Bathing Costume

Bathing costume, England, 1870-80. Museum no. Misc.102-1986 (click image for larger version)

Going to the seaside for your summer holiday has not always been popular and not everybody got to have a holiday. Sea bathing first became popular for health reasons in the 1790s: King George III set the fashion for sea-bathing when he visited Weymouth in 1789. Other people started to make trips to the seaside, originally for health benefits and later as a popular pastime. With Victorian improvements in transport, people would go to the seaside in droves by coach or by train. Towns grew rapidly with the influx of visitors and there were many forms of entertainment. By 1890 Weston-super-Mare had an alpine railway, shooting gallery, photographic studios, tearooms, merry go round, swings, maze, bandstand, helter skelter, switchback, waterchute, bar and theatre of wonders - and that was just on one pier. 

However much fun people had they still kept themselves very well covered. Most parents would stay fully dressed on the beach. This was as much for practicality as for modesty: people were simply not used to wearing few clothes, and feared that they would catch cold.  Those who were brave enough to bathe would be towed out into the water in a large, covered cart pulled by horses. They would change inside and come out of the back into the sea. Even so, at this date, few people knew how to swim, and the idea was simply to take a dip in the water. Boys and girls would wear swimming costumes very much like this one, although some boys and men bathed nude from separate beaches. Every summer dressmaking magazines such as 'Myra's Journal' ran features on clothing for the seaside: readers could then order sewing patterns for the garments shown. Many children's bathing costumes like this one would have been made at home. They were often made out of quite thick material and they would feel quite heavy when wet.