L Street Brownies

[1] Swimmers who came regularly to the L Street Bathhouse in South Boston usually swam nude or with minimal clothing, and became known as the "Brownies" because of the deep tans they acquired from daily exposure to the sun.

The daily ritual was so important to them that in 1913, according to the Boston Globe, it was "not unusual at L St, after an extremely cold night", when the bay was covered with ice, "to see a naked bather plodding through the snow armed with a hatchet or ax for the purpose of cutting out a space large enough for a dip.

The original bathhouse was one of several built by the city in 1866 to enable poor immigrants, who lived in tenements with no indoor plumbing, to bathe regularly.

Known as the "Boston Light", the race drew thousands of spectators each year and attracted national publicity until the onset of World War II, when it was discontinued.

[8] Richards went on to win the competition in 1911 and 1912, and in 1913 made headlines when he swam from the Charlestown Bridge to Boston Light and back, a distance of approximately 24 miles, in 13 hours and 9 minutes.

He was later disqualified because his navigator had steered him over Nix's Mate, a small island which was barely submerged at the time, forcing him to walk the short distance across it.

[2] The Bavarian-born Charlie Toth, a waiter at the Westminster Hotel near Copley Square, won the Boston Light in 1914, completing the course in 6 hours and 48 minutes.

[10] Toth held the American endurance record for a time, and famously trained for his English Channel swim in 1923 by towing a rowboat full of passengers.