‘Scanty and immodest.’ Biloxi arrested people for wearing bathing suits 100 years ago.
Because they walked Beach Boulevard in one-piece bathing suits but without the rest of their bodies properly covered, Fred Randall and Leo Bickman were fined $64.10 each, plus court costs. Biloxi police warned them not to do it again.
Huh? For true?
Yes, but this happened 100 years ago. May 24, 1920, was a lovely, sunny Saturday on the Mississippi Coast.
How beach fashion has changed in a century! Skimpy bikinis had yet to make the Memorial Day Weekend beach scene. That wouldn’t come until May 1946, when a Paris designer introduced the aptly named bikini four days after the first public atomic bomb test exploded on the Pacific’s Bikini Atoll in the ever-mounting Cold War.
Back to 1920 and Randall-Bickman. As Police Chief Bills hauled them into court, they pleaded ignorance of a bathing suit law signed 11 days earlier by Biloxi Mayor John Kennedy, who was both ridiculed and praised across the country for enacting Ordinance No. 512:
“Whereas persons have from time to time appeared on the beach and upon the highways, sidewalks and other public places in the City of Biloxi, Mississippi, clad in scanty and immodest bathing suits and whereas the appearance of such persons in such public places so clad is inimical to public morals resulting in public nuisance, therefore be it ordained by the Mayor and Board of Councilmen as follows:
“...That it shall be unlawful for any person over the age of 14 to appear in any public place, on the beach or elsewhere in the Biloxi clad in a one-piece bathing suit, or for any person over the age of 14 years to appear in any public place or on the beach or elsewhere in what is commonly known as a trunk bathing suits.
“...It shall be unlawful for any person to appear on any Biloxi street or to loiter in any public place off of the beach attired in a bathing costume, unless said person wears a suitable robe covering the body from shoulders to below the knees.
“...Be it further ordained that any person violating any provision of this ordinance shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction shall be fined not less than $5 nor no more than $100, or be imprisoned for a period not exceeding 15 days or both...”
Wow! Was the ordinance repealed or is it still on the books as spring breakers and others walk beach roads in revealing 21st Century beach finery?
A $100 fine in 1920 would be $1,282 today. A $5 fine, what the men paid, would be $64.10 today, That was the minimum but still a lot to pay for wearing one-piece, trunk-style suits becoming fashionable in other parts of the world, although plenty of moralist wagged their fingers.
In 1920, the so-called Roaring ‘20s was just beginning. Men and women tossed aside traditional and sometimes lawfully mandated moral standards for a more free-wheeling popular culture. Women abandoned tight corsets and ankle hemlines. New styles of social interaction emerged.
Men and women became emboldened in what they drank, danced, ate and wore, especially rejecting the cover-all, cumbersome and swim-restricting bathing costumes held over from Victorian times. The naysayers didn’t realize that if Roaring ’20s adherents wanted to step back into time, they’d swim naked like Roman men and women.
Randall and Bickman were the first convicted and fined under Biloxi’s new ordinance. Court costs weren’t revealed in the arrest news article.
“It is a fact that persons have more freedom and can swim with much more ease when attired in these suits,” The Daily Herald admitted, “but it is improper to wear them over the public highways and places where bathing is not permissible. Moral: Bathing suits are made for bathing but not for evening dress.”
The Herald editor was not alone with his opinions of one-piece swimsuits.
Two weeks after the arrests came this: “Pass Christian Wants Ordinance.” In explaining that the Pass was passing a similar law, the Herald observed, “Due to the benefit derived from the original ordinance in Biloxi is it expected that Bay St. Louis will be the next Coast resort to adopt a similar bathing ordinance.
Sure to follow was Gulfport, considered the young upstart of Coast towns and founded by Protestants instead of the more relaxed Catholics of older towns.
Biloxi made its second bathing suit arrests in June, with two couples from Mobile wearing one-piece suits in their car while driving the beach. They claimed ignorance of the law, and the judge didn’t make them pay the fines. After all, they were tourists, not locals.
The Roaring ‘20s roared as the Coast profited from its natural beaches, great hotels, dance pavilions, fishing and lax enforcement of Prohibition booze. If Coast resort towns wanted to continue roaring, they’d need to change attitudes about swimsuits. They did.
Kat Bergeron, a veteran feature writer specializing in Gulf Coast history and sense of place, is retired from the Sun Herald. She writes the Mississippi Coast Chronicles column as a freelance correspondent. Reach her at BergeronKat@gmail.com or at Southern Possum Tales, P.O. Box 33, Barboursville, VA 22923.