Downstream

by Caitlin Davies

  18

  London Bridge

  ‘The agile Agnes all proclaim

  The lady champion aquatic,

  And warm admirers hold her fame

  To equal that of heroes Attic’

  ‘An ode to Agnes Beckwith’, in Fun, 1879

  I am standing on the north side of London Bridge, looking downstream towards the Tower of London, where Tower Bridge looks like a gateway to a medieval castle moored in the middle of the river. Everywhere are boats, from City cruisers to HMS Belfast, while a row of buoys bob in the water like swollen orange lozenges. There have been several bridges spanning this section of the river reaching back to Roman times, and when the Victorian stone-arched bridge opened in 1831 it became the busiest and one of the most congested points in London. By the mid-nineteenth century 100,000 people walked across it every day – an ideal spot then if you intended to swim from it and wanted a crowd. In September 1875 it was here that Agnes Beckwith plunged into the Thames from a rowing boat and sped all the way to Greenwich. She was just fourteen years old.

  It was Agnes Beckwith who first sparked my interest in Thames swimming. I initially came across her in a British Library poster, an advertisement for a performance at the Royal Aquarium in 1885. She stands dead centre, wearing a satin costume, stockings and boots, one arm resting casually on a beach rock. Just behind her in the water a man has both arms raised in the air, his mouth open in alarm; presumably in the process of drowning. Then I read a passing reference to a swim she had done in the Thames, with no idea what a trailblazer she had been. Here she was diving off a rowing boat in 1875 when most sailors couldn’t swim and when 3,199 people had drowned by accident that year in England and Wales, 500 of whom were women.

  Agnes Beckwith and Emily Parker, both aged fourteen, were set to race each other in the Thames from London Bridge to Greenwich in September 1875.

  Thanks to Captain Webb’s crossing of the Channel the month before, long-distance events were the height of popularity and it was now that Thames swimming really came into its own. Swimming of any kind was in fashion: ‘while the present weather lasts all England by sea and stream will take a periodical if not a daily plunge into the limpid element,’ reported the Penny Illustrated Paper. It was ‘the mania of the hour, and a very good mania too,’ commented The Graphic. But few could match the skill and strength of Agnes Beckwith.

  Born in 1861, she’d been swimming and performing since she was a few years old. Her father was swimming professor Frederick Beckwith of the Lambeth Baths, who’d spent several months training Webb for his Channel swim. In 1854 he’d been declared ‘English professional champion’, a title he held for six years, and had been connected with the Baths for nearly a quarter of a century. Frederick’s ‘family of frogs’ started giving public displays in the early 1860s and in 1865 he included Agnes, introducing her as a two-year-old, although she was probably older. By the time she was nine she was performing with her brother Willie, himself a champion swimmer, as ‘Les Enfants Poissons’ in a plate-glass aquarium at the Porcherons Music Hall in Paris.

  T. Wildgoose and children, a swimming family similar to that of Frederick Beckwith’s ‘family of frogs’.

  Frederick, like most swimming professors, was a lover of spectacle and a savvy promoter, issuing swimming wagers at indoor pools as early as the 1850s, and organising fêtes of natation. His daughter’s swim in the Thames was both a publicity stunt and a money-making scheme. Just weeks earlier another professor by the name of Parker had advertised that his sister Emily would swim five miles from London Bridge to Greenwich. He’d placed a wager of £50 to £30; Emily had started training, her brother had even fixed a date. But Professor Beckwith got there first. On 1 September, just before 5 p.m., Agnes, ‘of slim make, and diminutive stature’, took to the Thames and ‘at once commenced a rapid side-stroke, which she maintained to the finish’, blowing ‘kisses to spectators on the way’. The Morning Post reported, ‘Swimming Feat by a Female’, and noted that her time was ‘remarkably fast’. The object was to ‘decide a wager of £80 to £40 laid against her by Mr Baylis, the money being deposited with Bell’s Life’ a weekly sporting paper: ‘the event created a great deal of excitement . . . a perfect swarm of boats accompanied, and indeed impeded, the swimmer the entire distance.’

