Eric Fraser - the Masher and the Bathing Belle

It’s the turn of the egregious Masher and the chaste Bathing Belle today. Perennially camera shy, the Masher was a popular subject for cartoonists in magazines like Punch and Passing Show who made fun of his over estimation of his appeal to the opposite sex. Sensing his attempt to transcend the barriers of class, they sneered at his sartorial efforts to pass himself off as a dandy. Here he is portrayed as a weedy cigar-smoking weakling leading a trio of decorous innocents into dangerous waters where aquatic frolics could soon go wrong. In the second image his roving eye directs his male gaze on to the most conspicuous  unattached females. The British comic postcard was a popular subject for collectors, though I suspect the numbers are rapidly dwindling. I find them hard to take thanks to the combination of clumsy drawing and coy innuendo.

Images of Bathing Belles are ambiguous figures, composed to project mild titillation while  embodying maidenly virtues. Victorian anxieties around uncontrollable passions triggered by glimpses of female flesh inspired a wide range of modesty-preserving costumes for the female swimmer. On postcards their expressions often suggest deep discomfort with the effort of flirtation. After the Great War attitudes and fashions changed to favour female exposure over concealment and postcards uneasily reflected that, whilst trying to avoid offending older generations who held to their puritan instincts. Many modern reproductions of Victorian swimwear can be found on eBay - perfect if you’re planning a John Ruskin-themed beach party. 

 

Eric Fraser at the Seaside

Eric Fraser designed and illustrated this ad for Guinness for publication in the summer of 1951 - the year of the Festival of Britain on London’s South Bank. A gallery of Victorian seaside characters has been assembled in a nostalgic exercise, celebrating the past.  A curiosity of the Festival iconography is the prevalence of Victorian associations and imagery in an exercise designed to embrace the excitement of the future. Most of these stereotypes have long receded into history but the Masher is still with us, though he has swapped the promenade for the manosphere and the dating app. The Punch and Judy Man and the Pierrot were key players in the world of seaside entertainment - a major activity in the first half of the last century, rapidly moving towards extinction by 1951. The concealed charms of the Bathing Belle had given way to a new era of exposure and the prudish Bathing Machine (beach hut on wheels, usually horse-drawn) had long since performed its final trundle along the English foreshore. Producers of vintage postcards captured all these characters at the height of their powers - some examples are posted below. Often they are incidental captures, minor parts of a much broader picture but occasionally a more imaginative photographer will focus on the documentary detail. The Masher was a figure of fun and more likely to turn up on hand drawn illustration postcards. This selection starts at Hastings with a Punch and Judy show of modest dimensions, then moves on to Scarborough, Millport, Clacton and other resorts where Pierrots and Minstrels take to the stage, to be followed by some more generic examples. In another post, the Masher and the Bathing Belle will be considered.

 

Misleading Postcard Captions

At the height of the picture postcard boom, the volume of publishers, local, national and international, piling into the industry drove competition to unprecedented levels. As business always does, cost-cutting became the default setting for lazy operators. Quality declined as cheaper card and economy printing with unstable inks produced cards that faded as rapidly as they disintegrated. Publishers developed generic subject cards - stormy seas, sunsets - that could be sold in almost any location with a local caption, from Maine to Florida. More dishonest was the practice of labelling a card with various place names to suggest a local connection that didn’t really exist. Here’s a few examples that have come my way over the years - there must be many, many more.

 

Fire over America

It’s a dangerous occupation so firefighters are heroes everywhere (other than those who start their own fires) and nowhere more so than in the US.  Serving as the guardians of their community and emblems of selfless devotion to duty, they pose on these postcards inside their vehicles or standing to attention outside their fire stations. The men of the Salvage Corps in Newark exhibit an air of grim resolve as they prepare for their next assignment.  Edward Croker was appointed Chief Fire Officer for the city of New York in 1899 at the age of only 35. He led by example and attended every major fire in the city, often first on the scene thanks to his automobile outrunning the teams of horses that carried his comrades. After leaving the Fire Department he became an advocate and promoter of fire prevention.

Equipped with water pumps and access beneath the hull to an unlimited water supply, construction of special purpose Fire Boats began in the early 1900s. Equally effective at extinguishing waterfront fires as those onboard ship. In Seattle the Duwamish went into service in 1909 - after retirement in 1985 the vessel was preserved as a National Monument. Opportunistic postcard businesses appear to have used the same images, with extensive but clumsy retouching on the pairs of cards from New York. Postcards of burning buildings in San Francisco and Chicago (where extreme cold is freezing the water jets on contact) follow. The final item is a memorial in Hoboken where the local community honours the fire crew who perished in the line of duty.

High Level Bridge over the Tyne

The ensemble of bridges old and new that cross the River Tyne between Newcastle and Gateshead offers an unusually varied assortment of types for the connoisseur of all things pontine. The best views of this can be seen from the High Level Bridge, a double decker construction where trains run over the top while road traffic and pedestrians share the lower deck. Victorian railway development reached a frenzied climax in the mid 19th. century and the origins of this bridge lie in the protracted conflicts between rival promoters in a saga too tedious to repeat here. When the dust settled, the chosen design was the work of Robert Stephenson (son of the famous railway pioneer, George Stephenson). Wrought iron construction and a bow-string structure were specified. Building began in 1847 and all was complete in time for Queen Victoria to perform the opening ceremony in September 1849. Walking over the bridge is an exhilarating experience - trains still pass overhead but road traffic is restricted to southbound buses and taxis, the views downstream are spectacular and the curiously deserted roadway encased in structural steel has an unsettling quality.  Historic England has the bridge listed at Grade 1.