Discussion Post: The Lion's Mane
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sherlock60This week, the canon story we’re looking at is The Lion’s Mane and the chosen topic is Swimming in the Victorian and Edwardian periods.
A few facts:
🏊 Few Londoners knew how to swim before public baths were built, but it was becoming quite a popular sport by 1879, when there were 16 swimming clubs based at London baths. By 1900, school children were being taken to baths to learn to swim. [Islington Museum]
🏊 The bathing machine was a device, popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, to allow people to change out of their usual clothes, change into swimwear, and wade in the ocean at beaches. Bathing machines were roofed and walled wooden carts rolled into the sea. Some had solid wooden walls while others had canvas walls over a wooden frame.
The bathing machine was part of etiquette for sea-bathing more rigorously enforced upon women than men but to be observed by both sexes among those who wished to be proper.
Especially in Britain, men and women were usually segregated, so nobody of the opposite sex might catch sight of them in their bathing suits, which (although extremely modest by modern standards) were not considered proper clothing in which to be seen…
People entered the small room of the machine while it was on the beach, wearing their street clothing. In the machine they changed into their bathing suit, although men were allowed to bathe nude until the 1860s, placing their street clothes into a raised compartment where they would remain dry.
Probably all bathing machines had small windows, but one writer in the Manchester Guardian of May 26, 1906 considered them "ill-lighted" and wondered why bathing machines were not improved with a skylight. The machine would then be wheeled or slid into the water. The most common machines had large wide wheels and were propelled in and out of the surf by a horse or a pair of horses with a driver. Less common were machines pushed in and out of the water by human power. Some resorts had wooden rails into the water for the wheels to roll on; a few had bathing machines pulled in and out by cables propelled by a steam engine.
Once in the water, the occupants disembarked from the sea side down steps into the water. Many machines had doors front and back; those with only one door would be backed into the sea or need to be turned around. It was considered essential that the machine blocked any view of the bather from the shore. Some machines were equipped with a canvas tent lowered from the seaside door, sometimes capable of being lowered to the water, giving the bather greater privacy. Some resorts employed a dipper, a strong person of the same sex who would assist the bather in and out of the sea. Some dippers were said to push bathers into the water, then yank them out, considered part of the experience.
Once mixed gender bathing became socially acceptable, the days of the bathing machine were numbered.
Bathing machines would often be equipped with a small flag which could be raised by the bather as a signal to the driver that they were ready to return to shore...
Bathing machines were most common in the United Kingdom and parts of the British Empire with a British population, but were also used in France, Germany, the United States, Mexico, and other nations. Legal segregation of bathing areas in Britain ended in 1901, and the bathing machine declined rapidly. By the start of the 1920s, bathing machines were almost extinct, even on beaches catering to an older clientele.
The bathing machines remained in active use on English beaches until the 1890s, when they began to be parked on the beach. They were then used as stationary changing rooms for a number of years. Most of them had disappeared in the United Kingdom by 1914. [Wikipedia]
🏊 The bathing machine was like a sentry-box on wheels; it was about six feet in length and width, and about eight feet high, with a peaked roof. Some had solid wooden walls; others had canvas walls over a wooden frame. Sometimes the windowless box was colored with the fantastic lavishness of a canal-boat, and sometimes the whole of the superficial space was covered with advertisements. The bathing machine had a door behind and in front, and as the floor was four feet above the ground, it had to be reached by a step-ladder. The contents of the bathing machine consisted of a bench, a damp flannel gown, and two towels. The only light was from an unglazed opening in the roof; there was no mirror, and no fresh-water. The bathing machine was wheeled or slid down into the water; some were pulled in and out of the surf by a pair of horses with a driver and others by human power.
Having left her "valuables" in the hands of the bathing-woman whose office was in a small wooden box, the female bather would closet herself and, in the privacy of the machine, would change into her bathing dress, placing her street garments into a raised compartment where the clothing would remain dry. When (in the opinion of the bathing machine operator) she had ample time to disrobe, the van was lowered to the edge of the water, and generally shaking the occupant violently as it rolled over the pebbles.
The bather then entered the surf by the front door, descending by another step-ladder like the one behind; and if she could not swim, the portly and sunburned attendant encircled the bather’s waist with a strong cord, attaching the shore end to the van. This precaution was very necessary at the British seaside, for often the slope of the beach was precipitous, and the water broke upon it with a sudden and vindictive force which often knocked down those who were weak. She, who fifteen minutes earlier had a smiling face with silken hair woven into obedient folds, stands in a line with half a dozen or more other bathers, each tied to a van. The shapeless bathing dress that covered her is all bedraggled; her hair is tangled and matted. In the spirit of the moment, she dashes handfuls of water into her face, and paddles with her feet; and all the time she is preoccupied and fearful lest one of the violent waves should catch her unawares. When she has splashed for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, and is unspeakably disheveled, the bathing-woman hauls her in; thus completing her sea-side experience. [Victoriana Magazine]
🏊 In the early Victorian era women had worn serge or dark flannel bathing dresses, but by the 1860s two piece belted costumes replaced the earlier styles.
The swimwear bodice top was jacket like and the swimsuit bottom part three quarter trousers… The later Victorian swimsuit outfit was still cumbersome, but was more practical and more attractive than earlier bathing clothes...
Swimwear fashion changes moved very slowly. Differences in swimsuit styles were simple such as the introduction of short cap sleeves. Eventually sleeveless styles with more ankle showing beneath the bloomers became usual…
Edwardian Swimsuits were very similar to Victorian styles. They were still made of wool and now consisted of bloomers and a wool over dress.
The dress was now a sleeveless version and the outfit was worn with black stockings and laced footwear.
Gradually by 1920 necklines were lowered and the overdress shortened even more. [Pauline Weston Thomas]
🏊 Torquay [tor-kee] was a posh seaside resort, a popular winter and summer holiday destination for wealthy Europeans and royal personages…
When Agatha [Christie (1890-1976)] was a young girl, the beaches in Torquay were segregated by sex. The Torquay Council kept a strict watch on the propriety of sea bathing. In 1899, a bylaw stated that “no person of the male sex shall at any time bathe within 50 yards of a ladies’ bathing machine.” Men and boys swam at the Gentlemen’s Bathing Cove where there was no dress code. Men swam there in the nude or “in their scanty triangles,” Agatha recalled, “disport[ing] themselves as they pleased.” Women and girls were restricted to swimming at the Ladies’ Bathing Cove. Their beach was small and stony, and steeply sloping...
Agatha would… swim out to an anchored raft, pull herself up, and then sit upon it, sunning. Getting to the raft was a minor feat in itself, even though Agatha was a strong swimmer, because once in the water, her woolen swimsuit became completely sodden and heavy, making her sink under its weight. Women sewed weights in the skirt hems to keep them from rising up in the water, compounding the problem. It was a recipe for disaster: women sinking under the weight of cumbersome dresses, women who could not swim, crashing waves, no lifeguards, and water so frigid that limbs went numb and faces blue. Only some beaches had attendants to help women in the surf and ropes to hold onto.
Trivial matters like safety aside, what really occupied everyone’s mind at the Turn of the Century in England was protecting women’s modesty. The beach at the Ladies’ Bathing Cove was immensely private; it was completely invisible from the windows of the Torbay Yacht Club situated above it on the hill...
