Two different days same walk, link to pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/817L/id7.htm
bit sleepy for some unaccountable reason, I can’t say I worked particularly
hard, to be honest I spent a lot of the day researching the relationship of the
development of the Thanet towns from 1750, because of the cure.
Something along the lines of around 1750 some London doctors
discovered that if they had failed to cure most diseases with bleeding,
mercury, quicksilver, purging and so on, then sending their patients of to the
sea to drink seawater and be ducked under the sea by professional dunkers would
cure almost anything.
Because only the rich could afford this treatment and the
Thanet towns were the most accessible from London by sailing hoy in the days
before railways I think the seaside holiday developed out of watching rich
friends and relatives being stripped and dunked.
Of course the poorer people would have gone for the same cure
we have today, which is basically splashing around in the sea and drinking a
bit of seawater.
I have put rings on the 1780s painting by Benjamin West of
Ramsgate Sands to decode what is going on
The orange one shows the observers with the telescopes, the blue one the wealthy patient and the green one the professional health workers, called dunkers.
Also one without rings
I also publish a guide book that was first published in 1763
to help people through the business, here is the link http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/a_description_of_the_isle_of_thanet_1763.htm
And here is the link to the books that went out in the
bookshop today http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/catch-22-in-bookshop.html
...the earliest account of 'skinny dipping'. I thought that back then exposing flesh was frowned upon. And so the Royal Seabathing Hospital came to the fore. Another interesting article.
ReplyDeleteNot exactly David, you are thinking mainly of the Victorian era I think, i.e. from 1840 to 1900.
ReplyDeleteI think there was a fairly strong puritan influence in England but not sure it included an attitude to nudity common people just took off their clothes and jumped in.
Plenty written during the 1700s about the lower classes, mixed sexes, just stripping off for bathing, I think women of the higher social classes were encouraged to wear some sort of loose fitting garment.
Gentlemen I think were expected to strip off, and against a background of trying to produce an act of parliament to stop men from riding in carriages because it was considered effeminate, all a bit hard to say.