An infamous hoax
There is an interesting side note connected with our stained glass, for the building in which it was made had been the scene of what has been called the greatest prank of all time: The Berners Street Hoax of 1810. At 5 am on 26 November the maid of 54 Berners Street was wakened by the sound of knocking at the door. Upon opening it she was confronted by a sweep who said he’d been asked to come at that hour to sweep the chimney. The maid replied that he was mistaken as no one had asked for his services and off he went. A few minutes later another sweep arrived with the same story. He, too, was sent on his way – as were a further 10 sweeps who also presented themselves.
After the parade of sweeps had been dispensed with a series of carts arrived, all bearing coal, and each claiming that an order had been placed for 54 Berners Street. As the last of the carts retreated a series of bakers arrived, each attempting to deliver a large wedding cake supposedly ordered by the lady of the house, a Mrs Tottenham. These were followed by a series of doctors, solicitors and priests who all said they had been summoned by Mrs Tottenham to attend to someone dying in the house.
No sooner had the exasperated woman got rid of the latest sequence of visitors than yet more tradespeople descended on the house throughout the day – fishmongers, cobblers, butcher’s boys, tooth-pullers, artists, drapers; furniture was being piled in the street along with pianos, an organ, and a made-to-measure coffin “as requested”. Even the Lord Mayor of London arrived, having received a note from Mrs Tottenham wanting to speak to him on an urgent matter and asking him to call because she was too ill to travel to him!
News spread of the commotion throughout London and people crammed the neighbouring streets to try and see what was going on, bringing a part of the city to a standstill. Eventually police officers were stationed to try to prevent more people turning up, including assorted servants looking for positions. Life returned to normal the next day but the affair in Berners Street was famous enough that it was mentioned in several stage productions of the day and for some years to come with no need to clarify its reference.
The perpetrator was never caught although years later it was claimed to have been carried out by Theodore Hook, a noted prankster and writer who later founded the John Bull periodical. It’s said he made a wager with a friend to prove that he could make any house in London the most talked-about address in the city within one week – and promptly wrote hundreds of letters purporting to come from Mrs Tottenham. Hook and the friend then watched the fun unfold from a house opposite. Certainly others of his acquaintance wrote years later of their belief that he was the culprit and Hook himself wrote a fairly autobiographical novel in which a semi-confession is made.
Some writers, however, have expressed doubt as to whether the hoax ever took place, that the hoax is, itself, a hoax. It was certainly covered in some contemporary journals of the time and a Mrs Tottingham undoubtedly lived at the address; a reporter asking questions could easily mishear Tottingham as Tottenham. Whether Hook was responsible or not, it seems likely that there was an incident at 54 Berners Street in November 1810 but perhaps, over the years, it became rather more elaborate in the re-telling. You can read more about this fantastic tale at the Museum of Hoaxes and decide for yourself.
The inaccurate commemorative plaque
In the curved alcove at the lobby end of the room was a tablet which, according to The Cheltenham Examiner, was yet to be dated and read ‘These, Baths, founded in the year —, having fallen into a dilapidated condition, were purchased by the Corporation and remodelled, and were reopened September 10, 1900, by the Mayoress in the second year of the Mayoralty of her husband, Alderman George Norman’. Either The Examiner was all too brief in its description of the tablet or it was later replaced by a brass plaque with a lengthier inscription as in this photograph.
The plaque was, some decades later, moved into the main body of the room. While much admired it is factually incorrect, as the council purchased the Baths from the Montpellier Gardens Company who had purchased them from the Globe Insurance Company in 1879. The Globe had acquired the property when Pearson Thompson defaulted on his mortgages in 1856. Thompson himself died in 1872.
Missing statue number one
The main entrance to the Baths in 1900 was through the pair of doors in the centre of the Bath Road frontage and for use by first and second class customers only (third class using an entrance at the rear). This brought you immediately into a small vaguely triangular lobby which featured two plaster seashell arches, one over the door into the main waiting room and one over a recessed plinth. This plinth was originally filled by an alabaster statuette called ‘The Diver’ executed by HH Martyn & Co and presented to the Baths for the reopening by Alderman Skillicorne. According to the Cheltenham Chronicle it was ‘not a copy of the familiar study from the nude but a female figure in up-to-date bathing costume posed for the act of diving, and is a tasteful example of the sculptor’s art’.
The statuette was still in situ in November 1921 when council minutes record it was damaged by someone attending a dance who offered to pay the cost of the repair (£3). Presumably the repair was undertaken and the statuette returned but its present whereabouts are unknown.
Running costs
The Baths never made a profit for the council although Corporation minutes very occasionally give the impression that it did. For example, the first 12 months of receipts totalled £431 11s 1d against an expenditure of £297 15s 1d. However, this excludes an unspecified payment (plus interest) in respect of the loans taken out to both purchase and refurbish the property in 1899/1900.
From 1902, the season at the Baths ran concurrently with the usual April – March financial year and again the amount of the repayment is not included or specified. Later years, however, make the real financial picture far more clear:
1902/03 1905/06 1909/10 1911/12 1913/14 1915/16 | Receipts Receipts Receipts Receipts Receipts Receipts | £ 462 525 496 634 465 587 | s 8 13 9 0 5 9 | d 3 3 5 0 9 2 | Expenditure Expenditure Repayment Total Expenditure Repayment Total Expenditure Repayment Total Expenditure Repayment Total Expenditure Repayment Total | £ 756 541 541 1083 742 528 1271 730 528 1258 720 527 1247 1093 535 1629 | s 19 11 10 1 12 10 2 2 17 19 1 4 5 11 9 0 | d 5 2 9 11 6 5 11 9 2 11 5 0 5 5 1 6 |
Very occasionally during 1909 and 1910, the minutes of the Corporation’s Finance Committee included the monthly expenses, excluding salaries, for the Montpellier Baths.
