Patrick, resident:
There are quite a few voyeurs in The Baths at Ostend. They sit on the bathing carts with a telescope, a photographer has set up his tripod and this man is also peering through binoculars. Was it so bad at the time? Were there really that many peeping Toms? Was a little bare flesh enough to drive them wild? Oh, yes.
Don’t forget: this is a scene from the 19th century. Women in wet bathing suits, even if they were covered up from the knee to the shoulder with no décolletage on show, was still quite shocking. French writer Victor Hugo complained bitterly about Ostend’s oysters, but was particularly fond of the view. He wrote: “When completely wet, the fabric clings to the body and is often lifted up by the waves... surrounded by the froth of the sea, the women are a delightful mythological apparition.”
Philosopher Friedrich Engels also wrote to his brother-in-arms Karl Marx on the subject. He wanted to convince Marx to also travel to Ostend, using a little drawing of a bathing woman with firm buttocks. We know that even King Leopold I had binoculars lying around in his personal bathing cart.
Of course, all that lustful gazing was the fault of the women. That’s why a fashion magazine offered this advice for the beach: “Move as inconspicuously as possible, do not provoke comments, and avoid any possible fantasy that might attract attention or elicit glances.” How ridiculous... and there was, of course, no advice for the lecherous men.