Strange Times 164: 100 Bathing Girls

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Today we have women stricken with overstudy, censored in Atlantic City and set free in Somers Point. Show some ankle on…

June 13, 1921

• The father of Giuseppe Verotta, the kidnapped five-year-old boy, identifies a body found in the Hudson river as that of his son. “Those are my boy’s feet,” he whispers. “I take his stockings off every night. They are his feet. His hands. I know his hands.”

• The director of the upcoming “Anti-Dry Parade” expects half a million “champions of personal liberty” to march in opposition to Prohibition.

• Only nine automobiles were stolen yesterday.

• The Weather: Generally fair today and tomorrow; moderate to fresh west and southwest winds.

As is so often the case with the 1921 Times, I’d sure like to hear the girl’s point of view on this story. Had her brain really been addled by overstudy or was she simply fed up with life at home? They didn’t ask, so we’ll never know.

Ruth Bentley, 16-year-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William E. Bentley, who disappeared last Friday and for whom a general alarm was sent out by the Mount Vernon police, walked into her home at 1 o’clock yesterday morning unannounced.

The girl had a disagreement on Friday with a teacher of the Mount Vernon High School, from which she expected to be graduated next January. She went to her home, 66 North Columbus Avenue, and at 3 o’clock she went out again in a thin dress and a hat.

That night she did not return and her father asked the police to find her. Police Sergeant Curtis found a clue and was just starting for Portchester when he was notified that the girl had returned.

Miss Bentley said she had gone to Portchester to visit a family named Allen. A son of the family brought her home. She seemed to be in a dazed condition and Dr. Woodruff said she was suffering from aphasia and had not fully recovered.

The girl had been a good student until a few weeks ago, when she began to show signs of forgetfulness, her father said. She is athletic and is a member of the high school tennis team. her father said Dr. Woodruff ascribed her present condition to overstudy.

The first of two items which were printed back to back in the Monday paper, as part of the Times’ ongoing coverage of women’s legs. For modern readers confused by the distinction between one- and two-piece suits, a two-piece suit was not a bikini—it was what we’d call a one-piece bathing suit worn above stockings. This article has more information, along with a ton of interesting pictures.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J., June 12.—This was the hottest day of the year in Atlantic City, and by far the greatest number of bathers that has enjoyed the surf was in the water or at rest on the beach. The temperature of the water around noon was above 70.

While the regulations against one-piece bathing suits were enforced when they were detected by the police or life guards, there were many women on the beach with rolled down stockings and several with bare legs. Many of the suits worn by women bathers approached so close to the limit that beach guards said it was difficult to tell where the suit stopped and the law began. Probably twenty persons were rescued from drowning by life guards.

Things are going very well for Bob Crissey, whom we met a few weeks back. I won’t speculate on his reasons for wanting hundreds of bare-legged women to flock to his beach, and will instead just be happy that the bathers were able to feel at ease.

SOMER’S POINT, N.J., June 12.—Mayor “Bob” Crissey, who recently extended a country-wide invitation to bathing girls to disport themselves on the beach of Somers Point in one-piece bathing suits, had his invitation accepted by a hundred-fold today.

The Mayor strolled along the beach, looking over the costumes of some 100 bathing girls, and the 72-year-old executive said that it was the first time that he had ever seen so many in the Kellerman suit.

“But I don’t see anything immoral in it,” he said, “and I don’t understand why the one-piece has been prohibited in Atlantic City. Why, I am going to get one for my wife.”