Downstream

could successfully compete in
a male arena.
Thousands gathered on
banks and bridges to watch
teenage champions such as
Agnes Beckwith, ‘the
youthful water sprite’, Emily
Parker, the ‘heroine of the
Thames’, and famed diver
Marie Finney.
By the 1890s there were
men-only swimming clubs all
along the Thames – in
Oxford, Reading, Henley,