In 1903, when Agatha was 13, the Torquay Council approved mixed bathing on its beaches… Although allowing the sexes to mingle was considered to be a very progressive social move, ironically, it placed an even heavier burden on the women. In order to properly mix with men on the beach, Victorian standards of modesty dictated that women had to wear far more clothing than before! It was strictly forbidden for women to let their bare legs show. To caps, dresses, bloomers, and shoes, they added thick, black stockings...
Australian swimmer, diver, and entertainer Annette Kellerman – “The Diving Venus” – set out to challenge legal restrictions on women’s bathing suits. She believed that swimming was the ideal exercise for women and that pantaloons and skirts prohibited free movement, allowing women only a dip, not a swim, in the life-giving sea. Kellerman was well-known in Britain. In 1904 she swam 26 miles of the River Thames, performed underwater ballet in a glass tank at the London Hippodrome, and tried (and failed) three times to swim the English Channel.
In 1907, preparing for a promotional coast swim, Kellerman was arrested for indecent attire on Revere Beach, Boston, in America. She was wearing one of her clinging, one-piece swimsuits that had no skirt, revealing her thighs.
Kellerman pleaded her case before the judge. Her swimsuit, she explained, was practical, not provocative… The judge dismissed the case, accepting Kellerman’s arguments in favor of swimming as healthy exercise and against cumbersome bathing suits, provided she wore a robe until she entered the water. Her arrest made international headlines. It was the birth of Twentieth Century bathing suits for women; from then on, swimsuits began to be designed for more practical use. [Lisa Waller Rogers]
🏊 In the Victorian era there was a conscious effort to avoid the possibility of impropriety and beaches were segregated into areas in which women and men could bathe separately. Men traditionally bathed naked and the few women who were brave, or daring enough, to take to the water wore large, voluminous bathing costumes which virtually covered their entire body and the bathing machines were strictly attended. From the mid 1800s some men also began to wear bathing costumes but many shunned the idea and continued to bathe unclothed… Bathing costumes for men became compulsory at many seaside resorts as the Victorian era progressed but mixed bathing was still prohibited. This attitude still prevailed into the early 1900s… Swimming costumes became thinner and tighter and attitudes towards public bathing started to be relax, the old bathing machines began to be replaced by changing tents and swimming directly from the beach became the norm during the latter years of the Edwardian era. [Carol Gingell]
🏊 During the Victorian era modesty was still a priority and women wore short dresses and ankle length pantaloons. Bathing consume fabric remained stiff so as not to reveal the female form and were made of wool flannel or serge. Dark colours prevailed, being less revealing than light colours. Fashion conscious women wore bathing costumes with wide, sailor collars and decorative edging in contrasting colours. Full length dark stockings were worn in the water along with flat soled bathing shoes.
By the late 19th century, the term ‘bathing suit’ was common. Ease of movement in the water facilitated designs that offered shorter pantaloons, shorter skirts and short sleeves. Before gender desegregation of beaches, men generally swam nude, but as mixed bathing increased, men wore garments designed for the water. One piece knit suits with short sleeves and knee length pants were popular. By the late 1800’s, two piece versions consisted of short sleeved or sleeveless tunics over knee length pants.
In 1901, the UK ended enforced gender segregation on public beaches and although the loose, floppy bathing costumes persisted until the 1920’s, swimsuit designers began to create suits that were more practical and comfortable. The suits of competitive and serious female swimmers lost the skirts in the early part of the century and the first functional two piece swimsuit was designed in 1913. [Gill Sinclair]
🏊 Despite the relative modesty of bathing costumes, it was considered an article of clothing improper for a mixed crowd and until 1901, both sexes were confined to segregated bathing machines (roofed and walled wooden carts that rolled into the sea) to retain a measure of propriety...
As the only activity for women involved jumping through the waves while holding onto a rope attached to an off-shore buoy, their bathing costume was quite unsuited for real swimming. Made of serge or preshrunk mohair in black, red or navy, it consisted of a knee-length skirt, a pair of bloomers and a tunic, or a combination type with skirt. The costume was then accessorized by long black stockings, lace-up bathing slippers, and fancy caps. The style of costume changed little between the years 1880 and 1907, cap sleeves being the only new concession to fashion. It was Australian swimmer, Annette Kellerman, who heralded the transformation of the bathing costume’s silhouette.
...bathing wear started to shrink, first uncovering the arms and then the legs up to mid-thigh. Collars receded from around the neck down to around the top of the bosom. The development of new fabrics allowed for new varieties of more comfortable and practical swim wear. Until 1860, it was customary for men to swim nude, and after this was banned in 1860, masculine bathing costume followed the lines of womens, consisting of shirt and shorts, made of dark-colored serge. As with women, men’s costume changed by the late 1900s, when a few daring men were seen swimming topless! [Evangeline Holland]
🏊 In Victorian England, it was generally believed that the sexes should be kept apart when bathing. To that end, the gentlemen’s wheeled bathing machines at the beach were often kept as much as a quarter of a mile away from the ladies’ machines. This allowed both ladies and gentlemen to enter their respective machines, change into their swimming costumes, and descend into the waves for a swim all without exposing themselves to the lascivious gazes of the opposite sex. There was only one problem—many Victorian ladies and gentlemen actually wanted to swim in company with each other. When they did so, the scandalous practice was known as promiscuous bathing.
Though promiscuous bathing was quite popular on the continent, especially in France, in Victorian England the sight of men and women bathing together was still considered to be rather indecent. In the seaside town of Margate, this indecency was exacerbated by the fact that some gentlemen did not feel the need to put on their bathing drawers and, instead, emerged from their bathing machines in what the 2 September 1854 edition of the Leeds Times describes as an “entirely primitive state.” Once in the water, these naked gentlemen had no compunction about approaching the female bathers nearby. As the Leeds Times reports:
“We counted a party of five females—we cannot call them ladies—who were engaged, amidst shouts of laughter from the bystanders on the beach, with a gentleman, in a splashing match. They were as close together as if they were of the same party.”
The men and women who engaged in promiscuous bathing at Margate did so in front of a very interested public audience, some of whom employed telescopes to get a better view of the indecency. During the 1854 incident with the naked gentlemen, the Leeds Times reports that:
“The beach was thronged with admiring spectators, and many of them with glasses, although they were not required, as the bathers, from the high tide, were close to the shore.”
Margate soon developed a reputation as a seaside town which attracted a particularly brazen variety of promiscuous bather...
At Margate, there was no effort made to keep a marked distance between the men’s and women’s bathing machines and the public promenade. At any given time, those strolling along the fashionable walk had full view of men and women frolicking together in the water. As the Era describes it:
“The bathers of both sexes romp, laugh, and perform all kinds of antics in which the actual nudity of the men is infinitely less offensive to our sense of decency than the modest immodesty of the clinging gossamer vestment in which the females cover, without hiding, their forms.”
Just as in the 1850s, the crowds at Margate during the 1860s often used telescopes to get a better view of the “nude groups and sportive syrens” in the water. As an additional point of interest, the Era reports that these “magnifying mediums” were as likely to be used by ladies as by gentlemen...
The outcry over promiscuous bathing was not limited to fashionable British seaside resorts and watering holes… [Mimi Matthews]
🏊 The principal Swimming Clubs in London are as follows
ALLIANCE, City of London Bath, Golden-lane, Barbican. 1s. per quarter.
