ABSTRACT
Social approbation and concerns about what constituted correct behaviour were pivotal in the development of early beach cultures in Australasia. Around the turn of the twentieth century Victorian ideals of decorum and modesty determined most social activities on the beach. Conservative Christian moralists stood at the centre of these ideals. Freud called them 'agents of disgust' ,2 more popularly they were known as Mrs Grundies. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Mrs Grundy represents the tyranny of social opinion in matters of conventional propriety.3 The legalization of daylight bathing in Australia in the early twentieth century marked a major defeat for her and a fundamental shift in the regulation of the body from moral doctrine to medical science, although, as we shall learn, conservative Christian attitudes towards public bathing still persist. This chapter discusses the tensions that simmered between Christianity, which frowned upon public displays of the body during bathing, and medical science that actively encouraged bathing as a corporeal panacea.
