Historic Archives - Nude Male Swimming

As the world's societies transform into the 21st century, all too often our understanding of our history is based upon our current culture and attitudes as opposed to actual historic documentation and knowledge obtained through extensive research. This website focuses on a highly esoteric area of historic research - the traditional differences between the genders as it pertained to nudity when swimming, or as it was once called, "sea-bathing".

This site could not exist if it were not for years of research conducted by established historians as well as non-professional academicians, and it provides us authentic documents and picture, art and film galleries focusing on this topic. Our documentation was retrieved from actual journals, period-based newspapers and columns, books authored by learned historians, historic photographs, accounts by authors with first-hand experience, renowned art renderings created during previous eras wherein the artist was memorializing actual scenes, and rare historic film. Also provided are anecdotal stories we found on various billboards and discussion forums that although not verifiable, present reflections by many that may give us added insight by those that actually experienced such times.

To some degree, these historical records serve to evidence a paradigm of contradiction and double-standards of a past era when viewed against the standards and culture of our current society. With the onset of the Internet, new generations are beginning to learn about this controversial subject and the related heated debates as to what previous generations experienced. We provide evidence that generations back to the early 18th century were often part of a culture that encouraged, if not required, boys and men to be nude while swimming or sea-bathing, sometimes even in the presence of females. Yet that same practice was rarely shared by the female gender, because as you will read, women were expected to maintain a high degree of modesty, and were always covered wearing conservative clothing indicative of the customs of their time. Indeed, during the Victorian Era when even the display of women's uncovered ankles was deemed immodest or men being seen in public absent coat, tie and hat were considered to be improperly dressed, it seems unfathomable that one might observe on nearby river banks or ocean beaches these same women being in the immediate presence of these same men -- at a time when the men enjoyed such activities completely naked and in full sight of these women.

Yet as you will find from the materials within this website, such contradictions and double-standards were not so uncommon as people might think. We also delve into historical evidence surrounding instructional swim classes or recreational swimming during the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries when it was mandatory at most public schools and community associations for all men and boys to be completely nude when in the pool area whereas females always wore swimsuits.

USE OF THIS SITE

This website is hosted by Google, and follows their embedded website format. On the left side of the page are links to pages and sub-pages and can also be found at the very bottom of the pages as well. For ease of navigation, we provide icon links to the sub-pages to each page:

Sub-Pages

DISCLAIMER AND AGREEMENT TO ACCESS THIS SITE

All documents and materials we have within this site are deemed to be authentic. We have authenticated almost all of them by locating their original source on the Internet or established, well known archives. However, there are a few that were not traceable through the Internet and thus cannot be verified. This is probably due to their provider not scanning the documents with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology then making them available to search engines, and although millions of documents are available through Internet searches, millions still remain out of reach. Many publications have been scanned but are copyright protected and only retrievable through purchasing access to search a specific publication's archives. Although we did purchase some such services (such as NewspaperArchives.com), we did not do it in all cases. In those instances where authenticity may be in question, we clearly make the disclaimer, and, we ask for your help in being able to notify us of any knowledge you have of their origins, or alternatively, can provide evidence as to why they are not authentic (please note - we are looking only for factual evidence, not opinions unless you happen to be a professional, credentialed document reviewer). Regardless, we present it all and encourage you to read through the plethora of materials on this site and draw your own conclusion.

To assist you in assisting us in verification of documentation as well as providing new material for us to use, we provide you with our Research Resources page. Should you know of or discover through research any materials or documentation that could augment the pages of this website with added historic insight, we would gratefully appreciate your notifying us of such potential contributions. If you attach them as an email, we would appreciate the link to the site where they were found. We can be emailed here: Historic Archives - Nude Male Swimming

This website is hosted by Google and is compliant to their Terms of Service, including content displayed. Upon accessing any of the sub-pages of this website, your are acknowledging that this site is not a source for the sharing of pornographic or erotic material depicting sexual acts of any kind, and, that any and all pictorial, artistic and video materials that display nudity ("Materials") are presented for historic importance and education and not for the purpose of sexual arousal. We have made every attempt to only present Materials that were provided through documents released to the general public by established publishers or government, and are depicting scenes of people in public venues conducting themselves in a legal and socially accepted manner typical of the era and local customs at the time they were created. Although famous artwork and historic archival photographs of public nudity may include depictions of minors at play while in the nude, they are presented solely for historical reference and not for any erotic purpose. The creators of this site vehemently condemn use of pictorial documentation of underage children for any erotic purpose, and prohibit this site for being used for any such interests. Further, upon our learning of any use of this site for such a purpose by anyone, the perpetrator will be reported to the proper authorities immediately.