Chris Horlock was right about the Corporation Slipper Baths (Letters, May 5).

Between 1932 and 1937 my friends and I used them all except the one at Ditchling Road.

It closed before I was deemed old enough to give up using the galvanised metal bath that hung on the wall in the back yard of our house in Queens Park Road.

At the age of ten, I started going to the slipper baths with my pals. We took a towel and two or three pence and went to either Cobden Road or Park Street as these were nearest.

The water was controlled by an attendant who carried a handle to operate valves situated outside the cubicles.

When a cubicle was allocated he turned on both hot and cold water while the occupant tested the temperature before closing the door and undressing.

If the water was then found to be too hot or cold, the procedure was to call out the cubicle number with a request for more hot or cold water.

The attendant would then come and turn on the appropriate tap acting on shouted instructions from the occupant who was usually stark naked inside the cubicle. We had great fun shouting for more hot or cold water and used to chat while bathing or if next to each other we would scramble up the wooden partition and peer over the top.

I do not recall any limit being placed on the amount of water dispensed or of being timed for using the cubicle but, as the last occasion I used the baths was on Saturday March 20, 1937, there could have been some changes made during the following 40 years before they all closed in the late Seventies.

-Ken Chambers, Brighton