1. The context

Those who write about the Victorian Turkish bath, especially when it is only peripheral to the main subject of their article or book, or just a location in their work of fiction, occasionally confuse a specific bath with another imagined to be the same. This does not include cases such as Neil Bartlett's Mr Clive and Mr Page where the author knew exactly which establishment his story refers to, but has knowingly used the name of another because he liked the sound of it, and because it seemed to fit the style of one of his characters.

The two baths most frequently confused were both in Jermyn Street: David Urquhart's London Hammam at number 76, and the Savoy at number 92. They only co-existed for 40 of the 113 years that one or other graced Jermyn Street, and they were quite different from each other in clientele and ambience. Where in Jermyn Street was Trollope's Turkish bath? notes some instances of this particular confusion.

There has always been much confusion also about two baths a couple of minutes walk away from each other in Dublin, discussed in Where did Bloom take his bath? Perhaps these baths are so frequently confused because the fiction of Trollope and Joyce is so widely studied.

But the confusion to be discussed here, between the baths at 76 Jermyn Street and another one in Oxford, is of a different kind. It has probably escaped attention because even George Slythe (G S) Street's most popular novel, The autobiography of a boy, is far less well known. It differs also as being an instance exemplifying where a critic has misinterpreted the meaning of a phrase, and later critics have compounded his error, almost certainly not having first checked what Street actually wrote.

2. Confusing the baths: London or Oxford?

Three articles by the Canadian scholar John Potvin suggesting that homosexual males appropriated the Jermyn Street Hammam (and other Victorian Turkish baths) in the latter part of the nineteenth century have become the sine qua non sources for anyone who later writes on homosexuality in the 19th century.

His arguments, which do not appear to provide any evidence to support this suggestion, are discussed in the article mentioned at the head of this page. This short extract arises from Potvin's emphasis on Jermyn Street as an important homosocial space and one that is therefore a most appropriate location for the Hammam.

Urquhart and his architect, George Somers Clarke, had great difficulty in finding a site which was affordable and where he would be able to get permission to build the Hammam. Yet Potvin, almost as though Urquhart had specifically chosen the Jermyn Street site for some nefarious purpose, loses no time in stating that,

the Jermyn Street Hammam was one of numerous venues in this 'inner sanctum of the masculine city', where male homosociability was performed and enjoyed.

The source of 'inner sanctum of the masculine city' is given as G S Street's best-known novel The Autobiography of a boy, published in 1894. The juxtaposition of this phrase with 'male homosociability' seems strange in the context of a book published at the end of the nineteenth century. A quick online search of Street's text fails to find the phrase. But the citation (page xiii of what the author calls 'The Editor's apology') does include, 'On leaving home [Tubby] went into a delightful little flat in Jermyn Street…'.

A search on Google Books indicates that the phrase 'inner sanctum of the masculine city' (in quotes) also appears in at least three books, amongst which is Matt Cook's London and the culture of homosexuality, 1885-1914. Cook writes:

Tubby, the effete protagonist of G S Street's novel Autobiography of a boy (1894), has chambers in Jermyn Street, St James'—the 'inner sanctum of the masculine city', according to Roy Porter—and he travels by sedan chair to the London and Provincial Turkish Baths at number 76, another important homosocial West End space.

A further search, this time for 'Roy Porter' and 'inner sanctum of the masculine city,' refers to his London: a social history—though the phrase itself does not appear in the book. What Porter actually wrote was:

Clubs helped keep London a masculine city, and St James's, with its bachelor chambers around King and Jermyn Streets, was its inner sanctum.

Is it mere pedantry to wonder if the difference matters?

Much more important to the Turkish bath historian is Cook's apparent discovery of a previously unknown reference to 'The London and Provincial Turkish Baths at number 76' in a work of fiction.  The reference, to  patronage of the baths by an effete young man, prompted a further online search of The Autobiography. This failed to find any mention of the London and Provincial, although a Turkish bath does appear, further on in 'The Editor's apology'.

As a student, the 'editor' explains, Tubby was sent down from Oxford in his third year, but two years later,

His humour of being carried in a sedan chair, swathed in blankets and reading a Latin poet, from his rooms to the Turkish bath, is still remembered in his college.

Clearly, the sedan chair journey to 'the Turkish bath' does not occur in London, let alone Jermyn Street, but in Oxford. We are not told which was Tubby's college, but William Dolley's Turkish baths in Merton Street, just down the road from Merton College, were the only ones in Oxford at that time.

Potvin is certainly not the only academic teasing out false references to The Hammam while, perhaps, seeking to confirm preconceived ideas.