  Like Annette Kellerman some thirty years later, it was Beckwith’s attire that was of just as much interest, ‘a swimming costume of light rose pink llama trimmed with white braid and lace of same colour’, and no future press report would be complete without reference to her clothing. At Horseferry Dock a salute was fired, and she was ‘encouraged with lusty cheers’. Passing Millwall, she ‘crossed to the north side and took advantage of the strong tide. At this point she was met by the saloon steamer Victoria, whose passengers were vociferous in their applause.’ She arrived at Greenwich Pier to ‘the spirited strains of “See, the Conquering Hero Comes!”’. She then swam ‘some distance beyond the pier’ before being taken on board a boat, having accomplished the distance in one hour seven minutes and ending ‘almost as fresh as when she started, and to all appearance was capable of going considerably further’. She had also ‘declined’ the offer of brandy and port wine and therefore accomplished her swim with ‘no stimulant whatsoever’.

  Was it her idea or her father’s to swim the Thames? What did she think about as she made her way down the river, and what were her mother’s views on the matter? We’ll probably never know, because there remain many gaps in the story of Agnes Beckwith. While university sports lecturers Dave Day and Keith Myerscough have recently uncovered a great deal, she remains largely unheard of, even in the world of swimming.

  Her achievement would have been astonishing. No woman had ever done what she did in the Thames, and only one man. Byron might have boasted of his swim in 1807, but that was only three miles. In 1826 the party of printers had covered four and a half miles, the Eton Psychrolutes were swimming the Thames a couple of decades later, but they were ex-public school boys, and of course the aristocratic jockeys were getting away with naked races. In terms of truly organised events the one-mile amateur championship for men had only begun in 1869, while the Lords and Commons five-mile race wouldn’t start until a couple of years later, and it would be another decade before the Amateur Swimming Association was formed. No one had succeeded in a Thames swim of this distance, except Webb the year before when he completed ‘nearly six miles’, watched by just three people.

  The following year Agnes Beckwith swam three-quarters of a mile in the River Tyne, and then ten miles from Battersea Bridge to Greenwich. Once again hundreds assembled to watch when, on 5 July 1876, she reached Greenwich after two hours and forty-three minutes. ‘Ladies who would learn to swim, take lessons of Miss Beckwith!’ reported one paper. But it then added disparagingly, ‘Miss Agnes, now you have given such ample proofs that you are a duck of a girl, stick to your proper vocation – that of teaching your sex to swim.’ Beckwith did just that, forming her own ‘talented troupe of lady swimmers’, and in the coming years she taught many women to swim, with her pupils giving benefit shows.

  She also returned to the Thames. In July 1878 her twenty-mile swim from Westminster to Richmond and back to Mortlake received huge press coverage. One journalist applauded ‘little Missie Beckwith’s marvellous swim . . . What girl will now remain ignorant of swimming?’ Press reports frequently mentioned her ‘ease and grace’ and she was nicknamed ‘the Lambeth Naiad’. The Era reported that ‘an immense number of spectators thronged’ Westminster Bridge and the Thames Embankment, and ‘accompanied’ by the steamer Matrimony, gaily ‘decorated with flags, and attended on by her father and redoubtable brother William in a skiff, the youthful water sprite, dressed in a closely-fitting amber suit, adorned with white lace, a jaunty little straw-hat, and fluttering blue ribbons, parted the waters and commenced her tedious journey at twenty-six minutes past twelve o’clock’.

  ‘The Lambeth Naiad’. Agnes Beckwith was a trailblazer in terms
of Thames swimming, but is yet to be inducted into any hall of fame.

  At Coates’s boathouse she was ‘fired at by way of encouragement, which, no doubt, was very comforting, and was certainly greatly appreciated by those on board the steamer, who cheered lustily, and probably took the compliment to themselves’. She ‘received an ovation as she glided prettily under Barnes-bridge that must have been highly gratifying’, the ‘merry young siren’ then ‘shot under Old Kew-bridge, laughing and keeping up an animated conversation with her friends’. An enormous crowd welcomed her at Richmond as she ‘floated under the picturesque bridge’ where she ‘went through numerous elegant evolutions in the water that were greatly applauded’. It was then back to Mortlake where she was greeted with the sort of enthusiasm ‘this young water-queen so unquestionably deserved’. She completed the swim in six hours twenty minutes, and it was only at Kew Bridge, after eleven miles, that she had paused to take a cup of beef tea.

