Miriam Kahn, 76, in a pink bathing dress and ruffled hat, approached me first.
|
|
1870s American bathing dress A bathing dress was a mode of dress used for ladies' swimming/bathing activities during the 19th Century.Lansdell, A. Seaside Fashions 1860-1939. Buckingham, UK, 1990 These bathing costumes originally included ankle length dresses, long pants, and long sleeves. Around the 1880s the sleeves and hemlines of these dresses were shortened to improve range of motion and general comfort.
|
|
Iconic figures like George Washington often appear. There is also frequent depiction of a woman called Blinky in a 19th- century polka dotted bathing dress. According to the art critic Richard V. West, she is both an avatar of Nebeker's wife Sarah and an appropriation of the work of Paul Gavarni.Royal Nebeker: Dreams and Allusions.
|
|
Nude swimming in rivers and lakes was common. The Bath Corporation official bathing dress code of 1737 prescribed for men: :It is Ordered Established and Decreed by this Corporation that no Male person above the age of ten years shall at any time hereafter go into any Bath or Baths within this City by day or by night without a Pair of Drawers and a Waistcoat on their bodies.Quoted in Byrde, Penelope. "That Frightful Unbecoming Dress: Clothes for Spa Bathing at Bath", Costume, No 21, 1987, p.
|
|
Those who did not swim in the nude, stripped to their underwear. The Bath Corporation official bathing dress code of 1737 prescribed, for women: > No Female person shall at any time hereafter go into a Bath or Baths within > this City by day or by night without a decent Shift on their bodies. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker was published in 1771 and its description of ladies’ bathing costume is different from that of Celia Fiennes a hundred years earlier: > The ladies wear jackets and petticoats of brown linen, with chip hats, in > which they fix their handkerchiefs to wipe the sweat from their faces; but, > truly, whether it is owing to the steam that surrounds them, or the heat of > the water, or the nature of the dress, or to all these causes together, they > look so flushed, and so frightful, that I always turn my eyes another way.
|
|
The bathing gown in the 18th century was a loose ankle-length full-sleeve chemise-type gown made of wool or flannel, so that modesty or decency was not threatened.Claudia B. Kidwell, Women's Bathing and Swimming Costume in the United States, Smithsonian Institution Press, City of Washington, 1968 In the United Kingdom until the mid-19th century there was no law against nude swimming, and each town was free to make its own laws. For example, the Bath Corporation official bathing dress code of 1737 prescribed, for men: > It is Ordered Established and Decreed by this Corporation that no Male > person above the age of ten years shall at any time hereafter go into any > Bath or Baths within this City by day or by night without a Pair of Drawers > and a Waistcoat on their bodies. In rivers, lakes, streams and the sea men swam in the nude, where the practice was common.
|
|
48-9 The Bath Corporation official bathing dress code of 1737 also prescribed, for women: :No Female person shall at any time hereafter go into a Bath or Baths within this City by day or by night without a decent Shift on their bodies. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, published in 1771, contained a description of ladies’ bathing costume which is different from that of Celia Fiennes a hundred years earlier: :The ladies wear jackets and petticoats of brown linen, with chip hats, in which they fix their handkerchiefs to wipe the sweat from their faces; but, truly, whether it is owing to the steam that surrounds them, or the heat of the water, or the nature of the dress, or to all these causes together, they look so flushed, and so frightful, that I always turn my eyes another way. Penelope Byrde points out that Smollett’s description may not be accurate, for he describes a two-piece costume, not the one piece shift or smock that most people describe and is depicted in contemporary prints. His description does, however, tally with Elizabeth Grant’s description of the guide’s costume at Ramsgate in 1811.
|
|