Imagine the horror of a Victorian couple taking their Sunday stroll in London to encounter a large group of poor urchins stripped entirely naked and enjoying some nude bathing in the river Thames. This was the disagreeable spectacle reported in the Chelsea News in September, 1883. Something had to be done about it!
It seems this was a growing problem at the time:
“Juvenile bathing in frequented parts of the Thames is at all times objectionable, but the conversion of the trench which runs between the most of the Bishop of London’s palace and the river to such a purpose is a nuisance which not for an instance to be tolerated.”
A group of about 12 to 16 boys from the slums, “innocent of any costume whatever”, were “dabbling” in the little sluice of water around this ancient building where the moat was supplied by water from the river Thames. Most appalling, to the newspaper reporter, was that three or four girls were standing nearby as spectators.
“Surely if such disgusting sights as these are to be witnessed in one of the most frequented, as it is one of the prettiest, walks of Fulham on a Sunday afternoon, we need no wonder if the moral tone of the rising generation is not so high as we could wish.”
But nude bathing in Victorian London was clearly catching on as the reporter warned his readers that similar scenes of depravity could also be seen at the river in Battersea, near Albert Bridge.
