Harriet the swimmer beat a man and taught women, with her Alice

They were passionate about teaching women how to care for their own and others’ physical health—not to be sexually attractive to men, but to benefit themselves and build their own muscular strength. With that strength, I imagine they would have felt more confident, more capable and less vulnerable.

Harriet and Alice acquired 40 acres of unceded Bunurong land in Upper Beaconsfield, outer-east Melbourne, where they lived from 1884 to 1888. Alice dubbed their cottage The Steyne, and ran a poultry farm on the land. Harriet continued to travel by coach and train into Melbourne every day to teach calisthenics to women at the gym. She and Alice were used to long commutes by this point. Every Wednesday, they would board a train at Werribee to travel to Ballarat and teach gymnastics, returning to Melbourne the same night. These were long, presumably exhausting days for the pair. It’s little wonder that the Ballarat classes came to an end shortly after they moved to Upper Beaconsfield.

They moved out of The Steyne in 1888. Perhaps it was too inland, too far from the bay. Someone like Harriet couldn’t live away from the water for so long. Or maybe it was because their relationship was beginning to show cracks.

They are not the sort of historical couple who remained together their entire lives and are buried in the same plot. Their relationship seems to have ended at the same time Alice sold The Steyne, with each moving into a separate residence in 1888. Alice had already sold her share of the Melbourne Gymnasium in 1887 (to Josephine McCormick, who replaced her as Harriet’s assistant) and uprooted her life for Sydney in 1890.

For a few short years, after a long stint in the gymnasium business, Alice dedicated herself to nourishing the brain. Her articles appeared regularly in the Daily Telegraph and Medical Gazette. Harriet moved to Sydney three years later, possibly finding it difficult to live so far away from Alice after moving across the world with her. McCormick took charge of the Melbourne gymnasium in her absence, while Harriet opened another gym on Liverpool Street. It’s unknown whether Harriet and Alice crossed paths in Sydney, but of course it’s not impossible.

Everything seemed to be going Alice’s way in Sydney, so it comes as a shock to read of her death in April 1894. She was only 39 when she died of heart failure, and the event was widely reported. Still living in Sydney at this time, Harriet would undoubtedly have been stricken by the news; she is listed as one of the people who attended Alice’s funeral.

In the late 1890s Harriet returned to Melbourne, opening a new gymnasium in 1899 with Miss G.E. Gaunt on Collins Street. Mothers were encouraged to take their daughters regularly to Miss Dick’s gym to build strength and physical health, then becoming a significant part of adolescent education for girls. In an echo of newspaper articles published 10 years previously, journalists again claimed that Harriet’s pupils were easily recognised by their figures and movement.

Harriet died in August 1902, late winter in a newly federated Australia. Her death certificate quotes heart disease as the cause of death. But maybe, like a shark, she stopped swimming and simply ceased to exist.