This paper explores the growth and development of the ‘art of swimming’ amongst Victorian female professional natationists when the common belief was that ‘ladies’ were not physiologically or emotionally equipped to withstand the rigours of physical exertion. Media coverage of such a popular entertainment often described female participants as mythological aquatic creatures. In so doing, the consumption of recreational activities, as opposed to sport, by females provided a course of less resistance from the sporting proselytisers throughout the period, 1870-c1910. The question is posed as to how significant displays of ornamental swimming were in promoting the activity as a ‘respectable’ form of recreational entertainment for female professional swimmers to undertake; or was it just another manifestation of the passion for freak-shows much loved by all social classes in Victorian Britain? This paper serves to provide an insight into the contribution made by professional female swimmers to the cause of ‘acquiring a moral legitimacy’.
This Blackpool ‘Tower’ programme from 1895 provides visual testimony to the impact aquatic acts were having upon recreational trends throughout the late-Victorian period. Three-time’s a-day, seven days a week the Tower’s Aquatic Circus would perform to full-houses of predominantly working-class, day- and short-stay, holiday makers. A typical Variety Circus programme would consist of wild animal acts followed by prominent natationists of the period such as: the ‘Four Sisters Johnson’ with their ‘exhibition of natation’, Joey Nuttall with an ‘exhibition of fast swimming’, Professor Finney and his sister, Marie with an ‘exhibition of scientific swimming’. The names of professional swimmers appeared on a weekly basis on the entertainments pages of newspapers both locally and nationally giving notice of their exploits in a variety of geographical locations and venues. It was the sporting press that provided a degree of moral legitimacy for female swimmers by labelling them as nymphs, naiads and mermaids.
In 1892, Lady Violet Beatrice Greville had published a series of essays penned by notable female sports practitioners of the day under the title, ‘The Gentlewoman’s Book of Sports’. It boldly declared that the pursuit of ‘active and genuine sport’ had contributed greatly to heighten female aspirations. Lady Greville makes the following observations on the activity of ‘bathing’ thus:
It used to be held that the nymph’s role in the water was to jump indefinitely at the end of a rope attached to a bathing machine, in, say, three feet of water, disappearing every tenth or twelfth time with a little scream … We have changed all of that since the gentlewoman took to sport.
Such a contemporary account by a prominent member of British society, serves to illustrate the important contribution being made by sportswomen of the period in changing social attitudes towards female participation in sport and recreation. However, public opinion often took a rather jaundiced view of female swimmers. In 1874 The Penny Illustrated Paper describes female swimmers thus:
Ducks that they are, the ladies are expressly made by Dame Nature so as to swim like ducks. Blessed with what may be termed, without profanity, we hope, natural life-belts, they are able to float and swim in a very few lessons; and they are then possessed of an accomplishment which greatly adds to the delights of existence...
In July, 1889 the Belfast News-Letter ran an article on the deficiencies of ‘women as swimmers’ to coincide with the beginning of the summer season when ‘so many of the “weaker sex” indulge in seabathing’. The reasons for such deficiencies were attributed to female physiology and the biomechanics of swimming; I quote:
… her head being heavier for her size and her lungs smaller than those of a man, her constant tendency in the water with every stroke is to pitch forward on her head. The shape of her body also increases this tendency, and the smaller size of her lungs gives her much less buoyancy. All these she has to overcome before she can learn to be a swimmer, and a girl who is a good one deserves a great deal of credit.
In July, 1892 the Ladies Tadpole Swimming Club was formed at Kensington Baths, in order to prevent accidents by those ‘who neglect the simple precaution of learning how to swim.’ The main reason for ladies swimming clubs appears to have been to prepare them for the new season of annual family trips to the seaside.
Advocates of women’s sporting suffrage from the 1880s onwards found that the path of least resistance came somewhat ironically, in a sport that required the baring of the arms and lower legs. The costumes worn by ornamental swimmers were typical of those worn by circus acrobats in that the arms and legs were free of layers of fabric designed to hide the female form. Bathing in the sea for ladies had slowly given way to ‘swimming’ in that the traditional visit to the sea-side with its almost obligatory dip in salt water for reasons of health and recreation was gradually being abandoned for the much safer confines of the private or public ‘plunge bath’. The costumes worn by recreational swimmers bore no resemblance to those worn by the professional swimmers and served to inhibit the popularity of swimming. The growth of publicly-owned swimming baths and wash-houses in the second phase of their development, 1870-c1910 enabled female natationists to pursue the more scientific and aesthetic forms of natation such as ornamental swimming, plunging and diving.
