Posted by Laurence Monkhouse on January 19, 2003 at 21:18:12 from 62.252.32.6 user Laurence_.
In Reply to: naked savage posted by Ed Kiser on January 17, 2003 at 19:30:14:
I suspect that this is one of the many places where AR is describing turn of the century customs from when he himself was young rather than the more prudish 1930s. In Victorian/Edwardian times people were much more relaxed about nude bathing - provided certain precautions about time and place were taken.
For example Suffling - the Land of the Broads (c1892) " The morning swim should not be omitted and may be indulged in early before the ladies are stirring"
There is another reference which I can't at the moment trace in a book about boating of about the same date instructing ladies not to go on deck before 8 am because of "the sacred hour of the bathe"
As a Cambridge man I can only go by hearsay but I understand that at Oxford there are on branches of the river two secluded sites called "Parson's Pleasure" and "Dames Delight" maintained to this day for unemcumbered swimming