AMATEUR, St. George’s Bath, Buckingham-palace-road. 10s 6d. per annum.
CADOGAN, Chelsea Bath, 171, King’s-road, Chelsea. 10s. 6d. per annum
CAMDEN, St. Pancras Bath, King-street, Camden Town. 2s. per month.
CYGNUS, Addington-square Bath, Camberwell. 10s per annum.
DREADNOUGHT, Victoria Bath, Peckham. 1s. 6d. per quarter.
EXCELSIOR, St. Pancras Bath, Tottenham-court-road. 2s. 6d. per quarter.
ILEX. Lambeth Bath, Westminster-bridge-road. 5s. per annum.
NORTH LONDON, North London Bath, Pentonville. 2s. 6d. per quarter.
OTTER, Marylebone Bath, Marylebone. 10s. 6d. per annum.
REGENT, St. Pancras Bath, Ling-street, Camden Town. 1s. per month.
ST. PANCRAS, St. Pancras Bath, Tottenham-court-road. 2s. 6d. per quarter.
SERPENTINE St. George’s Bath, Davies-street, Berkeley-square. 10s. per annum.
SOUTH LONDON, Lambeth Bath, Westminster-bridge-road. 1s. per month.
SOUTH EAST LONDON, Victoria Bath, Peckham. 2s. 6d. per annum.
WEST LONDON, St. Pancras Bath, Tottenham-court-road. 2s. per quarter.
Racing frequently takes place at the various baths, and, in the season, in the Thames and Serpentine; indeed, some enthusiasts even race in the latter unsavoury water at Christmas. There is a floating bath on the Thames at Charing.cross. [Charles Dickens (Jr.), Dickens's Dictionary of London, 1879, via The Dictionary of Victorian London.]
🏊 'Their object is to promote general proficiency rather than exceptional excellence–to teach the art to the many, not to deck the breasts of a few experts alone.' – Penny Illustrated Paper, 14 August 1869
The London Swimming Club (LSC) is one of London’s oldest swimming clubs on record. First established in 1859, LSC was a central hub of London’s Victorian swimmers. They were the first club to formalise the rules of Water Polo and their founding member, Ernst Ravenstein, was a prominent member of the National Olympian Association.
The club was known for its lively, social atmosphere and was a regular host of race events. Most notably perhaps was the summer fete, held in the East and West India Dock, where swimmers would chase a ‘duck’ (a fellow swimmer in a silly outfit) around in the water.
LSC placed huge importance on swimming as a fundamental skill and life-saving provision. Drownings were unfortunately common in the late nineteenth century, as many sailors and dock workers had never received formal lessons. As such, the club’s Hon. Sec from 1869, Mr. J. G. Elliott, offered regular and free tuition to children in the City of London Baths.
Unfortunately, like many Victorian swimming clubs, LSC eventually disbanded in the early twentieth century and faded from common memory… [The London Swimming Club]
🏊 ...by the Victorian era there were numerous swimming manuals available, such as one written by champion swimmer Charles Steedman in 1867. His manual, held at the Bodleian, is said to be the first text on competitive swimming and… its emphasis is on bathing in the wild. The best time to swim in the open air, it says, is the early morning, for then the "robust and healthy body" benefits most from the "shock of immersion", while the ideal training diet is underdone meat and home-brewed ale. Steedman devotes much of his book to the subjects of drowning and rescuing, at a time when "more than six persons" drowned on a daily basis in England and Wales.
Learning to swim was a necessary life skill. However [Steedman’s book] had just one intended audience: men. In Tudor times "it was not an expected thing for a woman to swim", says Karen, and things hadn’t changed much by the 19th century. Walker’s Manly Exercises, for example, published in 1847, recommends that bathers "should use short drawers" and learn to swim in jacket and trousers. No mention is made of what women should wear, because they were not supposed to be swimming.
But towards the end of the Victorian era came a new revolution in the story of swimming… ...not only did Victorian girls and women swim, but they did it competitively, racing for miles through oil and sewage. Agnes Beckwith is a prime example. In September 1875, at the tender age of 14, she dived from a boat at London Bridge and off she swam to Greenwich. The five-mile swim took her one hour seven minutes and she ended, reported the press, "almost as fresh as when she started".
...Agnes Beckwith would become one of Britain’s most famous swimmers and her 20-mile swim a few years later, from Westminster to Richmond and back to Mortlake, dressed in an amber suit and a jaunty little straw hat, received huge press coverage.
Born in 1861, Agnes had been swimming and performing since she was a few years old. She formed her own "talented troupe of lady swimmers" and was soon being billed as "the premier lady swimmer of the world"...
In the summer of 1916, Eileen Lee "eclipsed all records made by men as to time", swimming 23 and a half miles in seven hours from Greenwich. Two months later she topped that by showing "wonderful endurance" and swimming 36 and a quarter miles from Teddington. At 25 miles she confessed to feeling "a bit tired", but announced her determination to "see it out". By the end of the swim, Eileen Lee was "long-distance lady champion of the world". [Caitlin Davies]
🏊 If any one group of people could lay claim to the creation of the true sport of swimming, it would be the Victorians. The Victorian era was one of great creativity and economic and cultural growth and this included the new explosion of public works which helped to encourage the development of swimming as a competitive activity. The first publicly funded swimming baths in the United Kingdom specifically built for the purpose were St George’s Baths in Liverpool which opened in 1828 – but Liverpool had already enjoyed public swimming since 1756 when the first privately funded baths were created there.
Competitive swimming had already become popular by this point and that fashion only increased over the next half-century, with regular contests taking place from the 1830s onwards, especially in and around the capital where this new fashion took hold with the enthusiasm typical of Victorian London.
In addition to speed contests this era also saw the development of a craze for distance swimming, with Captain Matthew Webb swimming the English Channel, a distance of over 20 miles, in 1875. The popularity of swimming increased throughout this period in part because it fitted so perfectly with the Victorian taste for healthy, vigorous, “manly” pursuits. The principles of a healthy mind in a healthy body (mens sana in corpore sano) had been seized on by the Victorians and swimming embodied those ideals. The regimentation of swimming into an organised and formal sport also fitted with the ethos of the age, which had a passion for regulations and classifications, so it is unsurprising that the United Kingdom’s first official national governing body developed during this period- the Amateur Swimming Association, which formed in 1880 to oversee the existing three hundred plus regional clubs. Other national bodies were created in Europe over this period with France, Germany, and Hungary all having formed their own between 1882 and 1890.
It was not just in England that swimming as a competitive sport was coming into its own during this time. In America the first national swimming championships were held in 1877, and in Australia regular championships were held from 1889. With quite remarkably modern thinking Scotland held the world’s first ever women’s swimming contest in 1892...
The first Olympics to feature swimming as an official sport was in 1896 in Athens,with 100m, 500m, and 1200m races, which feel familiar to us today, though the 100m for sailors may seem a little odd! By the time of the next Olympic Games in Paris in 1900 the range of races had expanded and now also included a team race, and a backstroke race in addition to the more unusual obstacle race which took place in the River Seine, and an underwater race. In 1904 at the St. Louis Olympics the full range of swimming contests included 50 yds, 100 yds, 220 yds, 440 yds, 880 yds and the one mile freestyle, as well as the 100 yds backstroke and the 440 yds breaststroke, and the 4×50 yards freestyle relay. Strokes were beginning to be clearly differentiated with races in freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke...
