BATHS AND DIGNITY

Stratford Evening Post, Volume I, Issue 78, 11 March 1931, Page 2

BATHS AND DIGNITY

EFFECT ON MINERS CREATION OF SELF-RESPECT The Earl of Crawford and Balcarres opened the most up-to-date pithead baths in England recently at Maypole Colliery, Abram. The baths, which have been installed under the mines welfare scheme at an approximate cost of £17,000, are the first of their kind to provide bathing facilities for women employees equally with men. Lord Crawford said that welfare funds could be spent on research, education, cottage homes and other things, but in his opinion baths provided the simplest and very likely the best destination for the money. Comfort, health and dignity were promoted by pit-head baths. Mr. Gordon Macdonald, M.P. for the district in which the colliery is situated, expressed Jhe opinion that pithead baths gave the miner a better opinion of himself. From the earliest days the miner had never thought sufficiently well of himself. He had looked upon clerks and similar workers as being more important than himself. One of the reasons for this was that the miner had had to go home from his work in poor clothes and unwashed. A ballot of the miners gave an overwhelming majority for the provision of baths.