Q.  Sea Bathing: When did sea-bathing become first fashionable in England ? I do not remember any mention of sea-baths in medi�val writers, and do not imagine sea-baths to have been widely used for sanatory purposes before our German kings began their dynasty. I do not think either Swift, Pope or Addison alludes to sea-bathing. Did not tea and port wine gradually undermine our national constitution and lead to the necessity of summer grapples with old Neptune and pleasant dalliance with his nymphs? In Smollett's "Humphrey Clinker", all readers of that work will remember a celebrated sea-bathing scene. For a long time I thought that the discovery of iodine and bromine in salt water had led to the increase of marine bathing; but I find that iodine was not discovered till 1812, nor bromine till 1826. Was Brighton the first fashionable bathing-place, or not ?

Walter Thornbury.

A.  In the First volume of Cowper's Poems, published in 1782, the following verse occur:

     Your prudent grandmammas, je modern belles,
     Content with Bristol, Bath and Tunbridge Wells,
     When health required it, would consent to roam,
     Else more attached to pleasures found at home;
     But now alike, gay widow, virgin, wife,
     Ingenious to diversify dull life
     In coaches, chaises, caravans, and hoys,
     Fly to the coast for daily, nightly joys;
     And all, impatient of dry land, agree
     With one consent to rush into the sea.

Retirem�nt

The foregoing affords a clue to the date required. Weymouth was the resort of royalty, and Margate of the cits (who went thither in the hoy); while Brighton was only a small fishing place, brought into note first as a watering-place by George IV when Prince of Wales.

Z.Z.

Notes and Queries Vol. 8 3rd S. (183) Jul 1 1865 Page 10

Notes and Queries Vol. 8 3rd S. (185) Jul 15 1865 Page 58

^ back to top ^