I have been postponing, over and over again, my response to the request by a reader for pictorial spreads about beach fashions in early Malta because I believed it a difficult commitment to satisfy.
Differently from today, not a single one of the hundreds of pre-war postcards shows swimmers on beaches. Paying humble homage to Victorian prudery, card publishers banned that subject as entirely taboo, and public photographers too.
Adults, especially women, in bathing costumes, may appear, but very exceptionally, in private family albums.
One 1930s photograph, showing women in the most chaste of swimming gear, has a note handwritten on its back: “I don’t think this should be in the album.”
![The only pre-war bathing scene postcard, c.1905, showing policemen arresting a boy swimming starkers. The only pre-war bathing scene postcard, c.1905, showing policemen arresting a boy swimming starkers.](https://cdn-attachments.timesofmalta.com/83e1721b04e5b4f205d6d65b458a3daa52d9b5e0-1723186855-25534c1e-1920x1280.jpg)
Curiously, the only postcard I know of which shows a bathing scene was most likely meant as a morality warning. Published round 1905, it shows policemen arresting a boy swimming in the nude. Apart from that, absolutely nothing.
Women in swimwear start appearing, timidly at first, aggressively later, with the explosion of the tourist boom that followed Independence. You can date post-war Maltese postcards rather accurately, by measuring how skimpy the bikinis are.
![Xlendi Bay, Gozo, in the beginning of the Independence tourist boom Xlendi Bay, Gozo, in the beginning of the Independence tourist boom](https://cdn-attachments.timesofmalta.com/6f33025ee7b6157d128e5d80b634f15f8891b845-1723186902-4cec309b-1920x1280.jpg)
In an island surrounded by vast expanses of sea and espoused to tropical heatwaves, one would assume sea bathing to have been ingrained in popular culture.
If it was, it left very faint records in history. Apart from Toni Bajjada, whose marathon swims during the 1565 Great Siege became the stuff of legend, almost no mention of sea leisure, games or sports appears anywhere in our annals before the 20th century.
Malta had to wait till 1928 to send its first water polo team to the Amsterdam Olympic Games which, coincidentally, featured my mother’s brother, Edoardo Magri, later judge.
All images from the author's collections
![A number of young children enjoying the sea in the 1910s. A number of young children enjoying the sea in the 1910s.](https://cdn-attachments.timesofmalta.com/cb239fc83a29b3d5a891586d72a0ed7674cb7020-1723188142-56446c25-1920x1280.jpg)