  The swim was preparation for an attempt on the Channel, an ambition she had stated in the press, which would again have been unheard of for a woman and wasn’t attempted until nearly a quarter of a century later by Madame von Isacescu. But it appears this was too expensive for her father to finance, although he was now advertising her as ‘Heroine of the Thames and Tyne’.

  Like other professional swimming performers, Agnes Beckwith travelled the country giving exhibitions at seaside regattas and indoor pools. In July 1880 she spent thirty hours treading water at the Royal Aquarium, equalling a record set by Webb, in what was known as the whale tank – it had recently been home to a beluga whale which had died apparently because of mistreatment. She ate all her meals in the water and read the day’s news reports on her swim. A few months later Beckwith stayed 100 hours in the tank and once this was done she remained at the Aquarium teaching ‘ladies how they may save themselves and others from drowning . . . every afternoon and evening [she] shows the fair sex how to master the water, and swim and dive and float as dexterously as a Mermaid’. The Princess of Wales came to watch, bringing her children along, which meant Frederick could now promote his daughter as being ‘patronized by the Royal Family’.

  Agnes Beckwith (in the middle) travelled the country giving exhibition shows with her ‘troupe of lady swimmers’.

  In 1882 Beckwith was being billed as ‘the premier lady swimmer of the world’ at a farewell benefit at the Aquarium, before she set off for a tour of the United States where the New York Times commented, ‘unlike most female performers, Miss Beckwith is pretty’. She swam in France and Belgium, and in 1887 took part in P.T. Barnum’s Greatest Show on Earth at Madison Square Garden. The same year the Princess of Wales took her daughters to the swimming annexe of the Westminster Aquarium to let Beckwith ‘inspire them with a love for the delightful art’.

  Her impact on the world of swimming, as with her successors Annette Kellerman and Mercedes Gleitze, was enormous, but there has been no induction into any hall of fame for Agnes Beckwith. Yet her 1875 Thames swim was still well known nearly forty years later. In his 1914 book Swimming, Montague Holbein cites her in his chapter entitled ‘Long-distance Swimmers and their Feats’. First comes Lord Byron, then Dr Beadale of Manchester, J.B. Johnson, Boyton, Webb, and Cavill, then finally Agnes Beckwith whose five-mile swim, according to Holbein, was for a wager of £100.

  In 1916, when Eileen Lee swam thirty-six miles from Teddington, the British press still remembered Beckwith. She was the ‘pioneer of long distance swimming for ladies’ and her twenty-mile swim in 1878 had stood as a record until Lee beat it. The Australian press remembered her, too; an article in 1911 on ‘LADY SWIMMERS SOME AMAZING FEATS’ by the Adelaide Advertiser opens with: ‘There must be people still living who looked on with amazement, one day in 1875, as Miss Agnes Beckwith stepped out of the water at Greenwich “fresh as paint” after swimming from London bridge.’ It then quotes ‘sporting baronet’ the late Sir John Astley: ‘If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I shouldn’t have believed it was possible . . . After this I quite believe that the day will come when women will beat men in the water, whatever they do on land. I shall not live to see the day, but it will come.’ The Advertiser then names Beckwith’s rivals, Emily Parker, Lizzie Gillespie and Annie Johnson, and comments, ‘the woman of today, where she has not improved on these performances, has proved a worthy successor of these pioneer mermaids’. The paper goes on to cite Ethel Littlewood, Lily Smith, Claire Parlett, Vera Neave (who, in 1914, was the ‘best distance swimmer the world has seen’), Olive Carson and Mme Isacesen, before turning its attention to their own Annette Kellerman. So, while the British and Australian press once placed Agnes Beckwith firmly where she belonged, as the first woman to swim a notable distance in the Thames, who has heard of her today and how many of these other women are household names?

  Just like Kellerman, Agnes Beckwith also had firm views on women and swimming, telling the press it was the ‘best exercise’, developed the figure ‘to a marvellous degree’, and improved ‘the chest and arms wonderfully’. It promoted circulation and gave a healthy appetite, and for those who wanted ‘to cultivate pure muscle’ the overhand method was best. ‘One of its little known advantages,’ she said, ‘lies in its being a preventive of rheumatism, and I don’t know any swimmer who is troubled with that malady. It is also quite invaluable as a cold cure.’ Again like Kellerman, she also linked swimming with weight: ‘strangely enough, swimming has a fattening effect, and many of us find a difficulty in keeping down flesh.’

