Reverend Francis Kilvert was outraged. The Rector of Langley Burrell was taking his holidays on the Isle of Wight when he discovered his favourite past-time, nude paddling, had been banned. His reverence grumbled to his diary in August 1874: “at Shanklin one has to adopt the detestable custom of bathing in drawers. If ladies don’t like to see men naked why don’t they keep away from the sight?”
The Victorians invented the seaside holiday, seaside decorum – and seaside debauchery. Even Queen Victoria was an enthusiastic paddler and promenade-stroller, although she swam in the privacy of a bathing machine. In her diary on the 30th July 1847 she wrote: “Drove down to the beach with my maid and I went into the bathing machine, where I undressed and bathed in the sea (for the first time in my life). I thought it delightful until I put my head under water.”
Queen Victorian and Reverend Kilvert weren’t the only ones stripping off at the seaside. Eighteenth-century seaside holidays were health cures for the upper classes. During the season from October to March visitors rode horses – not donkeys – on the beach and no one ventured into the chilly sea. But things changed once the 1833 Factory Act gave workers eight half days holiday a year.
Queen Victorian and Reverend Kilvert weren’t the only ones stripping off at the seaside. Eighteenth-century seaside holidays were health cures for the upper classes. During the season from October to March visitors rode horses – not donkeys – on the beach and no one ventured into the chilly sea. But things changed once the 1833 Factory Act gave workers eight half days holiday a year.
Thanks to the new railway system, thousands of ordinary people could reach the seaside. In 1820 it took six hours to travel from London to Brighton, by 1862 only two. Newly-accessible resort towns sprang up along Britain’s coastline. At Southport, Llandudno, Margate, Weymouth, Torquay, Dover or Ilfracombe factory workers and clerks escaped smoky cities to cavort by the sea.
The working classes flocked to the seaside resorts, much to the chagrin of the upper classes. Suddenly Cockney accents and the cries of street sellers could be heard among more ‘refined’ tones at formerly exclusive places, like Brighton. The new working class trippers were lampooned by comics like the 1884 cartoon, Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday, mocked these ‘work-shy’ holiday makers. Lazy schemer, Ally Sloper, goes to great lengths to avoid his landlord, his wife and anything approaching hard work.
By the end of the 19th century the fashionable set had fled abroad, but they were quickly replaced by ordinary families. Mr Punch at the Seaside (1910), lampooned the middle-classes who went to the seaside only to spend all their time with acquaintences from home. “These Joneses and Browns cordially detest each other in London, and are not even on speaking terms; yet such is the depressing effect of ‘perfect quiet’ that, as soon as they meet at Shrimpington-super-Mare, they rush into each other’s arms with a wild sense of relief!”
Seaside towns were completely transformed by the influx of visitors. In 1812 Morecambe was just a tiny hamlet with a smattering of houses, but by 1880 the population had rocketed to 16,859. In newly-fashionable coastal towns pleasure palaces sprang up to entertain the masses. Music-halls, winter gardens, exhibitions, variety shows, zoos, opera houses, theatres, aquariums and even lagoons with Venetian gondolas. Street musicians, Punch and Judy shows, acrobats, ice cream carts, travelling photographers and pedlars all touted for business along the sands.
Among the pleasure-going crowds some Victorian holidaymakers abandoned decorum entirely. If you adhered to the marks of respectability - attending church and refraining from bathing on a Sunday - you could take advantage of seaside freedoms. Single men, safely out of sight of their families, could spend their days at beach front telescopes ogling women slipping into the sea from bathing machines and their nights visiting ladies of easy virtue, with no acquaintances to spot them and spread gossip.
Around three hundred prostitutes walked Brighton’s streets, piers and pebble beach. Working class men and women made open sexual advances while frolicking on the beach, driving prim middle class matrons into the safety of their bathing machines. The naughty seaside postcard was born, but the Victorians didn’t go as far as sporting ‘Kiss me quick’ hats. Even the Reverend Kilvert was not immune to the charms of a bathing beauty. “One beautiful girl stood entirely naked in the sand...a supple slender waist, the gentle dawn and tender swell of the bosom and above all the soft exquisite curves of the rosy dimpled bottom,” he dribbled in his diary.