The development of women’s swimming has followed a less direct path than men’s swimming, with greater obstacles to be overcome in terms of public approval. While men’s swimming was enjoying its burst of popularity in Victorian England this was very much as a “manly” pursuit and even in the less straight-laced rest of Europe, women’s swimming was just beginning to find some degree of acceptability, with Nancy Edburg leading the way throughout Sweden, Denmark, and Norway in the 1840s and ’50s.
With the exception of enlightened Scotland swimming competitions were for men, and the Olympics would not admit women swimmers until the 1912 Stockholm Games and even then only allowed them to swim freestyle. [Chris Corfield]
🏊 The boys living at St Mark’s Home for Boys in Natland, Cumbria, in the early-20th Century were known for swimming, and a number of boys from the home had been awarded swimming certificates by the Royal Life Saving Society.
The secret of St Mark’s Home’s swimming success was down to the way the boys were taught to swim. In fact, their method was seen as so effective that the home published a manual for other swimming instructors to learn from.
St Mark’s Home was three miles away from the local swimming pool, which meant that they weren’t able to use the pool very often… The swimming manual states:
The method now adopted is to instruct and drill our beginners in class on land until they are at home with every position and movement for breast stroke, and the positions for floating and diving; at least a dozen drills, occupying a quarter of an hour each drill, are necessary before taking the class to the baths at all.
For the boys at St Mark’s Home, this method of teaching seemed to work very well. I can’t help but wonder, though, if it wasn’t the method itself but instead the attitude of the instructors that helped the most. As the manual says:
Confidence is all-important to the learner, so no ducking is allowed, and we think the method of teaching by throwing a water-shy boy or any other boy into deep water is the last effort that should be resorted to.
Lying beneath these words is a hint at how other instructors were teaching children to swim at the time… [Janine Stanford]
🏊 The first water ballet competition on record was held in Berlin, Germany in 1891, before the sport was actually called “synchronized swimming.” It’s rumored that clubs designed to participate in and host these competitions began to pop-up simultaneously in Australia, the USA, Canada, and France.
But credit for inventing the modern sport of synchronized swimming is usually given to an Australian-born actor and swimmer named Annette Kellerman. Kellerman was a champion distance swimmer, diver, and practiced ballerina in the early 1900s. After making a name for herself in Australia, she moved to England where she impressed the world by swimming almost thirty miles down the Thames River.
A few years after her swim on the Thames, she received more media attention (and liberated female swimmers perhaps even more than any of her athletic feats), by wearing a one-piece swim suit that bared her arms and legs on a beach in Boston, Massachusetts. Then in 1907, Kellerman, in her still shocking one piece, performed underwater in a large glass tank at the New York Hippodrome. It became a landmark event for synchronized swimming and its quick rise in popularity. [iSport]
🏊 The rules of water polo were originally developed in the mid-nineteenth century in Great Britain by William Wilson. The modern game originated as a form of rugby football played in rivers and lakes in England and Scotland with a ball constructed of Indian rubber. This "water rugby" came to be called "water polo" based on the English pronunciation of the Balti word for ball, it means pulu. Early play allowed brute strength, wrestling and holding opposing players underwater to recover the ball; the goalie stood outside the playing area and defended the goal by jumping in on any opponent attempting to score by placing the ball on the deck.
By the 1880s, the game stressed swimming, passing, and scoring by shooting into a goal net; players could only be tackled when holding the ball and could not be taken under water… To deal with constant changes in rules, in 1888, the London Water Polo League was founded and approved rules to allow team competition, forming the foundation of the present game. The first English championships were played in 1888. In 1890, the first international water polo game was played; Scotland defeated England, 4–0.
Between 1890 and 1900, the game developed in Europe, with teams competing in Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, Hungary and Italy, using British rules. A different game was being played in the United States, characterized by rough play, holding, diving underwater, and soft, semi-inflated ball that could be gripped tightly and carried underwater. In 1900, the sport of water polo was added to the program of the Olympics – the first team sport to be added. Due to the different codes, European teams did not compete. By 1914, most US teams agreed to conform to international rules. [Wikipedia]
Some useful resources:
Bathing machine On Wikipedia.
Victorian Beach Life: Photos of 19th Century Bathing Machines in Operation By Thomas Nybergh, on Whizzpast.
Sea-Side Etiquette: Bathing Machine On Victoriana Magazine.
Promiscuous Bathing at Margate: Victorian Outrage Over Indecency at the Public Beach By Mimi Matthews, on her own website.
Victorian and Edwardian Seaside Fashion By Pauline Weston Thomas, on Fashion-Era.
Swimwear Through The Ages By Gill Sinclair, on VictoriaHealth.
Agatha Christie: Swimming in Lead Chains By Lisa Waller Rogers, on Lisa’s History Room.
Swimming On The Dictionary of Victorian London.
Dickens's Dictionary of London, by Charles Dickens, Jr., 1879 - "BAD-BET" On The Dictionary of Victorian London. A list of swimming baths is included.
The London Swimming Club
Who Invented Swimming As A Sport? By Chris Corfield, on SimplySwim.
The return of wild swimming: Swimming in the Thames is becoming the norm again By Caitlin Davies, on the Independent website.
Manual of Swimming. By Charles Steedman. (Lockwood and Co.) On The Spectator Archive, a review of the book from 19th October 1867, p. 21. [Haven’t been able to find the book itself online.]
Summer at the Beach By Evangeline Holland, on Edwardian Promenade.
Swimming in the 1900s By Melina Druga, on her own website.
Notes From an Edwardian Seaside Holiday By Carol Gingell, on Broadland Memories. There’s a bit specifically about swimming right at the end.
Swimming lessons in Cumbria By Janine Stanford, on Hidden Lives Revealed blog.
History of Synchronized Swimming On iSport: Synchro Swimming.
History of water polo On Wikipedia.
Swimming In The Victorian Era: The Universitality of Swimming A pdf article, on International Swimming Hall of Fame.
Swimming pools On The Victorian Society.
Victorian swimming costume Contributed by Islington Museum as part of A History of the World, on the BBC website.
A Social History of Swimming in England, 1800-1918 On Reviews in History. Review by Dr Win Hayes, of the book by Christopher Love.
A Social History of Swimming in England, 1800 – 1918: Splashing in the Serpentine, edited by Christopher Love A preview of the book on Google Books, so it may or may not work for you. The link should hopefully take you specifically to a section called Social Class and the Swimming World: Amateurs and Professionals.
Tynemouth Swimming Gala in Haven, North Shields (1901) Posted by BFI, on YouTube. 2 minutes, 30 seconds.
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
A few facts:
🏊 Few Londoners knew how to swim before public baths were built, but it was becoming quite a popular sport by 1879, when there were 16 swimming clubs based at London baths. By 1900, school children were being taken to baths to learn to swim. [Islington Museum]
🏊 The bathing machine was a device, popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, to allow people to change out of their usual clothes, change into swimwear, and wade in the ocean at beaches. Bathing machines were roofed and walled wooden carts rolled into the sea. Some had solid wooden walls while others had canvas walls over a wooden frame.
