Interview With Marie Frazher, Bath House Attendant
Conducted by Historical Commission member Doris Amsbury on April 23, 1992
MARIE FRAZHER, DISCUSSING THE NATURE OF HER JOB AS A MINERAL BATH ATTENDANT AT THE BATH HOUSES IN MOUNT CLEMENS:
The water is pitch black. It has salt, mineral and sulfur in it. And you cannot lie in the bottom of the tub. We had straps that went over the head of the tub and the people laid with their head on the strap and had to keep their feet braced at the foot of the tub to keep themselves down in the water. And we'd get one in, and go to the next tub and put in another person. And by that time, we'd come back, and massage the person we put in and then get back to the other one. And ... most of the treatment was half hours. And then when a half hour was up we'd take the lady out, lay her on the ... wrap her in towels and a blanket and lay her on the cot and give her hot packs down her back, down both arms, on the legs from the hips to the knee, from the knee to the toes. Then they laid there until they got cool. Then they undressed and went away. Well, as soon as we got one person out of the tub, we'd clean out our tub and start up with the next people. It was like production. And then we'd get that taken care of and go back to another one. That's how we went the whole day.
INTERVIEWER: How many would you do in a day?
MARIE FRAZHER: Sometimes I did twenty-five.
INTERVIEWER: Twenty-five?
MARIE FRAZHER: When I first started, the bath ... the people ... the bath attendants had been on strike, 'cause they were only getting seventy-five cents a bath at that time. When I went in-- I went in June, around the fifteenth-- because I worked when my daughters were home from school and they took care of the boy for me, so I worked from June 'til September, and it had just turned to a dollar then. Maybe about two weeks before I started. When I quit, we were getting two dollars.
INTERVIEWER: So, that made twenty-five or fifty dollars a day?
MARIE FRAZHER: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: But then, that was a workout for you, too.
MARIE FRAZHER: Yes. You were on your feet from the time you got there to when we sat and had our lunch, or maybe if you get a few minutes you could sit, but we were busy all the time. It was just--keep right on going.
INTERVIEWER: Your arms and back must have gotten quite a workout.
MARIE FRAZHER: Yeah. We wore a ... I wore a whalebone corset with stays enough that tied in the front. But you had to have something strong.
INTERVIEWER: Was that to give you support?
MARIE FRAZHER: Yes. And we wore white flannel gowns with a white towel around our stomach, and white anklets and tennis shoes.
INTERVIEWER: Very interesting.
MARIE FRAZHER: And we'd start work at five o'clock in the morning,
INTERVIEWER: Five in the morning?
MARIE FRAZHER: We'd put the first one in at five o'clock in the morning. We used to go to the rooms, knock on the doors, and people'd come down and get their bath, everybody wanted their bath as soon as they could, then they'd have the rest of the day to themselves. And, uh, on a regular day we worked from five 'til twelve. And every day a different woman took the watch-- worked the whole day, 'cause take care of people that came in the afternoon. And I had a little niece which was three years old when she got polio. And my brother talked to the doctor, and he asked about whether the mineral waters would help her, and he said, "no." So I talked to Mrs. Soule, and I asked her about it, and I was telling her about it and she said "you bring her here." Said, "bring her here after twelve o'clock, when all the other bathers are gone, 'cause people are very superstitious, you know, about sickness like that." So we ... my daughter and my sister-in-law had to carry her everywhere she went. So she brought her over, and we fixed the water just the right temperature, and gave her things to play with, then we rubbed her from her hips down to her knees, then wrapped her up in a blanket and put hot compresses on her. And we had her on her feet in three days.
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INTERVIEWER: Can you tell us a little bit about the room where these baths were given?
MARIE FRAZHER: It was like a stall, we had a chair for the person to sit down, and our tubs ... the tubs were all big. And we had a chair for the people to sit on when they got out of the tub, we had a shelf where we had our towels on, each day we a bundle of towels for each guest we had. And we had a door on each stall. And it had ventilation on the top and on the bottom.
