Mary Bagot Stack (12 June 1883 – 26 January 1935), known as Mollie Bagot Stack, founded the Women's League of Health & Beauty in 1930, the first and most significant mass keep-fit system of the 1930s in the UK. This has continued as an exercise system into the 21st century.

Education

After an education at Alexandra School and

Alexandra College Alexandra College ( ir, Coláiste Alexandra) is a fee-charging boarding and day school for girls located in Milltown, Dublin, Ireland. The school operates under a Church of Ireland ethos. History The school was founded in 1866 and takes its ...

, Dublin, she enrolled in 1907 as a trainee teacher at Mrs Josef Conn's Institute of Physical Training in London. She had met Mrs Conn in Paris and was inspired by her specialisation in exercises to promote health. By 1910 she had moved to

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...

and set up her own fitness centre with private classes, large classes for women factory workers and also treated private patients.

Development of the Bagot Stack Exercise System

In the 1920s she again began to hold classes, initially for children in her own home, and by 1926 was training teachers in her own system at the Bagot Stack Health School in Holland Park, London. This initially involved 12 sequences of exercise designed to train the body in accordance with the seven principles of the Bagot Stack System. There were classes for women and children in dance as well as exercises. Her inspiration for developing her own exercise system came from a short time in India, where she observed the differences in movement between women wearing constricting Europeans clothes and those with looser Indian clothing. She had also studied

hatha yoga Haṭha yoga is a branch of yoga which uses physical techniques to try to preserve and channel the vital force or energy. The Sanskrit word हठ ''haṭha'' literally means "force", alluding to a system of physical techniques. Some haṭha ...

on her travels in India. She developed a series of exercises based around her belief that movement was essential in life. This also fitted with ideas developing across Europe at the time of the benefits to women of exercise and changes in clothing fashions. As well as involving vigorous group exercises, the classes were designed to be sociable, which benefited the many recently bereaved women.

Mass market

Her big innovation was to move from small, private classes to a mass-market movement. In 1930 this grew into a commercial enterprise, the Women's League of Health and Beauty, using the

YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It was founded on 6 June 1844 by George Williams in London, originally ...

's Regent Street premises. Public displays in London garnered publicity, and more centres started in 1932 in Bromley, Southend, Slough, Bournemouth, Croydon, Birmingham, Glasgow followed by Ayr, Paisley and Edinburgh and finally franchised centres all over the UK. The Women's League of Health and Beauty classes included elements from dance, callisthenics, and remedial, slimming, and rhythmical exercise to music. The League published its own magazine, ''Mother and Daughter'', from 1933 to 1935 with content on pacifism and feminist political discussion as well as general self-improvement. Her book ''Building the Body Beautiful - The Bagot Stack stretch-and-swing system'' was published in 1931. The organisation has been described as the most popular female

physical culture Physical culture, also known as Body culture, is a health and strength training movement that originated during the 19th century in Germany, the UK and the US. Origins The physical culture movement in the United States during the 19th century ...

organization in Britain. The league adapted

eugenicist Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...

terms and saw women as "natural race builders". Their aim was to promote "racial health" through physical exercise. The organisation grew rapidly so that by 1934 there were 47,000 members but this had grown to 166,000 in 1937. Her daughter Prunella, along with others, continued promoting this exercise system so that what is now called the
Flexercise
movement continues as a national fitness programme in the UK.

Personal life

Mary Meta (Mollie) Bagot Stack was born 12 June 1883 in Dublin to parents from the Irish Protestant professional class. Her father was a dentist, Richard Theodore Stack (d. 1909). She contracted rheumatic fever at the age of 17. She married in 1909 (Albert Thomas James McCreery, a doctor) but this was short-lived ending in divorce. She married again on 10 March 1912 to a third cousin, Edward Hugh Bagot Stack (1884 - 1914), a captain in the Gurkha Rifles, who was killed in the First World War. She travelled with him to India, living in Lansdowne, a hill station near the Himalayas, but returned to the UK at the outbreak of war with her newborn daughter. She died in London 26 January 1935, aged 50 after suffering from thyroid cancer. Her first child died at birth in 1913. The second, Ann Prunella, was born in India on 28 July 1914.

References

Sources