The bathing machine was part of etiquette for sea-bathing more rigorously enforced upon women than men but to be observed by both sexes among those who wished to be proper.
Especially in Britain, men and women were usually segregated, so nobody of the opposite sex might catch sight of them in their bathing suits, which (although extremely modest by modern standards) were not considered proper clothing in which to be seen…
People entered the small room of the machine while it was on the beach, wearing their street clothing. In the machine they changed into their bathing suit, although men were allowed to bathe nude until the 1860s, placing their street clothes into a raised compartment where they would remain dry.
Probably all bathing machines had small windows, but one writer in the Manchester Guardian of May 26, 1906 considered them "ill-lighted" and wondered why bathing machines were not improved with a skylight. The machine would then be wheeled or slid into the water. The most common machines had large wide wheels and were propelled in and out of the surf by a horse or a pair of horses with a driver. Less common were machines pushed in and out of the water by human power. Some resorts had wooden rails into the water for the wheels to roll on; a few had bathing machines pulled in and out by cables propelled by a steam engine.
Once in the water, the occupants disembarked from the sea side down steps into the water. Many machines had doors front and back; those with only one door would be backed into the sea or need to be turned around. It was considered essential that the machine blocked any view of the bather from the shore. Some machines were equipped with a canvas tent lowered from the seaside door, sometimes capable of being lowered to the water, giving the bather greater privacy. Some resorts employed a dipper, a strong person of the same sex who would assist the bather in and out of the sea. Some dippers were said to push bathers into the water, then yank them out, considered part of the experience.
Once mixed gender bathing became socially acceptable, the days of the bathing machine were numbered.
Bathing machines would often be equipped with a small flag which could be raised by the bather as a signal to the driver that they were ready to return to shore...
Bathing machines were most common in the United Kingdom and parts of the British Empire with a British population, but were also used in France, Germany, the United States, Mexico, and other nations. Legal segregation of bathing areas in Britain ended in 1901, and the bathing machine declined rapidly. By the start of the 1920s, bathing machines were almost extinct, even on beaches catering to an older clientele.
The bathing machines remained in active use on English beaches until the 1890s, when they began to be parked on the beach. They were then used as stationary changing rooms for a number of years. Most of them had disappeared in the United Kingdom by 1914. [Wikipedia]
🏊 The bathing machine was like a sentry-box on wheels; it was about six feet in length and width, and about eight feet high, with a peaked roof. Some had solid wooden walls; others had canvas walls over a wooden frame. Sometimes the windowless box was colored with the fantastic lavishness of a canal-boat, and sometimes the whole of the superficial space was covered with advertisements. The bathing machine had a door behind and in front, and as the floor was four feet above the ground, it had to be reached by a step-ladder. The contents of the bathing machine consisted of a bench, a damp flannel gown, and two towels. The only light was from an unglazed opening in the roof; there was no mirror, and no fresh-water. The bathing machine was wheeled or slid down into the water; some were pulled in and out of the surf by a pair of horses with a driver and others by human power.
Having left her "valuables" in the hands of the bathing-woman whose office was in a small wooden box, the female bather would closet herself and, in the privacy of the machine, would change into her bathing dress, placing her street garments into a raised compartment where the clothing would remain dry. When (in the opinion of the bathing machine operator) she had ample time to disrobe, the van was lowered to the edge of the water, and generally shaking the occupant violently as it rolled over the pebbles.
The bather then entered the surf by the front door, descending by another step-ladder like the one behind; and if she could not swim, the portly and sunburned attendant encircled the bather’s waist with a strong cord, attaching the shore end to the van. This precaution was very necessary at the British seaside, for often the slope of the beach was precipitous, and the water broke upon it with a sudden and vindictive force which often knocked down those who were weak. She, who fifteen minutes earlier had a smiling face with silken hair woven into obedient folds, stands in a line with half a dozen or more other bathers, each tied to a van. The shapeless bathing dress that covered her is all bedraggled; her hair is tangled and matted. In the spirit of the moment, she dashes handfuls of water into her face, and paddles with her feet; and all the time she is preoccupied and fearful lest one of the violent waves should catch her unawares. When she has splashed for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, and is unspeakably disheveled, the bathing-woman hauls her in; thus completing her sea-side experience. [Victoriana Magazine]
🏊 In the early Victorian era women had worn serge or dark flannel bathing dresses, but by the 1860s two piece belted costumes replaced the earlier styles.
The swimwear bodice top was jacket like and the swimsuit bottom part three quarter trousers… The later Victorian swimsuit outfit was still cumbersome, but was more practical and more attractive than earlier bathing clothes...
Swimwear fashion changes moved very slowly. Differences in swimsuit styles were simple such as the introduction of short cap sleeves. Eventually sleeveless styles with more ankle showing beneath the bloomers became usual…
Edwardian Swimsuits were very similar to Victorian styles. They were still made of wool and now consisted of bloomers and a wool over dress.
The dress was now a sleeveless version and the outfit was worn with black stockings and laced footwear.
Gradually by 1920 necklines were lowered and the overdress shortened even more. [Pauline Weston Thomas]
🏊 Torquay [tor-kee] was a posh seaside resort, a popular winter and summer holiday destination for wealthy Europeans and royal personages…
When Agatha [Christie (1890-1976)] was a young girl, the beaches in Torquay were segregated by sex. The Torquay Council kept a strict watch on the propriety of sea bathing. In 1899, a bylaw stated that “no person of the male sex shall at any time bathe within 50 yards of a ladies’ bathing machine.” Men and boys swam at the Gentlemen’s Bathing Cove where there was no dress code. Men swam there in the nude or “in their scanty triangles,” Agatha recalled, “disport[ing] themselves as they pleased.” Women and girls were restricted to swimming at the Ladies’ Bathing Cove. Their beach was small and stony, and steeply sloping...
Agatha would… swim out to an anchored raft, pull herself up, and then sit upon it, sunning. Getting to the raft was a minor feat in itself, even though Agatha was a strong swimmer, because once in the water, her woolen swimsuit became completely sodden and heavy, making her sink under its weight. Women sewed weights in the skirt hems to keep them from rising up in the water, compounding the problem. It was a recipe for disaster: women sinking under the weight of cumbersome dresses, women who could not swim, crashing waves, no lifeguards, and water so frigid that limbs went numb and faces blue. Only some beaches had attendants to help women in the surf and ropes to hold onto.
Trivial matters like safety aside, what really occupied everyone’s mind at the Turn of the Century in England was protecting women’s modesty. The beach at the Ladies’ Bathing Cove was immensely private; it was completely invisible from the windows of the Torbay Yacht Club situated above it on the hill...
In 1903, when Agatha was 13, the Torquay Council approved mixed bathing on its beaches… Although allowing the sexes to mingle was considered to be a very progressive social move, ironically, it placed an even heavier burden on the women. In order to properly mix with men on the beach, Victorian standards of modesty dictated that women had to wear far more clothing than before! It was strictly forbidden for women to let their bare legs show. To caps, dresses, bloomers, and shoes, they added thick, black stockings...
Australian swimmer, diver, and entertainer Annette Kellerman – “The Diving Venus” – set out to challenge legal restrictions on women’s bathing suits. She believed that swimming was the ideal exercise for women and that pantaloons and skirts prohibited free movement, allowing women only a dip, not a swim, in the life-giving sea. Kellerman was well-known in Britain. In 1904 she swam 26 miles of the River Thames, performed underwater ballet in a glass tank at the London Hippodrome, and tried (and failed) three times to swim the English Channel.
