Everard Digbyâs De Arte Natandi, published in Latin in 1587 and translated into English eight years later, is generally considered the first English treatise on the practice of swimming.1 At the time it was written, swimming was viewed as a utilitarian and participatory activity, and in a twenty-first-century society concerned with increasing levels of obesity and physical inactivity, these remain its important features with Sport England reporting that over 5 per cent of the population had participated in some form of swimming between 2015 and 2016.2 However, swimming has also become an archetypal âmodernâ sport, characterized by a high degree of regulatory control, disciplined body practices, and standardization. Swimmers from 190 countries contested in the 2015 World Championships, and the 209 Federations that form the FĂ©dĂ©ration Internationale de Natation (FINA) competed in standardized pools on different strokes over distances ranging from 50 m to 1500 m, the rules for which have been enshrined in the âlawsâ. In England, thousands of swimming competitions, classified by age group, gender, standard, or disability, take place annually, licensed by the Amateur Swimming Association (ASA) , the National Governing Body (NGB) that controls the sport. County championships are followed by regional and national championships scheduled to dovetail with wider British and international competitions. ASA coaches are certificated at three levels and the ASA is supported financially by government quangos to develop an elite programme for national prestige alongside a participation programme intended to improve the health of the nation.
The transitioning of older activities like swimming into a modern sport form has been the subject of debate. While some have argued that modern sport emerged in Britain because of the industrial revolution, other scholars have suggested that sports did not develop spontaneously and that processes such as emergent capitalism, boundary making, standardization, codification, and specialization were already in evidence.3 For many commentators, modern sports forms existed well before the eighteenth century and sport had become increasingly institutionalized from 1450 through the creation and codification of rules, the building of dedicated sport spaces, the existence of a European-wide trade in sports equipment, and the emergence of a professional class of athletes, coaches, and officials.4 In rejecting the industrialization hypothesis, Guttmann viewed modern sport as a by-product of the scientific revolution of the European enlightenment and Szymanski sees this as a critical starting point, rooted in new forms of associativity.5 McClelland and Kruger argued that athletic activities were displaying the characteristics of modern sport by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and Behringer conceptualized this period as a distinct epoch in the sports history, due to the high levels of institutionalization and standardization of sport in many Western European countries. Bhambra also considered this period important given the social, cultural, political, and economic changes that took place, mainly as an outcome of the emergence of industrial capitalism.6
In reviewing these different perspectives, Vamplew has observed that while its precursors might have originated before widespread industrialization, the institutionalization of sport required further stimuli and there tends to be less disagreement among scholars about the importance of the Victorian era as a period in which the modernization of sport accelerated. As the spatial and temporal parameters of leisure changed, and influenced by a combination of the evolution of a triadic model of class, changes in work patterns and religious beliefs, greater urbanization, and increasing societal control, sports became more regulated.7 Alongside rule development and the growth of sports architecture, there was an expansion in the production of sporting goods and equipment, the numbers of specialized teachers, trainers, coaches, and sporting entrepreneurs, and the volume of sports reporting and advertisement.8
Strictly speaking, the Victorian era began in 1837 and ended with Queen Victoriaâs death in 1901, but distinctive cultural outlooks do not suddenly emerge and disappear, and the period can be stretched to include the years roughly from the Napoleonic Wars until the outbreak of World War I in 1914.9 This âlongâ Victorian period provides a flexible framework marked by continuities, innovation, and diversity,10 and the standard narrative surrounding the evolution of physical activities into global modernized sports during this period credits the English public school and university elites, who first combined to form national associations and then transported their amateur values and organizational structures around the world. In the case of swimming, for example, although some authors have explored its broader social context, most progress has been made in the historiography of the impact of the formation of the Amateur Swimming Association on the development of the sport.11 The argument presented in this text, however, is that this discourse ignores the significant contributions made by individuals, such as swimming professors , a community of motivated entrepreneurial experts who were critical in initiating the modernization of the sport and in stimulating participation, especially among women. Although Carlile suggested that circumstance, climate, the availability of facilities, and prevailing social attitudes were important developmental influences,12 individual practitioners, whether driven by altruism or by economic motives, were key to the changes that occurred in the swimming landscape. Their interventions drove the transition of âbathingâ into âaquaticsâ well before the formation of the ASA and provided the foundations for the sport that were subsequently appropriated by the amateur-controlled NGB.
Carlile was right, however, to draw attention to the importance of social attitudes as a facilitating mechanism for the spread of swimming and professors would never have achieved the success that they did without a general middle-class consensus about the values of cleanliness, which underpinned the increasing provision of baths and washhouses. The Victorians were obsessed with health, in the pursuit of which they âflocked to the seaside, tramped about in the Alps, or Cotswolds, dieted, took pills, sweated themselves in Turkish baths, adopted this âsystemâ of medicine or thatâ.13 An obsession with health encouraged experimentation. Vincenz Priessnitz developed a hydropathic establishment in Austria, which involved treatments such as lengthy cold water wraps, baths and showers, and regular consumption of water, and Captain Claridge brought back the fundamental principles to Britain leading to a craze for hydropathy and the building of âhydrosâ.14 The Turkish bath was also introduced in England in this period and its popularity grew rapidly amongst all sections of the population, becoming a part of the commercialized leisure world by offering an array of services and amusements alongside medical treatments.15
For the middle classes, health depended on the cleanliness of the body and, while there were some concerns in the 1880s that even educated sections of the population still had âvery crude notions as to what constitutes personal cleanlinessâ, it was generally assumed that these values should be imposed on the lower classes too.16 According to its promoters, personal cleanliness went hand in hand with sober, industrious habits and a conscientious sense of domestic and social responsibility.17 From the 1840s onwards, middle-class commentators, including several medical professionals, delivered lectures or wrote pamphlets and books, emphasizing the importance of personal cleanliness and, in 1844, their concerns were translated into action with the setting up of a National Commission for Baths and Washhouses to encourage the building of public baths. In 1846, a bill âPromoting the Establishment of Baths and Wash-houses for the labouring classesâ was passed and there was a widespread agreement that the public baths and washhouses created in subsequent years represented the greatest boon which âmodern civilization has yet given to the working classesâ.18 This lauding of the physical and moral properties of the new facilities was connected to a broader rational recreation movement concerned that the popular culture could potentially undermine societal values and keen to ensure that the lower classes subscribed to bourgeois ideals.
Swimming Communities
Before the provision of dedicated facilities in the form of these new baths, swimming took place in virtually any area in which water existed. In mid-Victorian Wolverhampton, the existing baths were only for the rich, while the poor used the canals and gravel pits. Even when more affordable access was provided, such as when the first real public baths in Wolverhampton were built by public subscription in 1850, these turned out not to be much better than the canals since the water was only changed monthly in 1851 and only weekly by 1875.19 Nevertheless, as more of these kinds of amenities were built, swimming became a more regulated sport and several diverse swimming interests coalesced around the activity as the establishment of dedicated ...