Bathing Habits at Victorian East London

Holidays makers on East London's Orient Beach in 1905 Visit the Orient Beach picture gallery

See M Staunton, "Sea Bathing at Margate" in History Today, Vol 23, July 1983, p 23.

Segregation of the sexes was common throughout Victorian England. The famous bathing resort of Margate, for example, maintained a rigid division of the beaches where boats were forbidden from approaching within 200 yards of bathers and bathing machines maintained a distance of at least 60 feet from those occupied by the opposite sex. Although men were expected to wear drawers when in the water, women had no such luxury but were encumbered with cloaks and dresses which had to be weighted with lead pellets to counteract the tendency for the skirts to float.

The question can be posed whether these were universally accepted norms amongst English people everywhere in the world or were they simply restrictions adhered to because they were applied through force of law? A study of bathing habits in 19th century East London provides a valuable insight into this phenomenon because, for almost three decades from the town's foundation, there was no enforced code of conduct and, even when a municipality was established in 1873, uncertainties regarding municipal jurisdiction meant that bathing regulations could not be properly administered until 1904. For almost six decades, therefore, the local residents were virtually free to follow their own dictates rather than official regulations. The result was that traditional Victorian principles appeared to fly out the window.

East London developed under extraordinary circumstances. The original town, founded in April 1847, was situated on the western bank of the Buffalo River on the eastern Cape seaboard. It was then very much a military settlement, established during the latter part of the 7th Frontier War and owed its importance solely to the fact that the river mouth, with its deep lagoon, made a perfect harbour to serve the forces then fighting on the frontier.

In December 1847 Sir Harry Smith arrived as Governor of the Cape with instructions to annex the territory between the Keiskamma and Kei Rivers, under the title of British Kaffraria. Had all gone according to plan, East London would have become part of the new Crown Colony and would have evolved naturally, with the early establishment of a municipality to take charge of civic affairs. The Governor, however, had left Britain without the Letters Patent which officially sanctioned the Crown Colony. He therefore improvised by annexing the territory under the authority of his High Commissionership and established a military dictatorship until such time as the Letters Patent arrived.

In the meantime the port on the Buffalo River presented a problem because the military government was not equipped to handle customs. The Governor found it expedient, therefore, to annex East London to the Cape Colony, at least until such time as the situation in British Kaffraria could be normalised. Another frontier war and the arrival of two new governors in quick succession further delayed the process, with the result that the Letters Patent were only published in 1860. East London was therefore forced to remain in its anomalous position for over a decade.

The economic and legal uncertainty caused by this turn of events prevented East London's natural evolution and hindered the establishment of a municipality until April 1873. Supervision of civic matters was consequently left in the hands of a Resident Magistrate whose time was occupied with his many legal functions. Town administration therefore took a back seat and even such vital necessities as sanitation, street-making and procuring a water supply went unattended. Peripheral functions like maintenance of Victorian standards were of little consequence, so the residents were left to set their own norms. Sea and river bathing fell into that category.

For the people of East London, bathing was not simply a sport but was a periodic necessity because a shortage of water prevented ablution in any other form. Until 1883 there was no reservoir for the town. On the West Bank, as the original village came to be known, the residents had either to use rain-water or take from springs about a mile out of town. Periodic droughts limited the first option, while the springs were only accessible to the wealthy who had carts to carry the buckets. On the East Bank, the residents of Panmure had no water beyond what their rain-water tanks could hold.

When the two villages united to form a municipality in 1873, lack of funds prevented the immediate construction of a reservoir and even when one was established in 1883, its situation on the Amalinda River meant that it could only cater for the residents of Panmure. Provision of mains to the houses took years to accomplish but, by 1896, the dam was already too small to meet the demands of a rapidly expanding town. Regular rationing had then to begin, simply to supply water for drinking purposes. Even so, continual haggling over the site for another reservoir meant that East London's water situation remained catastrophic until 1925 when the Umzoniana Project was completed to provide an abundance even for a water-borne sewerage scheme.

Throughout these difficult decades, therefore, personal hygiene demanded the occasional dip in the sea. Two of the most popular swimming areas were in the river itself and at the Sandy Beach at the river mouth because these were easily accessible to all the residents on both the West and East Banks. The close proximity to the Fort Glamorgan army barracks, the prison and the convict station meant, however, that these spots developed into bathing places for soldiers, prisoners and convicts, in addition to the townsmen, harbour workers and sailors. The women therefore tended to shun them in favour of the more remote beaches, especially Panmure Beach on the East Bank. At the time, this presented their best prospects for sea bathing and also proved to be the favourite site for inland holiday makers who outspanned during the Christmas season on the gently sloping ground to the west of Limekiln Kloof.

