, I carry a specific Scottish gene for it, but don't have it. You are correct about them not going grey. One uncle was still pretty bright around age 70.
Some interesting historical features are present here. Bath - the former Roman Aqua Sulis, "The Waters of Sulis", a goddess with similar qualities as Minerva - is a spa town, and the waters have been taken there for over two millennia. The modern Bath was largely constructed in Georgian times, the architecture is pure 18th century - and there is a lot of it. The Georgians built when only sewers were becoming a feature of urban life, but there was no main drainage, or internal plumbing in the many town houses. (You can still see today, ugly external guttering and pipes, because Georgian construction had very narrow internal walls and so indoor piping becomes very difficult to instal.) Behind "Red" in the bathroom, is something that used to be called a "geyser", which was a tank of water, usually fed from the roof, with a town gas heater beneath, which would be lit with a match, to give the bather hot water on demand. They were extremely dangerous, as town gas was toxic, and if that wasn't bad enough, the bather had to keep all the windows closed in case the gas flame blew out. Cold water tanks were installed in the roofs of English homes from the mid-18th century onward, but that became widespread during the Napoleonic Wars because England feared invasion and that the French would poison the terrestrial water supply, so the rain was gathered in the attics. We shall assume that a very clean "Red" enjoyed his bath and lived to tell the tale.
Once had neighbors from England and they told us about the meter boxes in their homes, God forbid if you ran out of coins. Stayed at some pensions in Europe with the hot water boxes for the shower, with knobs to turn the heat on and to control water pressure. Sometimes they worked, most times forget it:( Worst thing I have heard are some showers in hotel rooms in South America that have their heating element built into the showerhead! some people have been electrocuted :( don't mean ramble :)
Our flat in Amsterdam in the mid-50’s had a coin operated geyser in the kitchen, no bath in the home. Gas for the appliances and the water were supplied by coin operated meters on the street level. Definitely different times.
I've seen those in movies from the UK around that time. They did away with the coin meters in the 1980s, but they still use more moderm prepayment systems in some parts of England.
Mine worked fine in West Hampstead when I lived there in 1989-90. And the huge bath in the kitchen allowed me to bob for tortellini, if I chose. But the toilet at the bottom of the cellar stairs with the naked bulb swinging overhead was straight out of Psycho.
At least your West Hampstead place didn't have the toilet at the back of the garden in a shed, as I saw in Manchester in the early 90s. My grandparents didn't have indoor toilets until the 1960s. Before then you had to hike about a hundred feet out the back door, and when you got there, it was literally a wooden shit house with last year's Sears catalog, spiders, and an occasional snake. All the men and boys would pee in the bushes to avoid going in there.
Pete was a ginger? Or a Communist?
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing ginger. He doesn't look proletarian.
Delete"Red" is a common nickname for men with ginger hair in England. My father shared a flat with a fellow officer on the Malabar Hills in Bombay during the war called Red, who really was ginger. He didn't turn grey but a sort of pewter.
DeleteA lot of the men in my family are redheads, and according to my DNA testing, I carry a specific Scottish gene for it, but don't have it. You are correct about them not going grey. One uncle was still pretty bright around age 70.
DeleteSome interesting historical features are present here. Bath - the former Roman Aqua Sulis, "The Waters of Sulis", a goddess with similar qualities as Minerva - is a spa town, and the waters have been taken there for over two millennia. The modern Bath was largely constructed in Georgian times, the architecture is pure 18th century - and there is a lot of it. The Georgians built when only sewers were becoming a feature of urban life, but there was no main drainage, or internal plumbing in the many town houses. (You can still see today, ugly external guttering and pipes, because Georgian construction had very narrow internal walls and so indoor piping becomes very difficult to instal.) Behind "Red" in the bathroom, is something that used to be called a "geyser", which was a tank of water, usually fed from the roof, with a town gas heater beneath, which would be lit with a match, to give the bather hot water on demand. They were extremely dangerous, as town gas was toxic, and if that wasn't bad enough, the bather had to keep all the windows closed in case the gas flame blew out. Cold water tanks were installed in the roofs of English homes from the mid-18th century onward, but that became widespread during the Napoleonic Wars because England feared invasion and that the French would poison the terrestrial water supply, so the rain was gathered in the attics. We shall assume that a very clean "Red" enjoyed his bath and lived to tell the tale.
ReplyDeleteI encountered my first "on demand" water heater at an English B&B in 1990. It was electric and didn't work worth a damn.
DeleteOnce had neighbors from England and they told us about the meter boxes in their homes, God forbid if you ran out of coins.
DeleteStayed at some pensions in Europe with the hot water boxes for the shower, with knobs to turn the heat on and to control water pressure. Sometimes they worked, most times forget it:( Worst thing I have heard are some showers in hotel rooms in South America that have their heating element built into the showerhead! some people have been electrocuted :( don't mean ramble :)
Our flat in Amsterdam in the mid-50’s had a coin operated geyser in the kitchen, no bath in the home. Gas for the appliances and the water were supplied by coin operated meters on the street level. Definitely different times.
ReplyDeleteI've seen those in movies from the UK around that time. They did away with the coin meters in the 1980s, but they still use more moderm prepayment systems in some parts of England.
DeleteOnce stayed at an old pension in Brussels and the room had a disconnected coin box for the hot water in the bathroom :)
DeleteMine worked fine in West Hampstead when I lived there in 1989-90. And the huge bath in the kitchen allowed me to bob for tortellini, if I chose. But the toilet at the bottom of the cellar stairs with the naked bulb swinging overhead was straight out of Psycho.
ReplyDeleteAt least your West Hampstead place didn't have the toilet at the back of the garden in a shed, as I saw in Manchester in the early 90s. My grandparents didn't have indoor toilets until the 1960s. Before then you had to hike about a hundred feet out the back door, and when you got there, it was literally a wooden shit house with last year's Sears catalog, spiders, and an occasional snake. All the men and boys would pee in the bushes to avoid going in there.
Delete