This particularly well-developed lass turned up on my desk yesterday. Chorus girl, I thought, photographed in Paris. A bit come hitherish, showing off her physique like that ... but gollygosh, WHAT a physique ...
Well, of course, she wasn't a chorus girl. Like the beautiful Miss Braatz, last week, she was an athlete. And acclaimed as the best in her field in the entire world ...
Her field, in days when women didn't really do such things. was 'ornamental and long-distance swimming'. Esther Williams, curl up in the background, this lady would have been a bigger cinema star than you and Sonja Henje rolled into one.
Agnes Alice BECKWITH (b London 24 August 1861; d Port Elizabeth, South Africa 10 July 1951) was the daughter of Frederick Edward (dit 'Professor') Beckwith (b Ramsgate 16 December 1824; d Uppingham 29 May 1898) who operated in the 1860s as a 'professor of swimming', and had been a competitive swimmer since the 1840s ('champion of Margate' 1849 over 600 feet and 800 feet) etc
Tiens! A vase of wax flowers! But Fred Beckwith was on to a good thing, and as his multiple children were born, they were all put to the water.
I won't do one of my minutious family investigations here. I'll just summarise a few of Agnes' exploits. She seems to have come on the scene aged 13 (yes, she really was!) doing an act which involved swimming through a hoop alongside older brother Willie.
In 1875, Mrs [Agnes] Beckwith died, and Fred Ed was left to manage the family swimming business alone. Agnes and Willie played the halls in 1876, but Agnes's fame came thereafter from her endurance feats. Chelsea to Greewich in 2hr 46mins. Westminster Bridge to Richmond (20 miles). When Captain Matthew Webb did his famous first Channel crossing, his poisson pilot was ... Agnes!
In 1880 she did a 100 hours swim (17 hours per day) ...
In 1882 she married one William Taylor 'theatrical agent' by whom she had a son (William Walter Beckwith Taylor)
She performed until 1908 with her 'wonderful troupe of lady swimmers' (Oh Lord, NOT synchronised swimming!) but after the 1911 census, in which stated firmly that she was 'retired', I lose them.
Agnes's swimming story has been told (with notable omissions) elsewhere on www, so I won't copy. Suffice it to say that after the end of her career she and her son emigrated to South Africa where mother and son both died in the 1950s. But Agnes left her mark as one of the key figures in the history of women's swimming.
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