Until 1873 there were no regulations whatsoever to govern bathing but this was seen as a priority when the first municipal constitution was drawn up in January that year. The immediate problem was not Victorian prudery but the question of nudity. The majority of men preferred to bathe naked, although it is not clear to what extent East London women shared that sentiment. As a result, restricted hours and a segregation of the sexes became the official norm during the first two decades of municipal control. The first bathing regulation therefore restricted the sport to the night hours at any place near a public thoroughfare, although people could bathe when and how they pleased at such remote spots as Panmure Beach.

The first bye-law, however, had little impact on the public's swimming habits, probably because the majority were unaware of the regulation. The Municipal Council soon realised that people were continuing to bathe at the jetties and at other public places during all hours of the day but little was done to prevent it, apart from erecting a few notice boards which continued to be ignored. Among the chief culprits were the soldiers at Fort Glamorgan who flouted the municipal regulations by swimming naked in the river at all hours of the day. The prisoners on the West Bank were also marched to the river every Saturday at midday for their weekly wash and a deaf ear was turned to the Municipal Board's repeated warnings of possible action.

Only in 1880 was something at last done to enforce the bathing regulations and, oddly, the incident which galvanised the Council was of a rather minor nature. A correspondent complained to the East London Advertiser that a "young male person" ("neither . . . a man nor a gentleman") regularly went down to Panmure Beach to the spot where women were bathing, undressed and entered the water. Not only did it prevent the women from swimming, the letter objected, it was also "most shocking, indelicate, and unmanly". The correspondent therefore demanded that the Council take immediate action to enforce the regulation and impose fines or imprisonment if it continued to be transgressed.

It was the first occasion in which a member of the public complained of a bathing infringement and the incident evoked a sharp reply in the East London Dispatch from another correspondent using the non de plume "A Panmurian". The writer, a female, is of special interest because she described the situation which then prevailed in the more remote bathing areas and also revealed something of the point of view of the East London women whose interests the bathing regulation was purporting to protect.

The writer stated at the outset that the offender was probably a Christmas visitor because she herself was a regular bather and had never experienced such an incident. She thereupon outlined her objections to any form of fixed hours for bathing. It was the accepted practice, she pointed out, for women to bathe at all hours of the day but "sensible ladies" went into the water only with the incoming tide. She had often seen groups of "gentlemen" walking along the beach even while the women bathed, or the men waited for the women to finish. She had seen women doing the same when men were bathing.

She positively objected to Panmure Beach being closed at any time to either males or females but suggested that an easy remedy to the whole dispute would be to insist that all bathers wore costumes. When women were in the water, she wrote, they were supposed to be clothed "as much as modesty demands" and she therefore saw nothing wrong with males walking past. If the men in turn were required to wear "bathing drawers" instead of "the original costume worn by Adam before the fall", then the ladies could also walk past. As it was, many men were naked and something therefore needed to be done to remedy that problem.

The Council ignored the logic of Panmurian's letter and chose both to revise the bathing hours and to partition the swimming spots between the sexes. Panmure Beach was duly proclaimed a "ladies only" area and men were officially allocated the entire river as well as Sandy Beach. In all cases, swimming was restricted to the darker hours between sunset and dawn. Nobody was allowed to swim during the day!

The revised regulation brought forth scorn from "Panmurian" who pointed out that the regulation already in force was a dead letter as "any number" of men and boys could be found bathing in the river "at almost any hour of the day", especially on Sundays and holidays, yet they were never interfered with. She also objected to women being restricted to Panmure Beach and then being allowed to bathe only after dark. It would mean, she wrote, that no women could bathe in winter, except for those "with constitutions like cart-horses" and it would, moreover, put an end to up-country visitors because they could only swim at very awkward hours.

The writer then pointed out other important aspects which seemed to have slipped the councillors' attention. First, it was in fact illegal for the municipality to interfere at Panmure Beach because the area was a government reserve and not municipal territory. Second, bathing there was positively dangerous at certain tides "on account of slope, holes and backwash" when the sea was rough, and people would have to be "great enthusiasts" to hazard the water at such inconvenient hours during winter.

The dispute, however, proved to be a storm in a teacup. The Council took no action whatsoever to enforce the new bye-law and allowed the status quo to continue for the time being. It is probable that the councillors recognised the illegality of their earlier decision, as Panmurian had correctly explained. In January 1883, however, they suddenly decided to enforce the existing bye-law and laid a charge against six men accused of swimming in the river during the day.

