LONG before the days of aerobics classes, Zumba workouts and Davina McCall fitness DVDs, women flocked in their thousands to some new sixpenny exercise classes launched in the 1930s by a pioneering new organisation called the Women’s League of Health and Beauty.

The league, which was founded in 1930 by Mrs Mary Bagot-Stack, gave a generation of women whose fathers, brothers and husbands had been killed in the First World War the opportunity to raise their awareness to fitness through forms of movement and dance and exercise with fellow women in classes of varying levels of difficulty.

Movement is Life The league also embraced such disciplines as Pilates, aerobics, dance exercise and yoga, which were underpinned by the league motto ‘Movement is Life’, which was inspired by the founder’s mantra.

Mary Bagot Stack claimed that “movement is life. Stillness is the attribute of death. The stagnant pond collects the weeds which will finally choke it, but the moving river clears itself. A body without movement is like the stagnant pond: it collects the weeds of disease which will finally kill it; while the freely moving body creates its own health and exhilaration daily”.

It was while she was living in India that Mary Bagot-Stack noted the physical differences between the British Imperialists and the Indian women of all castes, who seemed to benefit from yoga, with better posture and greater flexibility.

Inspired by what she had seen, Bagot-Stack started an exercise class for children and another for women years later on her return to London, with the establishment of the Bagot-Stack Health School in 1925.

Here she taught teachers – among them her daughter Prunella, who qualified in 1930, aged 16, as an expert demonstrator of her mother’s techniques. Mary promoted a philosophy of exercise structured and graded to the needs of all ages and abilities, and taught by trained physicians, through huge public displays.

Daily Echo:

These Daily Echo pictures, snapped at Southampton’s Mount Pleasant School in February 1949, show one such display in full swing.

The women members of the Southampton branch of the Women’s League of Health and Beauty are all pictured at full stretch as they took part in a session of synchronised exercise. Also pictured was Mrs Molly Wills, who was adjudged the most graceful walker at a display, who is shown in this Echo photograph of the time (see left) demonstrating her graceful prowess to her colleagues.