Joyce Cooper winner of the
1931 Women’s Long
Distance Swimming
Championship from
Mortlake to Putney, one of
several long-distance
Thames races for women.In 1939, meanwhile, the
Thames women’s race from
Kew to Putney was won by
Ruth Langer, an eighteen-
year-old Austrian refugee.
Also a noted swimmer, three
years earlier Langer had
refused to take part in the