Despite this atmosphere of flirtation and frolics women kept every inch of pale flesh under wraps. They preserved lily white complexions beneath enormous parasols and up-to-the-chin bathing suits. Earlier in the Victorian period women wore flannel sack-like costumes, but by 1860s ‘Bloomer suits,’ thigh length jackets worn over blouses, were in fashion. To descend into the sea with maximum modesty, women used bathing machines. These contraptions were beach huts on wheels. Horses dragged down to the sea with the occupants wobbling about inside, trying to slip on their voluminous bathing costumes.
Until well into the 1900s, ladies would not be seen paddling or walking on the beach in their bathing costumes. In contrast, until the 1850s men, like Reverend Kilvert enjoyed swimming naked, although later they were restricted to certain parts of the beach. This was still insufficient for some visitors.
One 1866 letter writer to the Scarborough Gazette, protested that “hundreds of men and women may be seen in the water – the men stark naked and the women so loosely and insufficiently clad that for all purposes of decency they might as well have been naked too.” If they chose to wear them, men could sport red and white striped bathing suits with drawstrings at the waist and, later, knitted one piece jersey suits. Reverend Kilvert had to reluctantly don his trunks.
By the end of the 19th century the fashionable set had fled abroad, but they were quickly replaced by ordinary families. Mr Punch at the Seaside (1910), lampooned the middle-classes who went to the seaside only to spend all their time with acquaintences from home. “These Joneses and Browns cordially detest each other in London, and are not even on speaking terms; yet such is the depressing effect of ‘perfect quiet’ that, as soon as they meet at Shrimpington-super-Mare, they rush into each other’s arms with a wild sense of relief!”
Winifred and Ethel were dying to get their bikinis on
Seaside towns were completely transformed by the influx of visitors. In 1812 Morecambe was just a tiny hamlet with a smattering of houses, but by 1880 the population had rocketed to 16,859. In newly-fashionable coastal towns pleasure palaces sprang up to entertain the masses. Music-halls, winter gardens, exhibitions, variety shows, zoos, opera houses, theatres, aquariums and even lagoons with Venetian gondolas. Street musicians, Punch and Judy shows, acrobats, ice cream carts, travelling photographers and pedlars all touted for business along the sands.
Among the pleasure-going crowds some Victorian holidaymakers abandoned decorum entirely. If you adhered to the marks of respectability - attending church and refraining from bathing on a Sunday - you could take advantage of seaside freedoms. Single men, safely out of sight of their families, could spend their days at beach front telescopes ogling women slipping into the sea from bathing machines and their nights visiting ladies of easy virtue, with no acquaintances to spot them and spread gossip.
Around three hundred prostitutes walked Brighton’s streets, piers and pebble beach. Working class men and women made open sexual advances while frolicking on the beach, driving prim middle class matrons into the safety of their bathing machines. The naughty seaside postcard was born, but the Victorians didn’t go as far as sporting ‘Kiss me quick’ hats. Even the Reverend Kilvert was not immune to the charms of a bathing beauty. “One beautiful girl stood entirely naked in the sand...a supple slender waist, the gentle dawn and tender swell of the bosom and above all the soft exquisite curves of the rosy dimpled bottom,” he dribbled in his diary.
Until well into the 1900s, ladies would not be seen paddling or walking on the beach in their bathing costumes. In contrast, until the 1850s men, like Reverend Kilvert enjoyed swimming naked, although later they were restricted to certain parts of the beach. This was still insufficient for some visitors.
“Hundreds of men and women may be seen in the water – the men stark naked"
One 1866 letter writer to the Scarborough Gazette, protested that “hundreds of men and women may be seen in the water – the men stark naked and the women so loosely and insufficiently clad that for all purposes of decency they might as well have been naked too.” If they chose to wear them, men could sport red and white striped bathing suits with drawstrings at the waist and, later, knitted one piece jersey suits. Reverend Kilvert had to reluctantly don his trunks.
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