In 1907, preparing for a promotional coast swim, Kellerman was arrested for indecent attire on Revere Beach, Boston, in America. She was wearing one of her clinging, one-piece swimsuits that had no skirt, revealing her thighs.
Kellerman pleaded her case before the judge. Her swimsuit, she explained, was practical, not provocative… The judge dismissed the case, accepting Kellerman’s arguments in favor of swimming as healthy exercise and against cumbersome bathing suits, provided she wore a robe until she entered the water. Her arrest made international headlines. It was the birth of Twentieth Century bathing suits for women; from then on, swimsuits began to be designed for more practical use. [Lisa Waller Rogers]
🏊 In the Victorian era there was a conscious effort to avoid the possibility of impropriety and beaches were segregated into areas in which women and men could bathe separately. Men traditionally bathed naked and the few women who were brave, or daring enough, to take to the water wore large, voluminous bathing costumes which virtually covered their entire body and the bathing machines were strictly attended. From the mid 1800s some men also began to wear bathing costumes but many shunned the idea and continued to bathe unclothed… Bathing costumes for men became compulsory at many seaside resorts as the Victorian era progressed but mixed bathing was still prohibited. This attitude still prevailed into the early 1900s… Swimming costumes became thinner and tighter and attitudes towards public bathing started to be relax, the old bathing machines began to be replaced by changing tents and swimming directly from the beach became the norm during the latter years of the Edwardian era. [Carol Gingell]
🏊 During the Victorian era modesty was still a priority and women wore short dresses and ankle length pantaloons. Bathing consume fabric remained stiff so as not to reveal the female form and were made of wool flannel or serge. Dark colours prevailed, being less revealing than light colours. Fashion conscious women wore bathing costumes with wide, sailor collars and decorative edging in contrasting colours. Full length dark stockings were worn in the water along with flat soled bathing shoes.
By the late 19th century, the term ‘bathing suit’ was common. Ease of movement in the water facilitated designs that offered shorter pantaloons, shorter skirts and short sleeves. Before gender desegregation of beaches, men generally swam nude, but as mixed bathing increased, men wore garments designed for the water. One piece knit suits with short sleeves and knee length pants were popular. By the late 1800’s, two piece versions consisted of short sleeved or sleeveless tunics over knee length pants.
In 1901, the UK ended enforced gender segregation on public beaches and although the loose, floppy bathing costumes persisted until the 1920’s, swimsuit designers began to create suits that were more practical and comfortable. The suits of competitive and serious female swimmers lost the skirts in the early part of the century and the first functional two piece swimsuit was designed in 1913. [Gill Sinclair]
🏊 Despite the relative modesty of bathing costumes, it was considered an article of clothing improper for a mixed crowd and until 1901, both sexes were confined to segregated bathing machines (roofed and walled wooden carts that rolled into the sea) to retain a measure of propriety...
As the only activity for women involved jumping through the waves while holding onto a rope attached to an off-shore buoy, their bathing costume was quite unsuited for real swimming. Made of serge or preshrunk mohair in black, red or navy, it consisted of a knee-length skirt, a pair of bloomers and a tunic, or a combination type with skirt. The costume was then accessorized by long black stockings, lace-up bathing slippers, and fancy caps. The style of costume changed little between the years 1880 and 1907, cap sleeves being the only new concession to fashion. It was Australian swimmer, Annette Kellerman, who heralded the transformation of the bathing costume’s silhouette.
...bathing wear started to shrink, first uncovering the arms and then the legs up to mid-thigh. Collars receded from around the neck down to around the top of the bosom. The development of new fabrics allowed for new varieties of more comfortable and practical swim wear. Until 1860, it was customary for men to swim nude, and after this was banned in 1860, masculine bathing costume followed the lines of womens, consisting of shirt and shorts, made of dark-colored serge. As with women, men’s costume changed by the late 1900s, when a few daring men were seen swimming topless! [Evangeline Holland]
🏊 In Victorian England, it was generally believed that the sexes should be kept apart when bathing. To that end, the gentlemen’s wheeled bathing machines at the beach were often kept as much as a quarter of a mile away from the ladies’ machines. This allowed both ladies and gentlemen to enter their respective machines, change into their swimming costumes, and descend into the waves for a swim all without exposing themselves to the lascivious gazes of the opposite sex. There was only one problem—many Victorian ladies and gentlemen actually wanted to swim in company with each other. When they did so, the scandalous practice was known as promiscuous bathing.
Though promiscuous bathing was quite popular on the continent, especially in France, in Victorian England the sight of men and women bathing together was still considered to be rather indecent. In the seaside town of Margate, this indecency was exacerbated by the fact that some gentlemen did not feel the need to put on their bathing drawers and, instead, emerged from their bathing machines in what the 2 September 1854 edition of the Leeds Times describes as an “entirely primitive state.” Once in the water, these naked gentlemen had no compunction about approaching the female bathers nearby. As the Leeds Times reports:
“We counted a party of five females—we cannot call them ladies—who were engaged, amidst shouts of laughter from the bystanders on the beach, with a gentleman, in a splashing match. They were as close together as if they were of the same party.”
The men and women who engaged in promiscuous bathing at Margate did so in front of a very interested public audience, some of whom employed telescopes to get a better view of the indecency. During the 1854 incident with the naked gentlemen, the Leeds Times reports that:
“The beach was thronged with admiring spectators, and many of them with glasses, although they were not required, as the bathers, from the high tide, were close to the shore.”
Margate soon developed a reputation as a seaside town which attracted a particularly brazen variety of promiscuous bather...
At Margate, there was no effort made to keep a marked distance between the men’s and women’s bathing machines and the public promenade. At any given time, those strolling along the fashionable walk had full view of men and women frolicking together in the water. As the Era describes it:
“The bathers of both sexes romp, laugh, and perform all kinds of antics in which the actual nudity of the men is infinitely less offensive to our sense of decency than the modest immodesty of the clinging gossamer vestment in which the females cover, without hiding, their forms.”
Just as in the 1850s, the crowds at Margate during the 1860s often used telescopes to get a better view of the “nude groups and sportive syrens” in the water. As an additional point of interest, the Era reports that these “magnifying mediums” were as likely to be used by ladies as by gentlemen...
The outcry over promiscuous bathing was not limited to fashionable British seaside resorts and watering holes… [Mimi Matthews]
🏊 The principal Swimming Clubs in London are as follows
ALLIANCE, City of London Bath, Golden-lane, Barbican. 1s. per quarter.
AMATEUR, St. George’s Bath, Buckingham-palace-road. 10s 6d. per annum.
CADOGAN, Chelsea Bath, 171, King’s-road, Chelsea. 10s. 6d. per annum
CAMDEN, St. Pancras Bath, King-street, Camden Town. 2s. per month.
CYGNUS, Addington-square Bath, Camberwell. 10s per annum.
DREADNOUGHT, Victoria Bath, Peckham. 1s. 6d. per quarter.
EXCELSIOR, St. Pancras Bath, Tottenham-court-road. 2s. 6d. per quarter.
