Healthy Lifestyles: Exercise, Sport and Health

Cradle to Grave Lecture 8

Themes• New ideas of health and exercise cultures from

Victorian period• Largely voluntary and commercial – little state

involvement• For men emerge mid-19th century, women late 19th –

fused with Empire/Imperial concerns• Physical culture movement – endures till 2WW• Physical education at school• Health education – diet, hygienic citizenship• Engages different stages of life cycle in different eras –

men and boys, women and girls, middle aged and most recently elderly men and women

Life cycle and fitness

Sport as remedial health – school as early site of exercise and sport

• Debates about mind and body, over-pressure and moderation – late 19th century

• Mens sana in corpore sano

Sport, public schools and gender• Muscular Christianity and regulated games – ethos of

public school – character building e.g. Thomas Arnold at Rugby. Godliness = manliness (cricket, football, rugby, fencing). Preparation for role as rulers of Imperial nation.

• Importance of team sports – character building• Filter down social class – football, rugby – to produce

physical improvement in ‘degenerate populations’.• Sport is laden with rituals, symbols and preconceptions

which reinforce certain social values – initially seen as masculine, ideal woman antithetical to sport.

• Women’s entry to sport significant part of general movement for female emancipation and demands for equality.

Women and exercise• Towards end of 19th century women take up range of new

sports, gymnastics and exercise.• Debates on suitability – many centre on health as well as

etiquette and appropriateness.• Exercise cultures in home – promoted in health advice

literature for women and girls (housework also framed as exercise).

• Girls schools actively promote healthful activities – gymnastics, games and sport, as well as training in domestic science and lectures on health.

• New literature for women – advice literature, magazines and periodicals advise on exercise as means of improving health and physique and beauty.

Gymnastics• Adopted in schools, including

elementary schools for girls (Martina Bergman Ősterberg appointed to London School Board to promote exercise in schools, later sets up first training college for PE for girls in Dartford)

• Private gymnasia for girls set up and promoted in girls’ magazines.

• 1899 Girl’s Realm magazine advised ‘modern girls’ to pay weekly visit to gym.

Cycling for health

• 1880s onwards cycling increased in popularity – cycle craze of mid-1890s (1.5 million cyclists in UK, 1898 2,000 cycle clubs, by 1896 one-third women’s cycles)

• Moved from being aristocratic sport, to middle-class and as cycles became cheaper working class.

• Concerns about cyclists and impact on health: - accidents, overstrain, infection of bladder, overtaxing

muscles, hernias, nervous disorders – disorders such as ‘bicycle hand’, ‘cyclists spine’ and vibration and fatigue fever.

- for women also concerns about damage to reproductive organs though this was short-lived.

• (Modern Records Centre at Warwick has National Cycle Archive)

Cycling and risk• Concern that cycling would

lead to deterioration in female character – over-athleticism, loss of femininity and mere muscular achievement (‘Bicycle face’)

• Dangers of competition and racing, over-exertion

• By turn of century recognition that cycling beneficial for boosting health - improved ‘nerves’, prevented hysteria, good for anaemia, improved circulation and digestion, etc.

Zander’s exercise equipment

Swedish physician and inventor of therapeutic exercise regime and machines. New equipment entered

home – middle-class consumption of health products

Health in Moderation• Ideas of ‘moderation’ important for both sexes, but especially

women and girls (fixed fund of energy!), yet sport recommended on grounds of health:

• ‘Archery improves the chest, throws back the shoulders, thus improving the figure, and develops the muscles… Croquet has improved the health and happiness of womankind more than any game before invented…. ‘ (Dr Pye Henry Chavasse, Advice to a Mother, 1889).

• Exercise according to educator Ernest Lowe ‘The young women of to-day are finer to look at, straighter, taller, more wholesome looking, than were those of thirty years ago… The girl who formerly was lackadaisical and languid – never absolutely ill… but never at the same time entirely well, always suffering from some trifling ailment, which made her and every one with whom she came into contact miserable – becomes literally a “new woman”’. (Chambers’ Journal, 1899).

• Also character building – especially team sports.

Physical culture• Entrepreneurs – physical culturists (e.g. Bernarr

MacFadden, Eugene Sandow)• Coincided with revival of Olympic Games early 20th century• Sandow built physical training empire – settled England

1897. Institute of Physical Culture, magazines and books – ‘educator and savior-by-example’ in improving physical stock of deteriorating nations (Dorothy Porter)

• Lobbied Education Dept (George Newman) to adopt his system in schools – but Ling method (from Sweden) widely taken up by late 19th century in schools

• MacFadden American physical culturist, but influential in UK – publishing empire (Physical Culture). Proponent of fasting to increase strength

Eugene Sandow – showman and body builder

• Institutes of Physical Culture and book publishing

Physical Culture Creed, c.1934

Physical Culture

Health and Beauty• Relationship established early 20thC between health and

beauty, and character for women and gilrs: ‘there can be no beauty without health’ (Dr Gordon Stables, 1891); ‘No amount of “making up” can replace the glow of health in a clean skin, the gloss of well-nourished hair, and the full development of trained muscles. The girl who would be attractive to look upon must be good throughout’ (Amy Barnard, 1909); ‘If a girl sits down to a potato and pickles, strong tea, pies, cakes, ices, and fiery condiments, she will not hold her beauty. As a result, when the girl is twenty her eyes are dull, teeth yellow, gums pale, lips wan, flesh flaccid, and skin unyielding. Recourse is had to padding, face washes, stains and belladonna (article in Good Health magazine, 1895).

