In the contemporary US, both boys and girls learn to swim as part of physical education. In the early 1900s, however, many men learned to swim but few women received instruction. Often, women actively shunned the water. When a fire broke out on the steamboat General Slocum in 1904, eyewitnesses reported that women, certain they would drown if they jumped overboard, “waited until the flames were upon them, until they felt their flesh blister, before they took the alternative of the river.”((“1,000 Lives May Be Lost In Burning of the Excursion Boat Gen. Slocum,” New York Times (June 16, 1904), 1.))
Bodies washed ashore after the steamship, General Slocum, caught fire, 1904. Wikimeida Commons.
Of the estimated 978 women and children aboard the cruise, nearly all died. Most drowned just a few feet from shore in relatively shallow waters.
The New York Times opined, “one of the lessons which the General Slocum horror should bring home to every woman and girl in New York City is the desirability of knowing how to swim.”((“1,000 Lives May Be Lost In Burning of the Excursion Boat Gen. Slocum,” New York Times (June 16, 1904), 1.)) While catastrophes like this commanded national attention, thousands of accidental drowning deaths occurred in the US annually. Most fatalities involved women and children.
Why did so few women know how to swim in the early 20th century?
Some physicians and conservatives concluded that women were biologically inferior or incapable of swimming. One common cultural stereotype held that men were innately predisposed to athleticism. Many saw swimming–especially open water swimming–as a masculine sport, far too challenging for women.
Frederick J. Garbit, M.D., “The Woman’s Medical Companion and Guide To Health.” The Josephine Long Wishart Collection: Mother, Home, and Heaven, Courtesy the College of Wooster Special Collections.
Others realized that women’s aversion to water and unfortunate tendency to drown had less to do with biological deficiency than it did with cultural customs.
Louisa Dresel and two women in bathing suits at Mingo’s Beach, Beverly, Mass., 1900. Image courtesy of Schlesinger Library.
In the early 1900s, cultural beliefs required modesty of women. As a result, women’s swimsuits consisted of multiple layers: dark wool tights, knee-length bloomers, a sailor-style blouse with balloon sleeves, a belt, and full skirt. The average woman’s swimsuit used seven to ten yards of woolen fabric depending on the style.
Margaret Wessell Piersol learning to swim, 1896, Courtesy Radcliffe College Archives, Schlesinger Library.
Women ventured to bath houses located along river banks and ocean beaches to cool themselves and allow their children to play in the water. Their long, heavy bathing suits permitted frolicking in the surf. But the full, water-logged skirt often tangled around a woman’s legs and immobilized her. Ironically, the fear of drowning in the swimsuit that cultural etiquette demanded women wear deterred many women from learning to swim.
Even if a woman knew how to swim, the weighted fabric could drag her down. In the summer, each week, newspaper headlines recounted numerous deaths–mostly of women–from drowning at beaches and lakes. Often women drowned while trying to save a child.
The deaths of nearly 1000 women in the General Slocum incident called attention to drowning as a public health and safety issue. Confronted with this threat to safety, municipalities initiated “Learn to Swim” campaigns targeting women. Postcards, posters, and newspaper articles encouraged and warned women to learn to swim as a life-saving measure for themselves and–more importantly–for the nation’s children.
Postcard promoting swimming for girls and women, circa 1905. Personal collection.
As cities began offering swimming instruction to women, individuals advocating swimsuit reform–like Lucille Eaton Hill, Edwyn Sandys and Annette Kellerman–began finding audiences receptive.
Campaigns about public safety worked together with advertisements glamorizing swimming for women. They began to dismantle the stereotype that open water swimming was a masculine sport unsuitable for women.
Public safety advertisements successfully persuaded the general public that men and women could (and should) swim together on beaches because men could both safeguard women and teach them basic elements of swimming.
This interaction of the sexes in a sport designated as masculine, like swimming, contradicted custom. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries middle-class propriety delineated appropriate interactions between the sexes in most social settings–especially sports. Swimming pools were often segregated by gender and race but the dangers posed by the surf allowed conservatives to condone mixed-gender swimming, despite the fact that swimming exposed more of the body than other sports.
Mixed-gender swim group in New York, August, 1906. By G. C. Hovey, Mid Manhattan Picture Collection, Library of Congress.
The early 20th century “Learn to Swim” campaign succeeded. Mixed-gender amateur swim groups formed in most major US cities. Soon women began competing against men in open water marathons. Women’s success contradicted cultural beliefs about women’s physical frailty.
Open water swimming race from the Battery to Coney Island, New York, 1908. (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)
But the campaign may have had unintentional effects. Early “Learn to Swim” campaigns that targeted women may have inadvertently (or purposefully) reinforced another cultural stereotype: that swimming was a “white” activity.
Today, death by drowning is capturing headlines again. This time, however, the victims are predominantly nonwhites: 70 percent of African-American children don’t know how to swim. They are three times more likely to drown than other children. This begs the question: are our cultural stereotypes killing us?
Marilyn Morgan, Director of the Archives Program and Lecturer of History and UMass Boston.
Marilyn Morgan is the Director of the Archives Program & Lecturer of History at UMass Boston. Her first book, a cultural history of open water swimming and swimwear in America is unexpected to be released in 2018. She is at work on a new project on the history of gender, food, and advertising. Check out her blog or follow her on Twitter @Mare_Morgan
Leave a Reply