ILEX. Lambeth Bath, Westminster-bridge-road. 5s. per annum.
NORTH LONDON, North London Bath, Pentonville. 2s. 6d. per quarter.
OTTER, Marylebone Bath, Marylebone. 10s. 6d. per annum.
REGENT, St. Pancras Bath, Ling-street, Camden Town. 1s. per month.
ST. PANCRAS, St. Pancras Bath, Tottenham-court-road. 2s. 6d. per quarter.
SERPENTINE St. George’s Bath, Davies-street, Berkeley-square. 10s. per annum.
SOUTH LONDON, Lambeth Bath, Westminster-bridge-road. 1s. per month.
SOUTH EAST LONDON, Victoria Bath, Peckham. 2s. 6d. per annum.
WEST LONDON, St. Pancras Bath, Tottenham-court-road. 2s. per quarter.
Racing frequently takes place at the various baths, and, in the season, in the Thames and Serpentine; indeed, some enthusiasts even race in the latter unsavoury water at Christmas. There is a floating bath on the Thames at Charing.cross. [Charles Dickens (Jr.), Dickens's Dictionary of London, 1879, via The Dictionary of Victorian London.]
🏊 'Their object is to promote general proficiency rather than exceptional excellence–to teach the art to the many, not to deck the breasts of a few experts alone.' – Penny Illustrated Paper, 14 August 1869
The London Swimming Club (LSC) is one of London’s oldest swimming clubs on record. First established in 1859, LSC was a central hub of London’s Victorian swimmers. They were the first club to formalise the rules of Water Polo and their founding member, Ernst Ravenstein, was a prominent member of the National Olympian Association.
The club was known for its lively, social atmosphere and was a regular host of race events. Most notably perhaps was the summer fete, held in the East and West India Dock, where swimmers would chase a ‘duck’ (a fellow swimmer in a silly outfit) around in the water.
LSC placed huge importance on swimming as a fundamental skill and life-saving provision. Drownings were unfortunately common in the late nineteenth century, as many sailors and dock workers had never received formal lessons. As such, the club’s Hon. Sec from 1869, Mr. J. G. Elliott, offered regular and free tuition to children in the City of London Baths.
Unfortunately, like many Victorian swimming clubs, LSC eventually disbanded in the early twentieth century and faded from common memory… [The London Swimming Club]
🏊 ...by the Victorian era there were numerous swimming manuals available, such as one written by champion swimmer Charles Steedman in 1867. His manual, held at the Bodleian, is said to be the first text on competitive swimming and… its emphasis is on bathing in the wild. The best time to swim in the open air, it says, is the early morning, for then the "robust and healthy body" benefits most from the "shock of immersion", while the ideal training diet is underdone meat and home-brewed ale. Steedman devotes much of his book to the subjects of drowning and rescuing, at a time when "more than six persons" drowned on a daily basis in England and Wales.
Learning to swim was a necessary life skill. However [Steedman’s book] had just one intended audience: men. In Tudor times "it was not an expected thing for a woman to swim", says Karen, and things hadn’t changed much by the 19th century. Walker’s Manly Exercises, for example, published in 1847, recommends that bathers "should use short drawers" and learn to swim in jacket and trousers. No mention is made of what women should wear, because they were not supposed to be swimming.
But towards the end of the Victorian era came a new revolution in the story of swimming… ...not only did Victorian girls and women swim, but they did it competitively, racing for miles through oil and sewage. Agnes Beckwith is a prime example. In September 1875, at the tender age of 14, she dived from a boat at London Bridge and off she swam to Greenwich. The five-mile swim took her one hour seven minutes and she ended, reported the press, "almost as fresh as when she started".
...Agnes Beckwith would become one of Britain’s most famous swimmers and her 20-mile swim a few years later, from Westminster to Richmond and back to Mortlake, dressed in an amber suit and a jaunty little straw hat, received huge press coverage.
Born in 1861, Agnes had been swimming and performing since she was a few years old. She formed her own "talented troupe of lady swimmers" and was soon being billed as "the premier lady swimmer of the world"...
In the summer of 1916, Eileen Lee "eclipsed all records made by men as to time", swimming 23 and a half miles in seven hours from Greenwich. Two months later she topped that by showing "wonderful endurance" and swimming 36 and a quarter miles from Teddington. At 25 miles she confessed to feeling "a bit tired", but announced her determination to "see it out". By the end of the swim, Eileen Lee was "long-distance lady champion of the world". [Caitlin Davies]
🏊 If any one group of people could lay claim to the creation of the true sport of swimming, it would be the Victorians. The Victorian era was one of great creativity and economic and cultural growth and this included the new explosion of public works which helped to encourage the development of swimming as a competitive activity. The first publicly funded swimming baths in the United Kingdom specifically built for the purpose were St George’s Baths in Liverpool which opened in 1828 – but Liverpool had already enjoyed public swimming since 1756 when the first privately funded baths were created there.
Competitive swimming had already become popular by this point and that fashion only increased over the next half-century, with regular contests taking place from the 1830s onwards, especially in and around the capital where this new fashion took hold with the enthusiasm typical of Victorian London.
In addition to speed contests this era also saw the development of a craze for distance swimming, with Captain Matthew Webb swimming the English Channel, a distance of over 20 miles, in 1875. The popularity of swimming increased throughout this period in part because it fitted so perfectly with the Victorian taste for healthy, vigorous, “manly” pursuits. The principles of a healthy mind in a healthy body (mens sana in corpore sano) had been seized on by the Victorians and swimming embodied those ideals. The regimentation of swimming into an organised and formal sport also fitted with the ethos of the age, which had a passion for regulations and classifications, so it is unsurprising that the United Kingdom’s first official national governing body developed during this period- the Amateur Swimming Association, which formed in 1880 to oversee the existing three hundred plus regional clubs. Other national bodies were created in Europe over this period with France, Germany, and Hungary all having formed their own between 1882 and 1890.
It was not just in England that swimming as a competitive sport was coming into its own during this time. In America the first national swimming championships were held in 1877, and in Australia regular championships were held from 1889. With quite remarkably modern thinking Scotland held the world’s first ever women’s swimming contest in 1892...
The first Olympics to feature swimming as an official sport was in 1896 in Athens,with 100m, 500m, and 1200m races, which feel familiar to us today, though the 100m for sailors may seem a little odd! By the time of the next Olympic Games in Paris in 1900 the range of races had expanded and now also included a team race, and a backstroke race in addition to the more unusual obstacle race which took place in the River Seine, and an underwater race. In 1904 at the St. Louis Olympics the full range of swimming contests included 50 yds, 100 yds, 220 yds, 440 yds, 880 yds and the one mile freestyle, as well as the 100 yds backstroke and the 440 yds breaststroke, and the 4×50 yards freestyle relay. Strokes were beginning to be clearly differentiated with races in freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke...
The development of women’s swimming has followed a less direct path than men’s swimming, with greater obstacles to be overcome in terms of public approval. While men’s swimming was enjoying its burst of popularity in Victorian England this was very much as a “manly” pursuit and even in the less straight-laced rest of Europe, women’s swimming was just beginning to find some degree of acceptability, with Nancy Edburg leading the way throughout Sweden, Denmark, and Norway in the 1840s and ’50s.
