This early photograph shows a group of people in the surf. It appears to be a cropped image estimated to be from 1885. That date is probably wrong, however, since the photo is also identified as “Maidstone Club Bathers,” and the Maidstone Club was founded in 1891.
The people in the image are unidentified, with one exception, Dr. Everett Herrick (1830-1914), the mustachioed man with sideburns looking at the camera toward the right side. In Jeannette Edwards Rattray’s history of the Maidstone Club’s early years, members vividly recalled Dr. Herrick’s swimsuit as a blue flannel outfit reaching to his calves, trimmed with white braid.
He is surrounded by a crowd of children and teens, along with a few young men, but there seem to be no adult women swimming. This may be explained by a combination of Victorian ideas about modesty and the subsequent long dresses worn by female bathers at the time. The cumbersome bathing suits may also explain why so few of the bathers appear to have ventured past the breaking surf.
Dr. Herrick took it upon himself to enforce these standards, notoriously berating anyone he found to be dressed too immodestly for bathing.
His word was nearly law, and he would test the water temperature every year, declaring when the ocean was “safe” for swimming. As Ruth Moran recalled, Dr. Herrick’s authority partly stemmed from his role as “family physician for most of us,” although his role as a co-founder of the Maidstone Club also certainly added to his authority. The first meeting of the club was held at his home, Pudding Hill.
Others felt that their tolerance for his attitudes on community behavior stemmed from the extreme generosity and early support the doctor and his wife, Harriet Ford Herrick (1848-1912), offered civic projects here.
—
Andrea Meyer is the head of the Long Island Collection at the East Hampton Library.
