Seabathing in scarborough - an article by John Rushton

As the first seaside resort, Scarborough pioneered "bathing machines" for women, who entered the ocean clad in vast garments, helped by servant women, from horse drawn sheds on wheels.. Men swam naked from boats or the sands. When the railways came , in 1845, far more trippers crowded onto the beach . A wealthy visitor complained of the "discreditable jumbling together of the sexes and the absence of proper hoods on the bathing machines".She saw a dozen "Goths" from a cheap day train eyeing the sands with glee.There were cries of "South Sea Islandism".

The Corporation quickly produced rules specifiying bathing areas, distances to be kept between men and women and the bathing clothes to be worn, from 7 a.m. to 9.p.m. Respectability was enforced and paddling became the poor man's pastime. Attittudes would change..The "Graphic in 1871 could say it was absurd that a house, a horse and an attendant were necessary to get someone into the sea. By 1904 Scarborough had bathing tents beyond the spaw and on the north sands.

Women's bathing costumes remained a problem. A common garment was "cut high to the neck, with knickerbockers of ample dimensions at the other end and a skirt which fell below the knees,almost invariably worn with stockings . It gave a soggy result. Hastings allowed mixed bathing in the sea under regulation and daimed it had become a happy family pastime, although "the better class and couples from boarding houses did it but the cheaper kind of visitor wasn' t partial to it" .Scarborough clung to tradition. A Leeds loiner staying at the resort said " mixed bathing is the half way house to mixed sleeping and might be a plank on the river leading to the Niagara of eternal damnation".So ,there you go.

John Rushton

OTHER ARTICLES
• A general history of Scarborough
• Scarborough : A seaside resort , in the 1820s
• Charles Dickens account of Filey and Scarborough graveyards
• The German bombardment of scarborough in the First World War in 1914
• Fishing farming and tourism in the early Filey - 1805
• The Yorkshire smuggler - the smuggling of contraband
• Thomas Hinderwell - history of Scarboroughs fisheries
• Thomas Crimlisk - First of the Crimlisks
• The Womens work in the Filey fishing industry
• Robin Hood's Bay - The Storm family website
• The Allen and Truman Scarborough fishing families
• Events and newspaper clippings from Scarborough
• When the Colliers came to Scarborough
• Filey tourism in 1862 - better than Scarborough
• Climbing the cliffs in filey in 1779 - Yorkshires maritime heritage
• Characters of the Filey fishing industry
• Whitby history - The journal of Captain Cook - extracts from Tahiti
• The need for canals in the scarborough area - discussions in the late 1700's
• Scarborough fishermen and the U-Boats by Godfrey Arthur