It was the advent of family-based aquatic acts that provided female relatives with the opportunity to display their considerable skills in natation to the general public. This is highly significant as their actions enabled females to take up a profession that would most certainly have been closed to them if not for such swimming ‘Professors’ as Fred Beckwith, Peter Johnson and James Finney. It was their promotion of swimming that encouraged talented female swimmers to perform in public, but perhaps more importantly; it encouraged females of all social classes to take up swimming as a recreational activity. The new leisure entrepreneurs of the period were not slow to acknowledge the potential for ornamental swimming to be a profitable form of recreational entertainment.
Female entertainers were participating in ornamental swimming at three distinct levels of performance: there was a small elite group who performed nationally and internationally, a second group of artistes who toured nationally or regionally, and a third group who performed predominantly in local swimming baths. Each level of performance enabled the female participants to be remunerated for their efforts at the appropriate level; the elite group were able to negotiate their own contracts whilst those on the local circuit performed for a nominal fee plus expenses. They were all successful performers in their own right in that they were ‘paid’ to entertain people with their aquatic feats. Each group of performers provides significant proof that female athletes made a noteworthy contribution to the development of swimming at all levels of participation during the period under study. The vast majority of female ornamental swimmers where considered to be professional natationists simply because they or a member of their family was a teacher of swimming, a baths attendant/superintendant or an aquatic performer, or indeed, a combination of all these categories.
Music Halls and Variety Theatres welcomed ornamental swimming acts as they provided good entertainment value. The aquatic act’s contained a strong element of danger whilst transporting the spectator to a mystical world where humans could ‘breath’ underwater. There was also an element of voyeurism which completed the display within the accepted conventions of the day. Before 1900 most theatres did not have a water tank built into the stage so aquatic entertainers would perform in a glass crystal water tank that could be rolled on and off the stage. Despite the limitations of cost and transportation there was a plethora of ‘tank acts’ throughout the country displaying their aquatic feats. Such performances followed a tried and tested pattern including: drinking, eating and even smoking under water; there were feats of endurance and skill, as well as pastiches of mythological events involving water nymphs and naiads.
The popularity of ornamental swimming had encouraged seaside holiday destinations such as Blackpool to offer aquatic shows in its privately-owned swimming baths. The Prince of Wales Baths, in Blackpool occupied a prime site on the south promenade next to the Blackpool Tower Company’s complex of entertainment venues. The baths was built in 1881 for the express purpose of providing aquatic entertainments for the resorts visitors. The main theme, at ‘The sight of Blackpool’ was to provide ‘fun’ for their customers. They achieved this by hiring the most accomplished male and female professional swimmers and acrobats in the country. The price of admittance was graduated from six-pence to one- or two-shillings for shows that were presented four times a-day in the summer season.
The advertising hoardings for the Prince of Wales Baths served to entice passing trade to come in and view the ‘The Greatest Swimming Show in the Universe’ with scantily clad young ladies in their bathing costumes being portrayed in tableaus reminiscent of those found at the circus or fairground. The lady on the left is shown in a rather suggestive pose guaranteed to entice the inquisitive male to view the show. The lady on the right is symbolically pulling back the curtain to reveal all the fun of the show with a water pantomime finale. Many of the advertisements declare that the shows are suitable for all the ‘family’ and that all swimmers are in full official costumes’.
The mix of water-born gymnastics with that of aerial acrobatics proved to be a successful combination of the elements. The use of the water as a ‘safety net’ added a further element of danger to the mystical atmosphere being created by the feats performed by aquatic and aerial entertainers. If there was any doubt that the ornamental swimming feats performed during the period under study were anything but risky and risqué in their concept and execution; well, this image dispels any notion that such entertainment could be viewed as being ‘scientific’ in nature. However, it should be recognized that Blackpool was largely catering for the entertainment needs of Lancashire’s working-classes who journeyed to the resort to consume a myriad of such popular recreational activities. The format of ornamental swimming performances on the swimming gala and local theatre circuits was somewhat more conservative in nature and serves to signpost the clear differences in entertainments experienced ‘at home’ to those consumed whilst on holiday at the families favoured seaside resort.
