Conclusion

Abstract

This chapter discusses three key nineteenth-century swimming communities, the most important being the community surrounding swimming professors, whose craft expertise and entrepreneurial skills developed a public appetite for swimming. The authors suggest that these communities operated as a type of industrial district in the sense that professors’ working lives involved both cooperating and competing with each other, tensions that meant the Professional Swimming Association was always unlikely to succeed. Professors were more successful in stimulating swimming among women and the expansion in professional and amateur female swimming communities is summarized here. The chapter ends with a commentary on the efforts of the amateur swimming community and how the all-embracing power of the Amateur Swimming Association has led to professors being written out of swimming history.