WASH-HOUSES, PUBLIC. In Great Britain and on the Continent, where public bath-houses, owned and operated by the municipality. have long been in existence, it is quite common to operate public laundries in connection with the bath-houses, (See Bini-DottsEs. 11(visaciPAL.) Within recent years, however, there has been a tendency to separate these institutions and locate them in different buildings. In some of the Eng lish wash-houses a very important addition has been made in the form of a public cri•elle where women may leave their young children to be eared for while they are busy in the wash-house. The great use that is made of these European public wash-houses proves how important a puh lie utility they are. Most of them are not self supporting, and it has been pointed out that to make them so would probably thwart the primary object for which they are conAtructed—the bet terment of the sanitary condition of the very poor. The first public wash-house in England was built in 1842 at Liverpool. in connection with a public bath-house. In the period 1890..
95 the average annual number of washers was 16,268 a ml its maintenance involved an average annual loss of $832. The first public wash-house erected in Germany, having a public laundry, was built at Hamburg in 1855. Unlike the British wash-houses, it is said that most of the German wash-houses have proved self-supporting and sometimes yield a profit.
In America there are no munieipally owned public laundries. In a few of the public bath houses the bathers are supplied with conveniences for the cleansing of their wearing apparel. At the public bath-house in Rochester, N. Y., men and boys are allowed to wash their own clothes. This is also true at. Buffalo, where the wash-room and drying-closets for mulerelothes were used by 1542 persons in 1897 and 3100 persons in 1899. In Philadelphia the Public Baths Association operates a public wash-house in connection with the bath-house. The laundry, which at first was reserved for men on certain days, is now open to women only.