Pools, Pagars, Baths and Standpipes: The Landscapes of Bathing in Colonial Singapore

Singapore's first truly public institutions for swimming were only established in the early 1930s, based on then-modern ideas of what swimming is. But, in fact, people in Singapore have always saw wherever they could access water. This presentation traces a much wider history of swimming and bathing in colonial Singapore, from the foundation of the British settlement (1819) until the outbreak of war in 1942. It develops a history of colonial leisure swimming and water architecture that was framed by European ideas about bathing. It also discusses the politics of access to a civic water supply, and considers how ideas of hygiene and health shaped the definition of a bathing waterscape throughout this period.