It is not clear whether the action was taken because of adverse criticism from the Advertiser, which that month claimed it was "high time" that the Council "awoke to its responsibilities" in bathing matters, or because someone had maliciously torn down all the bathing notices but the action revealed a number of anomalies in the regulation. First, the notice boards had been unclear because they appeared to prohibit daytime bathing only in the vicinity of the ferry. Furthermore, the river environment itself fell under several different authorities. As a correspondent submitted in the Advertiser, the Harbour Engineer gave permission to bathe, the municipality prohibited it while the wharf authorities were indifferent. The bathing hours themselves were unreasonable as dawn was believed to be rather early to prohibit the sport. The Council was "never very anxious to protect the rights of the people", the correspondent concluded, but it was "fond of trampling on them".

Ultimately the Council decided to drop the charges against the men, a decision lauded by the Advertiser. It could hardly have been the intention, the editor wrote, to throw any obstacle in the way of bathing which was "not only a most enjoyable pastime" but also a "positive necessity" for the health of a place which had no regular supply of fresh water. There were hundreds of men at hotels and boarding houses, he said, who would have no bath if the sea were forbidden during reasonable hours. He further suggested that the use of bathing costumes should become compulsory, as was the practice "on the continent" and which would solve the great "fig-leaf controversy".

The Council formed a special committee to re-investigate the question and eventually reached some clarity with regard to a definition of bathing hours and places. It clearly demarcated the area within the river in which bathing would be allowed and the time for swimming was then extended by a couple of hours after dawn. Of greater importance, however, was the fact that the Council at last demanded that bathing costumes had to be worn if the bather wished to avoid prosecution for public indecency.

The idea of segregated bathing remained entrenched in Council thought. Sandy Beach remained a male's domain and the women were compensated for their loss by being awarded a nearby rock pool. Insolvent's Hole, as it was commonly called, was a shallow pool immediately below Quanza Estate which the Council decided to develop for female bathers. A galvanized iron shed was built to serve as a change room, the loose stones on the pool floor were cleaned out and crevices in the rock were cemented to prevent leakage at low tide. It was small, however, and certainly served as no compensation to the women for being banished from the more attractive Sandy Beach, which explained why the issue was physically disputed for years to come until the Council was forced to concede defeat.

The Council's attitude to bathing was clearly out of step with the accepted norms of the town. The need for sexually segregated bathing and for restricted hours should have disappeared with the imposition of the bye-law forcing people to wear costumes. Indeed, the public refused to be restricted in any other way and waged an ongoing battle both legally through representations to the Council and physically by ignoring the regulations altogether.

In April 1883 a male deputation met the Council to appeal for unrestricted bathing in the river and in return recognised that men had to accept the idea of wearing costumes. It further pleaded that the members of the rowing club be allowed to bathe at all times at a point 50 yards beyond the sight of any passing women and even undertook to provide screens which would stretch to the water's edge, behind which the men could change and enter the water unseen. Although the Council accepted the idea of screens, however, it was prepared to extend the rowing club's swimming time by only one hour.

The construction of the Beach Road in 1885 changed the face of East London as a health resort because it made the eastern shore (long regarded as remote) more accessible to the townspeople and holiday makers. The perennial question of bathing hours had therefore to be re-defined and the Council at last recognised that bathing could be allowed all day at two of its formerly inaccessible resorts, namely Sandy Beach and Insolvent's Hole, conditional to the wearing of costumes. The debate also revealed the presence of forces for change within the Council chambers, with one councillor arguing for completely open bathing at all spots and another questioning the utility of having to don a bathing costume at all, even when on an open beach.

Women too were becoming increasingly defiant of the Council's stance because the men had been given Sandy Beach while they were confined to uncomfortable rock pools, unless they chose to journey to the more remote and also more dangerous Eastern Beach, as it was now known. It was common knowledge that the Council doubted whether it had the authority to prosecute infringements of the beach regulations and so women bathed at Sandy Beach with impunity. Eventually, in April 1888, the Council realised it was fighting a losing battle and tried to impose a compromise solution by a division of Sandy Beach between the sexes. A life-boat had been conveniently wrecked at its centre which allowed the Council to grant the area between the eastern pier and the wreck to the men, while the women were allowed to swim between the wreck and the rocks.

Such a compromise proved petty and the bathers generally ignored the provisions and continued to bathe as they pleased and the Council was powerless to act because its authority over the foreshore remained uncertain. Only in January 1895 did the councillors finally resolve to have the Town Solicitor examine the question and their worst fears proved correct. Not only did the municipality have no power to control bathing on the beaches, but it certainly had no authority over swimming in the river which was wholly under the jurisdiction of the Harbour Board. All the hours of debate had therefore been in vain and the numerous regulations had been invalid. That problem was solved only in 1904 when the government agreed to extend municipal control at least to the sea-shore.

