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How a swimsuit got a woman arrested at Revere Beach in 1907
Annette Kellerman became a symbol for personal freedom by defying the expectations of full-coverage swimwear for women at the time.
In 1907, a single bold swimsuit turned a day at Revere Beach into a scandal — and made one Australian swimmer a symbol of changing times.
Annette Kellerman, a record-breaking swimmer and vaudeville performer, was arrested at Revere Beach for public indecency. The cause? Her decision to defy the modest bathing gowns of the era by wearing a one-piece swimsuit that revealed her legs. Kellerman’s arrest ignited conversations about women’s freedom and shifting social norms at the beach.
Who is Annette Kellerman?
Born in 1886 in the Sydney suburb of Marrickville, Annette Kellerman would become a global sensation – a pioneering athlete, silent film star, and health guru.
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Diagnosed with rickets as a child, Kellerman wore steel leg braces until she discovered swimming as a way to build strength. The water didn’t just heal her – it became her stage.
She left Australia at 18 for London and quickly made headlines attempting the near-impossible: swimming across the English Channel.
“She got three-quarters of the way across the [English] channel, in 10.5 hours, in 1905,” according to a 1953 Boston Sunday Globe article, “a record at the time and an attempt that captured the attention of the world.”
Though she didn’t finish, the effort alone was enough to capture public attention – especially when she did it in a one-piece bathing suit. It was a bold rejection of the full-coverage, multi-layered swimwear women in the early 20th century were expected to wear.
“Most women at the time would have thrown a skirt over their swimsuit and called it a day,” Haley Shapley, a journalist specializing in fitness, told WBUR. “But Annette didn’t want to constrict her movement. So instead she sewed some black tights into the bottom of the suit.”
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That moment marked the start of her most enduring contribution: changing how women dressed for the water.
“She expanded the accepted notions of what was proper, in terms of bodily display,” Peter Cox, curator of the 2016 Million Dollar Mermaid: Annette Kellerman exhibition at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, told the BBC, “and made it possible for a generation of women to learn to swim.”
How Annette Kellerman’s swimsuit got her arrested at Revere Beach
Her penchant for dramatic flair hit a high in 1907 at Revere Beach just north of Boston. Stepping onto the sand in her one-piece bathing suit, Kellerman was promptly arrested. Though her suit covered far more than a modern bikini, it was revolutionary – and scandalous – at the time.
“Me, arrested!” she recalled in the 1953 Globe article. “We were all terribly shocked, especially my father, for I was his innocent protected little girl. But the judge was quite nice and allowed me to wear the suit if I would wear a full-length cape to the water’s edge.”
Boston.com asked the Revere Police Department and Massachusetts State Police for records of her arrest, though both said their records don’t date back that far.
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Despite the scandal, or perhaps because of it, her fame surged. The same legs that triggered outrage also propelled her to record-breaking success. In 1908, she swam 26 miles from Dover to Ramsgate, set a record for staying underwater for more than three minutes.
The director of Harvard University’s Hemenway Gymnasium, Dudley Sargent, declared Kellermann the closest “to a perfectly proportioned woman.”
“Among the many thousands who have been examined at the gymnasium, not one has fulfilled every requirement. Annette Kellermann, the professional swimmer, whom he examined not long ago, is near the ideal type,” a New York Times article published about the study on Dec. 4, 1910 said.
As years passed, her fame didn’t fade – it evolved. Kellerman starred in silent films, including the extravagant 1914 spectacle “Neptune’s Daughter,” and the controversial 1916 film “A Daughter of the Gods,” in which she allegedly became the first major actress to perform in a nude scene on screen.
She wrote books and gave health lectures, and encouraged girls to partake in exercise – particularly long-distance swimming – despite social expectations discouraging it.
But when it came to pushing swimwear even further with the bikini, the woman once credited for “liberating beachwear” with her one-piece drew the line.
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“The bikini bathing suit is a mistake,” she said in the Globe article. “The bikini shows too much. It shows a line that makes the leg look ugly, even with the best of figures. A body is at its most beautiful when there is one beautiful, unbroken line.”
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