  Swimming professor Hobson Bocock whose 1888 ‘self instruction’ swimming cards were aimed at ‘both sexes’ thanks to pioneers such as Agnes Beckwith.

  By now the press was urging that all girls and women should know how to swim; ‘no girl’s education should be considered complete before she is able to swim well,’ declared the Penny Illustrated Paper. In 1899, for ‘one night only!’, Beckwith performed at the new Lambeth Baths as ‘Champion Lady Swimmer of the World’. She was still holding exhibitions as well as teaching in the early 1900s. By now she had married theatrical agent William Taylor, their son was born in 1903 and five years later he was performing alongside his mother as ‘the youngest swimmer in the world’. She performed for visitors to the Industrial Exhibition in Manchester in 1910, but a year later was calling herself an ex-professional swimmer.

  What happened to Agnes Beckwith after this remained a mystery for a long time, and it took sports lecturer Dave Day and his partner Margaret ten years to establish when and where she died. Dave’s original interest came through researching Frederick Beckwith, whose biography he wrote for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. It was only very recently that he was able to update Agnes’ entry. After her first husband died she married again and then, widowed for a second time, she moved in with her son, William. In 1948 the family sailed for South Africa and settled in Port Elizabeth. Agnes Beckwith died at the age of ninety at Nazareth House, a care home run by Nazarene nuns, in 1951. She was buried in the South End cemetery, where her name appears on a memorial plaque listing patients cared for by the nuns. To Dave, it was her career that helped to ‘pave the way for the British women who represented their country’ in the 1912 Olympics.

  Sports lecturer Keith Myerscough, meanwhile, first came across Agnes while researching the Blackpool Tower’s Aquatic and Variety Circus. ‘A programme for 1895 revealed an astonishing scene of swimmers conducting acrobatics in the water!’ he says. ‘I was hooked. Agnes Beckwith was a true pioneer of swimming for females. She alone was responsible for making swimming in public a respectable activity. Her amazing feats were the equal of most male swimmers, which gave her a mythical aura that legitimised swimming as a profession. Countless working-class females escaped the factories to earn a living in an activity – synchronised swimming – that would eventually become a sport.’

  Emily Parker, meanwhile, whom Beckwith had beaten to her intended swim from London Bridge to Greenwich, also completed some major Thames swims. She was said to be
just a few months older than Beckwith when in September 1875 she also set off from London Bridge, this time to Blackwall. Like Beckwith, she was a professional swimmer who had performed in many English towns, and again like Beckwith she had a brother, Harry, who was ‘the champion of London’. The press reported that her appearances were made under his tuition.

  At five o’clock on Saturday afternoon a river steamer ‘conveyed the heroine of the evening’ to London Bridge. Parker, ‘dressed in appropriate costume, descended into a wherry with her brother and her pilot. At once the boat shot out into the stream, and having passed under the bridge . . . amid much cheering, which Miss Parker gracefully acknowledged, the young swimmer plunged quietly into the Thames.’ The river police kept the Thames free from the obstruction of seventy or eighty wherries ‘as well as they were able’, while Harry stood in the accompanying boat ‘with all his natatory honours thick upon him’.

  Parker used a ‘vigorous breast stroke’ and never showed ‘the slightest sign of fatigue’. River pistols, guns and small cannon were fired from various points as she made her progress down the Thames, and ‘sailors in the ships cheered as the swimmer and the river mob which followed went past’. Just before seven she arrived opposite Greenwich Pier, where several thousands were waiting along the Embankment hoping to catch sight of her, but had to ‘content themselves with cheering while the black patch on the water rapidly drifted in the gathering twilight towards Blackwall’.

  In the ‘half obscured light of the moon’ Parker reached Blackwall Pier and was taken on board the steamer in a ‘most vivacious mood’. Her time was one hour thirty-seven minutes. She had successfully eclipsed Beckwith’s swim from London Bridge to Greenwich ‘by going a stage further’. But, once again, the press were not entirely supportive. ‘While we admire the endurance and skill of these young ladies,’ commented The Graphic, ‘we hardly like young ladies indulging in this public exhibition of their natatory abilities.’