Agnes Beckwith was the leading lady of a swimming dynasty that provided aquatic entertainments in a variety of venues throughout the second half of the nineteenth-century. Agnes was introduced to the general public as a 14-year old in 1875 when she gave an exhibition of long-distance swimming, ‘the mania of the hour’ in the River Thames. The Graphic newspaper suggested that such exhibitions were admirable as they exemplified the young ladies endurance and skill but caustically added, ‘we hardly like young ladies indulging in this public exhibition of their natatory abilities.’ The Penny Illustrated Paper offered the opinion:
Ladies, who would learn to swim, take lessons of Miss Beckwith! Miss Agnes, now you have given such ample proofs that you are a duck of a girl, stick to your proper vocation – that of teaching your sex to swim.
In January, 1894 Miss Annie Luker went up in the world in more ways than one when she performed a high dive into the whale tank at the London Royal Aquarium. Such a feat by a female had great novelty value and, as a consequence she was rewarded with a considerable pay rise. Previously she had been employed as a professional swimmer with Captain Boyton’s Water Show on an income of just one-pound per week. Annie’s new role as a diver provided her with a significant pecuniary reward of £20 per week ‘in emulation of the male divers at the aquarium’. The pay rise was significant in that it not only made Annie a relatively wealthy young lady but, perhaps more importantly, she provided a positive role model for other young ladies. By 1902 Annie had been employed for eight consecutive years at the Royal Aquarium as a high diver. She had dived twice a day from a height of 90-feet into the shallow whale tank without a break, save for ten or twelve days per year.
Throughout the period 1870-c1910 the country’s major recreational venues were to play host to the art of ornamental swimming. Newspaper articles tended to wax lyrically about the female swimmers performances as mystical events performed by creatures of the marine world. Thus, a thin vale of respectability was created for female ornamental swimmers who appeared predominantly in swimming baths and local theatres. The combination of a strong male swimmer variously described as a ‘man-frog’ or ‘merman’ with that of a young female often depicted as nymph or naiad ensured a strong level of interest from the general public. Such popular entertainments were now being habitually sought out by people of all classes both on a night out to their local variety theatre and also when taking in a show at the seaside during their holidays.
In November, 1888 The Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times described ‘a subaqueous performance’ of ‘Father Neptune’ (Professor Finney) with a ‘veritable Lurline’ (his sister, Marie) thus:
Father Neptune himself could not surpass Finney in the ease and dexterity with which he plunges to the bottom of his glass tank … his pretty sister, who looks the most captivating of undulating river sprites, as, her brown hair floating like a fairy coronal, she hovers over the sleeping brother. In this picturesque and unsurpassed aquatic performance of the Finney’s … swimmers and the general public [are offered] a spectacle of unprecedented attractiveness.
Thus, the use of Greek mythology served to legitimise an activity that had strong sexual overtones that were being exploited by the new leisure entrepreneurs of the period. Social codes of respectability were side-stepped by the mystique of performances that were linked to the adventures of mythological aquatic creatures in female form.
To suggest that professional swimmers created a universally accepted form of rational recreation would be to over-simplify the outcome. Professional female ornamental swimmers did generate a great deal of interest in their feats simply due to their entertainment value. A spin-off to this was the uptake of swimming as an increasingly popular recreational activity by females throughout the late-Victorian period. Consequently, ornamental swimming became an ‘acceptable’ form of entertainment which gave it a degree of respectability amongst the masses in their new leisure world. The fact that many of the spectators could not swim did encourage a high degree of curiosity for an activity that did appear to them to be ‘freakish’ in that many of the feats were considered to be ‘abnormal’ and ‘unconventional’. As a recreational activity for the spectator, ornamental swimming had that essential mix for satisfying morbid curiosity whilst gratifying voyeuristic tendencies. Thus, the nymphs and naiads of professional ornamental swimming helped females acquire a moral legitimacy in their consumption of sport and recreation, 1870-c1910.
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