INTERVIEWER: So it didn't get steamy?
MARIE FRAZHER: No.
And then when I first started, we had what they called a
"dog house." And each new person was down in the dog
house. The dog house had two tubs. One was a right-handed tub and
one was a left-handed tub. Hard to get adjusted to. But I got by
all right anyhow. It was seven of us women and it was fourteen
tubs. Fifteen ... fifteen, rather, because there were seven of us
and two tubs in one room.
We all had our own rooms and we each had our name at the top of
our room, so that people could ... when they'd come down the line
they could look for the name.
INTERVIEWER: So, you had the same tubs all the time?
MARIE FRAZHER: All the time. Yes. Those were our rooms.
INTERVIEWER: What ... were the tubs porcelain, or... what were they made of? Or don't you know? Where they just a typical bath tub?
MARIE FRAZHER: No. They were very ... real ... very, very big. And real heavy. And every day when we got through with all the baths, we cleaned our tubs with acid.
INTERVIEWER: That was to remove the ...
MARIE FRAZHER: Remove the stain. We had acid and we cleaned with that. When we were done the tub would be nice and white again.
INTERVIEWER: Did you have to use rubber gloves on your hands?
MARIE FRAZHER: Yeah, we uh, well we were just careful with it. We didn't use rubber gloves.
INTERVIEWER: Must have been quite a strong acid, though.
MARIE FRAZHER: Yes, it was a hundred percent. It was strong, but it took the stain away.
INTERVIEWER: Well, that's interesting.
MARIE FRAZHER: Then when we'd get through, when our shift was over, and we'd clean our rooms. Each one cleaned their own room.
INTERVIEWER: You mean...
MARIE FRAZHER: Washed the floor, and then we'd take turns cleaning the hallway.
INTERVIEWER: Where the people came in...
MARIE FRAZHER: Yes. And then the girl on watch in the afternoon did the cooling room, where the people used to sit after the baths.
INTERVIEWER: This was a wide open room with no partitions?
MARIE FRAZHER: No. Wide open room and had a bench, and had a mirror.
INTERVIEWER: And what was the mirror for, now?
MARIE FRAZHER: Well, people'd come in and fix their hair.
INTERVIEWER: This was before -after they were dressed?
MARIE FRAZHER: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: How long did they have to rest after a bath?
MARIE FRAZHER: It didn't take long. Enough to cool off. Some people used to drive in from Detroit, from Marine City, from all around. And then, their husband, or whoever brought them, would be waiting for them. And then they'd pick them up. And then the other women, when they came in for the baths, they would sit in this waiting room, cooling room, and wait for us. And when we were ready for them, we'd call them. And we'd call them in. And when everything was all ready, then they went in the cooling room and sat there and cooled off and waited for their driver. Because we had a driver-- we had a lot of people staying at rooming houses that didn't have drivers. And then the driver would come in and pick them up and take them back again from the baths.
INTERVIEWER: Was this cooling period about twenty minutes?
MARIE FRAZHER: It depended upon how they felt.
INTERVIEWER: If they were in a hurry to leave...
MARIE FRAZHER: It'd just depend...
INTERVIEWER: There was no set time.
MARIE FRAZHER: No. No.
INTERVIEWER: What did you notice...how did the baths affect some of these people? Were they a lot better off?
MARIE FRAZHER: Oh, yes. I'd see people come with wheelchairs and leave with canes.
INTERVIEWER: Leave with canes..
MARIE FRAZHER: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: And some came with canes, and didn't need those then...?
MARIE FRAZHER: No. I had a lady used to come from Israel, she came every year, and she said that, she was real bad, she said, when she first started. And then we had people that took the baths and said that if it wasn't for the baths they'd never live through the winter. They wouldn't get through the winter with the pain.
INTERVIEWER: Did most of the people take the baths because of something like arthritis?
MARIE FRAZHER: For arthritis. It was good for arthritis and rheumatism.