With the exception of enlightened Scotland swimming competitions were for men, and the Olympics would not admit women swimmers until the 1912 Stockholm Games and even then only allowed them to swim freestyle. [Chris Corfield]
🏊 The boys living at St Mark’s Home for Boys in Natland, Cumbria, in the early-20th Century were known for swimming, and a number of boys from the home had been awarded swimming certificates by the Royal Life Saving Society.
The secret of St Mark’s Home’s swimming success was down to the way the boys were taught to swim. In fact, their method was seen as so effective that the home published a manual for other swimming instructors to learn from.
St Mark’s Home was three miles away from the local swimming pool, which meant that they weren’t able to use the pool very often… The swimming manual states:
The method now adopted is to instruct and drill our beginners in class on land until they are at home with every position and movement for breast stroke, and the positions for floating and diving; at least a dozen drills, occupying a quarter of an hour each drill, are necessary before taking the class to the baths at all.
For the boys at St Mark’s Home, this method of teaching seemed to work very well. I can’t help but wonder, though, if it wasn’t the method itself but instead the attitude of the instructors that helped the most. As the manual says:
Confidence is all-important to the learner, so no ducking is allowed, and we think the method of teaching by throwing a water-shy boy or any other boy into deep water is the last effort that should be resorted to.
Lying beneath these words is a hint at how other instructors were teaching children to swim at the time… [Janine Stanford]
🏊 The first water ballet competition on record was held in Berlin, Germany in 1891, before the sport was actually called “synchronized swimming.” It’s rumored that clubs designed to participate in and host these competitions began to pop-up simultaneously in Australia, the USA, Canada, and France.
But credit for inventing the modern sport of synchronized swimming is usually given to an Australian-born actor and swimmer named Annette Kellerman. Kellerman was a champion distance swimmer, diver, and practiced ballerina in the early 1900s. After making a name for herself in Australia, she moved to England where she impressed the world by swimming almost thirty miles down the Thames River.
A few years after her swim on the Thames, she received more media attention (and liberated female swimmers perhaps even more than any of her athletic feats), by wearing a one-piece swim suit that bared her arms and legs on a beach in Boston, Massachusetts. Then in 1907, Kellerman, in her still shocking one piece, performed underwater in a large glass tank at the New York Hippodrome. It became a landmark event for synchronized swimming and its quick rise in popularity. [iSport]
🏊 The rules of water polo were originally developed in the mid-nineteenth century in Great Britain by William Wilson. The modern game originated as a form of rugby football played in rivers and lakes in England and Scotland with a ball constructed of Indian rubber. This "water rugby" came to be called "water polo" based on the English pronunciation of the Balti word for ball, it means pulu. Early play allowed brute strength, wrestling and holding opposing players underwater to recover the ball; the goalie stood outside the playing area and defended the goal by jumping in on any opponent attempting to score by placing the ball on the deck.
By the 1880s, the game stressed swimming, passing, and scoring by shooting into a goal net; players could only be tackled when holding the ball and could not be taken under water… To deal with constant changes in rules, in 1888, the London Water Polo League was founded and approved rules to allow team competition, forming the foundation of the present game. The first English championships were played in 1888. In 1890, the first international water polo game was played; Scotland defeated England, 4–0.
Between 1890 and 1900, the game developed in Europe, with teams competing in Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, Hungary and Italy, using British rules. A different game was being played in the United States, characterized by rough play, holding, diving underwater, and soft, semi-inflated ball that could be gripped tightly and carried underwater. In 1900, the sport of water polo was added to the program of the Olympics – the first team sport to be added. Due to the different codes, European teams did not compete. By 1914, most US teams agreed to conform to international rules. [Wikipedia]
Some useful resources:
Bathing machine On Wikipedia.
Victorian Beach Life: Photos of 19th Century Bathing Machines in Operation By Thomas Nybergh, on Whizzpast.
Sea-Side Etiquette: Bathing Machine On Victoriana Magazine.
Promiscuous Bathing at Margate: Victorian Outrage Over Indecency at the Public Beach By Mimi Matthews, on her own website.
Victorian and Edwardian Seaside Fashion By Pauline Weston Thomas, on Fashion-Era.
Swimwear Through The Ages By Gill Sinclair, on VictoriaHealth.
Agatha Christie: Swimming in Lead Chains By Lisa Waller Rogers, on Lisa’s History Room.
Swimming On The Dictionary of Victorian London.
Dickens's Dictionary of London, by Charles Dickens, Jr., 1879 - "BAD-BET" On The Dictionary of Victorian London. A list of swimming baths is included.
The London Swimming Club
Who Invented Swimming As A Sport? By Chris Corfield, on SimplySwim.
The return of wild swimming: Swimming in the Thames is becoming the norm again By Caitlin Davies, on the Independent website.
Manual of Swimming. By Charles Steedman. (Lockwood and Co.) On The Spectator Archive, a review of the book from 19th October 1867, p. 21. [Haven’t been able to find the book itself online.]
Summer at the Beach By Evangeline Holland, on Edwardian Promenade.
Swimming in the 1900s By Melina Druga, on her own website.
Notes From an Edwardian Seaside Holiday By Carol Gingell, on Broadland Memories. There’s a bit specifically about swimming right at the end.
Swimming lessons in Cumbria By Janine Stanford, on Hidden Lives Revealed blog.
History of Synchronized Swimming On iSport: Synchro Swimming.
History of water polo On Wikipedia.
Swimming In The Victorian Era: The Universitality of Swimming A pdf article, on International Swimming Hall of Fame.
Swimming pools On The Victorian Society.
Victorian swimming costume Contributed by Islington Museum as part of A History of the World, on the BBC website.
A Social History of Swimming in England, 1800-1918 On Reviews in History. Review by Dr Win Hayes, of the book by Christopher Love.
A Social History of Swimming in England, 1800 – 1918: Splashing in the Serpentine, edited by Christopher Love A preview of the book on Google Books, so it may or may not work for you. The link should hopefully take you specifically to a section called Social Class and the Swimming World: Amateurs and Professionals.
Tynemouth Swimming Gala in Haven, North Shields (1901) Posted by BFI, on YouTube. 2 minutes, 30 seconds.
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
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Date: 2017-07-23 02:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-23 04:06 pm (UTC)I also wonder how many of those bathing machines were directly responsible for getting its occupant killed, if it tipped over in the water pinning the person inside.
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Date: 2017-07-23 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-23 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-24 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-25 03:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-29 11:41 pm (UTC)I am a bit confused, though: the reference in LION to Bellamy owning all the "bathing-cots" in the village, the end-notes in my version (Oxford Sherlock Holmes) states that they're "small boats used by people bathing in the sea." Small boats used how? Or were they meant to be bathing machines? But by 1907, bathing machines were already on their way to obsolescence, yeah?
SPEAKING OF END-NOTES, apparently there was a manuscript version in which a naturalist, Dr. Mordhouse, comes on the scene about the time Stackhurst does, and then is around for most of the story -- and it's Mordhouse, not Holmes, who realizes it was a jellyfish. And then the final lines, in addition to the bit about the jellyfish avenging the Yard against Holmes, include a thing about Holmes "meeting his Waterloo" in the jellyfish mystery that he couldn't solve.
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Date: 2017-07-30 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-30 05:18 pm (UTC)(Also, I covet your Google skills; I never seem to come up with as much info on these questions as you do!)