• Hygiene, diet, exercise and good character all connected – responsibility for health and body management.

Ideas of health and the healthy body• Health crazes, mass health cultures – also upheld Imperial

ideology • Yet largely non-state – commercial and voluntary interests• Health education campaigns addressed via organisations

like New Health Society (1925), Sunlight League (1924), vegetarian movement, nudism, as well as campaigns via advice literature, newspapers (e.g. Daily Mail) and film. Health exhibitions, health weeks and public talks.

• Healthy eating, living and exercise becoming ‘industrial complex’

• ‘Physical culture patriotism’ endured until 2ndWW (physical fitness, dietary reform, hygiene, alternative healing, dress reform, sun bathing, hiking, etc.)

• More leisure, rising affluence, reduced hours of work, holidays – entitlement to leisure

New Health Society• Founded Sir William Arbuthnot Lane 1925• To convert a rapidly degenerating community into a

nation of ‘healthy, vigorous members’ • Social Darwinism, ideas of national fitness and

eugenics combined with utopian body practices and progressive gender ideology.

• Largely ignored relationship between poverty and ill health – emphasised character and self-discipline ‘managing the body’ – unrest and discontent among workers due to lowered condition of health and vitality.

• Very ‘political’ organisation

Sir William Arbuthnot Lane (1856-1943)• Health rules – diet, fresh

air, sunlight, loose clothing (dress reform), personal hygiene and exercise. Theory of auto-intoxication.

• Birth control (Marie Stopes and Ettie Rout members (racial health))

• New Health Society folder 1937 with Lane’s retirement, though journal New Health continued.

Physical education• Since late 19thC attempts to provide PE in schools (largely

drill).• Seen as means of ameliorating impact of urban life – also

undertook school journeys and holidays (supported by Education Authorities, LEAs) and Camp Schools.

• Belief gymnastics/sport could relieve health problems (from flat feet and curvature of spine to general health/ability to resist disease and mental ‘backwardness’) – shift from environment to personal health. Cheap way of improving children’s health.

• 1920s particularly significant – physical education became ‘the supreme method of medicine in behalf [sic] of the normal school child’ (George Newman). Also intended to ‘mask’ problems of malnutrition in children.

Voluntarism• British tradition of games playing cf. continental

dictatorships – voluntary and amateur.• Responding to idea of having physical education talks on

radio, Sunday Times wrote in 1926 ‘What next! Shall we have State breakfast hints, or tooth-cleaning drill, or possibly Government golf. We may be a C3 nation, but at least we preserve our individuality’.

• Expenditure on PE at schools modest and facilities poor – lack of playing fields and other facilities.

• Voluntary organisations like Scouts (1907) and Guides (1910), boys and girls clubs, Youth Hostel Association, Ramblers Association promote exercise and outdoor pursuits. Though had imperial designs, also set up to promote health and inclusiveness.

Women’s League of Health and Beauty, launched 1930 Mary Bagot Stack and daughter Prunella

Membership 100,000 by 1939 (‘keep fit’, racial health, physical culture and fun and friendship)

State involvement• George Newman, Chief Medical Officer – Central

Council for Health Education (Society Medical Officers of Health) 1927

• Better Health journal• Local authorities organise Health Weeks and

lectures but much of this activity remains voluntary• 1937 Physical Training and Recreation Act –

established local authority facilities, particularly sports grounds (after 1936 Berlin Olympics!) – yet little money put into establishment of services

Health and sport – 2nd half of 20th century• Second phase of growth in culture of getting fit in 1980s –

aerobic exercise, fitness training.• Healthy body is ‘a social map of economic power’ (still

associated with responsibility and social duty – ‘elite citizenship’ according to Dorothy Porter)

• White Paper, Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation (1999) argues ‘good physical education and school sports provision essential to the foundation of lifelong positive attitudes towards health and fitness’.

• Sport for girls said to increase confidence, reduce incidence of eating disorders and even unplanned pregnancies.

• Still concept of national fitness? Who responsible – state, individuals, voluntary organisation?

Conclusion• Many aspects of sport and exercise cultures in

20thC deep-seated political connections• Relationship with gender and particularly women’s

emancipation• Sport and exercise promoted as key aspect of

building blocks of health• Harnessed media and commerce• Limited role for state – despite fact largely about

nation’s health• Connects to ideas of ‘modernity’