👮‍♂️ma'am, this is a beach. if you don't cover your knees, we'll take you to the slammer 👮‍♂️🔒🏢

in this piece i get into a stretch of atlantic city history when morality meant getting arrested for exposing a knee and the governor threatening to send troops into town over a sunday drink.

a novelist named louise rosine got hauled off the virginia avenue beach in 1909 for rolling her stockings below the knee. around the same time officials were policing bathing suits, banning bare chests, and deciding who was dressed respectable enough to go in the ocean.

meanwhile the governor was calling atlantic city a “saturnalia of vice” and talking about sending soldiers in if the saloons stayed open on sundays.

it sounds ridiculous now, but it was serious at the time. this piece looks at the long fight over who gets to decide what counts as decent in atlantic city, and why that argument never really went away.

read the full piece on substack. be my sub? subscribe if you want more atlantic city history like this.

https://thedivinghorse.substack.com/p/maam-this-is-a-beach-if-you-dont