BC - RECORDS OF BATH CITY COUNCIL AND BATH & NORTH EAST SOMERSET COUNCIL
- BC/13 - Bath as a Spa, Cultural and Tourist centre: records of Bath City Council and Bath & North East Somerset Council's responsibilities for culture, leisure and tourism
  - BC/13/12 - Records relating to the Thermae Bath Spa
    - BC/13/12/1 - Records relating to the Bath Spa Project (1997-2006)
      - BC/13/12/1/1 - Audio recordings of interviews conducted to aid in the development of displays for the Spa Visitor Centre, Bath

Interview with Mrs Shepherd who recalls her time working at the Spa Treatment Centre, Bath

Reference Number: BC/13/12/1/1/10
Alternative Reference Number: 0779
Level of Description: Item
Title: Interview with Mrs Shepherd who recalls her time working at the Spa Treatment Centre, Bath
Date: c.2005
Extent: Extent: 1 minidisc
Description: An audio recording of an interview with Mrs Shepherd who describes her time working at the Spa Treatment Centre in the 1970s.

This interview, along with others, was conducted to aid in the development of visitor displays at the Spa Visitor Centre, which opened in August 2006. Further details of the date and location of the recording have not been captured, and it is not clear who is conducting the interview.

The recording is 00:05:21 long with the interviewer’s voice breaking in at 00:00:03. Below are the extracts of what was said during the interview. Please note this is not a complete transcript as the superfluous conversation in between questions has been removed:

[Mrs Shepherd] ‘I started working in the health centre at the treatment centre in 72 and worked there for five years. It was a delightful, well-equipped physiotherapy department and the bonus we had was one of our means of heating and comfort and treatment for arthritic and injured joints was the wonderful mud which came up from the bowels of the treatment centre and was applied to people's joints wrapped in hot towels and the whole place was a very efficient and happy place to work.
Our enjoyment of it was much increased by the delightful surroundings because we were working in what had been the treatment part of the Grand Pump Room Hotel which was a very upmarket hotel and all the appointments were very luxurious and very beautiful and that's not what you normally find in a hospital. The actual hydrotherapy pool itself was across the road and it was a small bath and very warm and we only stayed in it for an hour and a half and our patients were only in it for 20 minutes because it could be rather enervating after then. It was about 98 and the water had to be cooled down for us to use it. But it was a lovely little bath with a glass dome ceiling and if the weather was fine the attendants could ratchet up great big wheels at the side and the whole roof would open up and you could sit in the sun in 98 degree water which was pretty nice and the patients of course loved it.
And the buoyancy of the water meant that people who perhaps had had a stroke or children in those days they were children still with polio they could do a lot more in that hot water than they could otherwise and therefore it was a very rewarding place to work. And people were coming treated? Treated ordinary patients of course that came from their doctors and so forth but in the summer we used to get a lot of people from the continent particularly Germany because the concentration camp victims who had survived the German government were prepared to pay for any medical treatment they needed and we got people coming over with very severe arthritis or disjointed joints from Germany paid for by the German government and put up in bath by the German government.
And as I think I told you I remember being very horrified the first time I treated somebody and saw their concentration camp mark tattooed across their arm and it seemed so totally incongruous in a place like Bath but one was glad that one could do something to alleviate their horrific experiences'.
[Interviewer] ‘And you obviously got to take some of the treatment yourself?’

[Mrs Shepherd] ‘Oh when we first went there you had the option if you liked you could go downstairs and be treated in the basement with these wonderful hydrotherapists who massaged you and wrapped you in hot towels and made you realize what a delightful and beneficial treatment it was. When we first went there we had a new member of staff. You would go down into the basement where the hydrotherapists would give you one of their marvellous treatments and this could you could go in a jacuzzi which in those days were not so prevalent in hotels and homes and have all the various water treatments there and you could also be massaged under a hot water and then wrapped in boiling hot towels and it was quite wonderful you felt marvellous at the end of it’.

[Interviewer] ‘And you said that also about your boys being taught to swim’.

[Mrs Shepherd ] ‘Yes apart from the treatment pool across the road the Hot Bath there was also a small Cross Bath which was open to the sky and a lot of small children including my two small boys learned to swim there. There were various swimming instructors would take them for a class and it was a fairly safe and unusual place for children to be taught. And of course there weren't the big baths, the Beau Street baths; there were only perhaps two or three children at a time, so one could very easily keep an eye on them. And my two learnt to swim there and many others as well’.
Existence and Location of Copies: Digitised MP3 versions are available on Preservica via internal access at Bath Record Office.