At the same time, the Mayor found that his appeals for public subscriptions to help finance the baths from the wealthier folk in the town were falling on deaf ears and in an embarrassing climb down the baths proposals were abruptly abandoned. Recriminations about this rumbled on for some years afterwards.

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No plans appear to survive of Tempest Radford’ ‘best baths in the Midlands’. From the description that does exist we can be sure they would have looked very like the baths that actually  were built in Westbury in Wiltshire to commemorate the Jubilee and which are still in use today. In that town, very like Kidderminster with a textile based economy and similar population, the leading manufacturer underwrote the costs of building the baths