9 December 1909 Blind Institution Cavendish House Davies, D Fisher, John & Sons, Ltd Jackson, John Pates, JP & Co Smith Bros. Stores Account 1 February 1910 Cooke, C Cossens, WT Gas Company Jackson, John Marshall, RE & C, Ltd Pates, JP & Co Saxby, AC Smith Bros Stores Account 31 May 1910 Cheltenham Poor Rate Cheltenham General District Rate Cavendish House Corporation Waterworks Drake & Co Fisher, John & Sons, Ltd India Rubber, Gutta Percha & Telegraph Works Co Jackson, John Lance, John & Co, Ltd Nicholas, C & Co Pates, JP & Co Saxby, AC Suter Hartmann & Rahtjen’s Composition Co Ltd Stores Account 28 June 1910 Allaway, LA Blind Institution County Fire Office Ltd Fisher, John & Sons, Ltd Jackson, John Pates, JP & Co Rossiter, Nurse M* Salt Union Ltd Such, John & Sons Ltd Thornton & Co Stores Account Gas Company 28 December 1910 Cheltenham & County Drug Co Fisher, John & Sons, Ltd Packer, H Pates, JP & Co Stores Account Gas Company | Repairing mats Taking down/refixing doors Furniture polish Steam pipe fittings Soda Coal Timber etc Materials Coal Magazines Gas (December quarter) Soap Batteries etc Slack coal Thermometers Adamant Materials On Montpellier Baths On Montpellier Baths Twill carpet/matting Repairing water meter Tape and cotton Ironmongery Grease packing Soap Cocoa matting Paint and glass Slack coal Thermometer Paint Materials Repairing dating stamps Clothes baskets Insurance premium Ironmongery Polish and soda Slack coal Treatments* Broad salt Grease packing Galoshes Materials Gas (June quarter) Boracic acid Wheel steam valve Coal Slack coal Materials Gas | £ 1 6 1 3 13 1 1 1 7 6 18 8 6 2 7 1 3 12 1 3 48 4 12 1 5 1 1 30 8 10 | s 5 17 3 11 6 4 6 1 17 4 4 2 2 10 13 2 3 4 8 2 7 9 9 7 8 1 13 1 4 2 2 19 19 8 7 11 9 11 9 16 18 17 3 9 19 3 15 3 6 16 1 11 17 15 | d 9 6 0 11 10 3 6 9 6 8 11 8 9 0 0 6 3 10 7 7 6 10 2 11 7 2 9 6 4 0 0 1 5 1 0 0 0 0 5 8 0 6 9 3 6 1 2 0 0 0 2 11 10 11 |
Another flood
The building was flooded again on 14 July 1931 – the centre of Cheltenham has been flooded some 17 times over the years – although the damage was considerably less compared with the floods of 1855 or 2007. A property a little further up Bath Road was not so lucky, as is revealed in this report from the Gloucestershire Echo:
‘The most serious structural damage occurred in Bath Road. For as the storm water had come before reaching the thoroughfare, the Chelt had gained rather than lost any of its force en route, and, crossing the road near the Salvation Army Citadel, it rushed out of the culvert at a terrific pace, carrying away the retaining walls of the river right along into Wellington Street and Rodney Road.
‘At the outlet near the Salvation Army Citadel stood a wing of Carlton House, which, probably undermined by the subsidence caused by the collapse of the constraining wall, fell into the bed of the stream taking with it a large trellis-work fence and uprooting a tree near. The Salvation Army premises were flooded as were the Medical Baths…’
Emperor Haile Selassie requests to visit the Montpellier Baths
Haile Selassie, Emperor of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), had been residing in Bath since 1936 when he was forced into exile following the invasion of Ethiopia by Italian forces. On 27 July 1937 he arrived in Cheltenham at 11.30 am by train, accompanied by one of his sons and his secretary, on what the Gloucestershire Echo described as a ‘surprise visit’ and led them to ponder whether the Emperor ‘may be considering coming to live in or near Cheltenham in the near future’.
The Echo continued that ‘On arrival, the Emperor and his companions went to Cheltenham Ladies College, over which he was conducted by the principal (Miss M E Popham). He also visited St Hilda’s, one of the college’s boarding-houses. He then took lunch at the Queen’s Hotel, where Mr G A M Wilkinson, Cheltenham’s entertainment manager, interviewed his secretary and invited the Emperor to make a short tour of some of the most interesting features of Cheltenham. In order to do so, the Emperor delayed his departure from Cheltenham until a later train
‘Mr P P Davis placed his car at the Emperor’s disposal and drove him first to the Town Hall, where each member of the party had a glass of the Pittville water from the Central Spa. Then, at the request of Haile Selassie, they visited the Monpellier medicinal baths, over which they were conducted by the superintendent, Mr T Hudson.
‘After visiting the Sandford Park swimming pool, the Emperor, then accompanied by Mr John Howell, went to the Pittville Pump Room, where he displayed particular interest in the waters and the way they were conducted to the Central Spa. The Emperor left Cheltenham on the 3.20 pm train’.
TO READ MISCELLANY FROM 1945-NOW CLICK HERE