1886 article & illustrations - Swimming for Girls and Women

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July 24, 1886 – Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper

NATATION FOR GIRLS AND WOMEN

Besides the numerous private swimming-baths and schools of natation, the eleven free saltwater baths of New York city are open to the weaker but more graceful sex—Monday, Wednesday and Friday of each week being “ladies’ days.”

On an average, about ten thousand girls and women avail themselves of this privilege. They make excellent swimmers, as a rule; and no one can deny that in these days of liability to boating or bathing accidents it is of great practical benefit for a woman to have some further dependence than the buoyancy of her skirts or the promptness of a rescuer in case of her getting into deep water.

Our artist—whose open sesame to the seraglio-like privacy of a ladies’ swimming-bath we may account for by explaining that she herself is a lady—has depicted a whole bevy of girls disporting themselves like mermaids in the cool, clear saline bath.

One can take double and triple headers here—an advantage over the sea-beaches, where butting against an incoming wave, and emerging bewildered, with eyes and ears full of sand, is the ordinary substitute for a dive.

Little “tots” of seven or eight years learn to float, swim and tread water with the ease of ducks; while their grown-up sisters, especially those of generous avoirdupois, find progression through the water easier and more agreeable than walking on dry land.

From "Daughters of the Lost Century"

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