RIVER COSTUMES

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 74, 25 September 1934, Page 14

RIVER COSTUMES

QUARREL OVER THAMES

The problem- as to wiiat costumes sunbathers !ori the Thames Kiver should wear has led to a difference of opinion between the Thames Conservancy and tho Minister of Transport, Mr. HorcBelisha, says the "Daily Telegraph."

A deadlock has been reached, and for the moment the sunbathers are free to please themselves, subject to the ordinary limitations imposed by law.

In response to complaints they had received the Conservancy made the following new bylaw: "No person while ou board a vessel shall enter or be in any lock on the Thames wearing less than full rowing costume or full university bathing costume."

Any bylaws passed by the Thames Conservancy must receive the approval of the Ministry before they can be enforced, but' Mr. Hore-Belisha-has refused to pass this. • It isUhe first time in the seventy-seven years'" existence of the Conservancy that a Minister has vetoed... a bylaw. .

Mr. F. W. Geary, secretary of the Thames Conservancy, told a representative of the "Daily Telegraph" ihat the bylaw had been framed only after attempts at "peaceful persuasion" had failed.

"l^or^ some time," lie said, "our officials tried to persuade persons wearing these scanty costumes to put on a coat or other covering, while passing through the lock. In almost every ease they were met with1 a point-blank refusal, often accompanied by the derision of people standing at the lock side. Men are the worst offenders. It was for this reason that the bylaw was decided on.

"After a fine Sunday my telephone bell would ring incessantly and hundreds of complaints wquld be made of 'not too nice' costumes seen in the Thames locks.

'' We are not prudish, but some of the costumes, while probably all right in an open space, are not proper in the narrow confines of a lock.

"A few years ago women wore exquisite river dresses and set a fashion, Today they wear as little as possible.

-- '' Wo tried to frame a regulation that would be a middle course between the' extremes of dress and undress. At present you have the 'extraordinary position that people are obliged to wear more when they are in the water than when they arc on it.

."All our bylaw sought to do was to lay down that people should not wear less when they are passing thVough a lock in a boat than when they are bathing in the river." ■-