In the meantime, there was total confusion as to what restrictions applied to bathing. In November 1895 the Council rescinded all regulations concerning bathing hours and sexually segregated bathing at Sandy Beach, leaving the sole proviso that bathers wore costumes when swimming during daylight hours. Only the rock pools at Insolvent's Hole and below the Beach Hotel were reserved for women and children. A flurry of letters to the Dispatch in December 1899 indicated nevertheless either that few were aware of the implications of the law or that the old notice-boards had probably not been removed. It was also clear that the accepted code of dress was often ignored.

The chief problem was still nudity on the beaches and, because of a lack of bathing shelters, both men and women dressed on the sand or on the rocks. A certain Mrs Malpass of East London complained that it was common for men ("of course roughs, not gentlemen") to "thrust themselves" within a few yards of women "in the course of dressing" or denuded themselves "in a most reckless fashion". Others, she wrote, flaunted themselves "in most ungentlemanly gestures" before female eyes and mocked "the claim to decency all respectable females should have". Mrs Malpass was supported by "Leander" who argued that dressing rooms were the answer and, once these had been provided, the bathers at East London should "cast off their primitive habits" and adopt the bathing customs "of more enlightened communities".

There was opposition to the letter. A male correspondent wrote that women should keep to the rock pools as the notice-boards demanded. A female bather, on the other hand, stated that she could see nothing wrong with nudity on the beach. All her sympathies were with the "sinners", she wrote. What a pity Mrs Malpass could not "wield the brush" as well as she did the pen as she evidently had some "splendid chances" of making studies of the "human form divine". People could not expect, the correspondent concluded, that the "lords of creation" should be inflicted with "these cumbersome bathing suits."

It was not only the men who were at fault. Another correspondent, a female refugee from Johannesburg, pointed out that it was "a notorious fact" that certain women made it "a common practice" to sit in the midst of the men when disrobing, thereby making it impossible for "a modest minded man" to enjoy "the needful bath". Even as late as 1906 a correspondent complained that the regulations referring to costumes needed to be enforced because women were taking to the water clad in almost any garments. As a mere man who liked his "dip in the briny," he wrote, it was "not nice" to find women clad in night shirts, men's pyjamas, and all kinds of female garments "of nameless description" which were "to say the least" not bathing costumes.

Matters came to a head in 1905 when the Council decided to build a beach pool near the wreck of the Quanza, between Insolvent's Hole and Sandy Beach. The Quanza Pool was divided into two sections and bathing was meant to be restricted to women and children but the idea proved to be controversial and there was concerted pressure to open the pool to everyone.

The "medley of mixed-bathers" on the beach, a correspondent wrote, indicated how "extremely popular" unrestricted bathing was amongst both sexes of all ages but the concept of men and women mixing in the close confines of the pool horrified others. Permitting mixing "at a large watering-place" was one thing, a correspondent wrote, yet to allow it in the pool was definitely beyond the pale. Where a long stretch of sandy beach was available, he said, and where a large number of persons swam at the same time who neither knew nor cared about one another was a very different thing to permitting it in a restricted pool where all were bound to remain close to one another the whole time. Under such circumstances, he wrote, it was "simply disgusting".

The debate also raged within the walls of the Council Chambers. One councillor attempted a compromise by suggesting that the men be given the larger pool while the women and children be permitted to use the adjacent section but another objected that the pools were too close together and there would be an "outcry in the town" if they threw the bathing open in that way. Several councillors, on the other hand, argued that the opposite was true. East London, like "almost every modern seaside resort" accepted mixed bathing as an established fact. The latter argument eventually won the day and the Council resolved to open the main pool to everyone, while offering the smaller section to those women who demanded privacy.

By 1906 the issue of sexually segregated bathing at East London had at last been resolved on the condition that all bathers donned costumes. During the three decades of conflict, however, it was abundantly clear that the Town Council was looking to England for guidance in creating municipal regulations to control the situation and, in doing so, was attempting to enforce Victorian principles on a very unwilling public. The Council proved to be continually at variance with public demands but was unable to enforce its will because it was never certain of the legality of any of its actions, a situation arising from the strange legal circumstances in which East London found itself.

The residents, therefore, made use of municipal hesitation to flout the bye-laws. Nudity, especially amongst the male bathers, was widely practised and was a principle which even many of the women

See also: Orient Beach / Sandy Beach Eastern Beach Insolvent's Hole East London's economic crises

accepted. On the other hand, sexually integrated bathing was a reality at the town long before it was officially recognised by the town fathers. East London's population appeared, therefore, to be generally out of step with the accepted norms of Victorian society.

Dr Keith Tankard