... que iam para a praia, quando ir a banhos se tornou uma moda entre as práticas aconselháveis à saúde, e se atiravam todos nus para dentro de água, homens e mulheres misturados, ali mesmo à vista dos Paterfamilias. Isto é só um excerto. O artigo está cheio de descrições cómicas.
There is something worrying about what happens to grown men and women once they reach the sea-shore: “both ladies and gentlemen seem determined to set all rules and regulations at defiance”. In fact, it’s the ladies who really worry him: “It is certainly extraordinary that English women, who are held up to the whole world as patterns of modesty and delicacy, should, when they get to the sea, seem entirely to change their natures”. The seaside, he implies, brings out a concerningly frivolous and ungovernable side of women.
Three years later, in August 1857, the Observer’s unnamed seaside reporter (can it be the same person?) has gone back to the south coast, having rounded up a spate of recent references in the press to “the indecent manner in which the bathing is conducted in these places”. The local authorities in Margate and Ramsgate are refusing to take the problem seriously – complainers are “London grumblers who, if they are so easily offended, had better stay away”. But Dover has really tried, passing a resolution that “all bathing, except from a machine, should be strictly prohibited”. The locals don’t like it, however, arguing vociferously that bathing is beneficial to health, and, more pertinently, that “as much indecency is practised where machines are used as when bathing takes place from the beach”. The resolution is rescinded.
The Observer simply can’t understand why male sea-bathing isn’t confined to a beach further off – a good ten minutes’ walk or so. As it is, the houses on the front at Dover are so close to the beach that “no modest female can pull aside the blind until after seven in the morning, unless she wishes to see some three or four hundred naked men and boys, engaged in all sorts of antics, but a few yards from the houses”.
The debate doesn’t go away, and as more and more breaches of decorum are lovingly detailed, a suspicion arises that the sight of 300 or 400 naked men and boys, not to mention antics in shallow water around bathing machines, far from being a deterrent, might in fact be one of Dover’s main attractions. Certainly, the Local Board thinks so, responding briskly to the complaint: “If ladies are so shocked, why do they crowd about the machines during the bathing hour?”
By the 1860s, the problem is out of control. Men in “nature’s costume” and women (“we can hardly call them ladies”) in “loose bathing dresses, which really hide but few of their charms” show a “total want of modesty which seems to pervade all classes”. Some of the spectators bring opera glasses. The country, the Observercries, is in moral decline: “Is it to be wondered at that the tone of their minds becomes lowered, and that the business of the Divorce Court so rapidly augments that it is thought that no single judge can get through the numbers of cases?”
...
The next day, Paterfamilias writes about bathing costumes – he’s been reading the correspondence in London newspapers about this and is in total agreement. “The women wear a bathing costume, is it true; but what a costume! I won’t describe it. Everybody knows how scant it is, how short it is, how it clings to the figure.” Men are still making no attempt to be decent. What is urgently needed is “some costume for both sexes” which does more than “the primitive fig-leaves did for our common parents”. If only suitable garb could be seen as fashionable, the whole problem would be resolved. That same August, for example, a periodical entitled Era, offers an overview:
...Indecency would seem to be a chronic vice among the English nation; for every year for the last quarter of the century, no sooner do the summer months fairly set in, and sea-bathing becomes not only fashionable but wholesome and necessary, than journals are deluged with letters from indignant fathers of families, from foreigners, calling attention to the indecent manner in which sea- bathing is practised in England, and praising the superior manner in which they do this kind of thing in France.
From the 1870s onwards, borough councils introduced regulations to ensure proper social distancing. A Folkestone byelaw states that there must be a distance of 40 yards between any bathing machine used by a woman and one being used by a man. Strict bathing times are laid down. Between 8 o’clock and sunset, no person should “undress or dress upon and bathe from any part of that portion of the sea shore”, unless wearing “some suitable dress or covering, proper and sufficient to prevent any indecent exposure of his or her person”. Bathing from a boat has to take place at least 400 yards from the shore. Brighton doubles its fines for offenders from 20 to 40 shillings. Dover Swimming Club, the stated aims of which were “to encourage sea-bathing, to promote swimming and to further the cause of decency”, petitioned for the extension of its morning bathing time from 7 to 8 a.m. They weren’t after an unconditional extension: just “one groin [sic] to the east of the Yacht Club”.For instance, we are foolish and perhaps, prudish enough, to fancy that for a gentleman stark naked to bathe a lady (wearing, it is true, a bathing dress) in the presence of a score of other naked men close by is not quite proper, and yet this scene occurred at Margate last Tuesday at about half-past eleven in the morning, in the presence of several spectators.
Jane Darcy
