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 – overathleticism, 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
New equipment entered
home – middle-class
consumption of health
products
Swedish physician and inventor of
therapeutic exercise regime and
machines.
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 selfdiscipline ‘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 autointoxication.
• 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’