![]() ![]() ![]() Fortunately, too, turn-of-the-century Sydney had plenty of opportunities for swimming lessons. Her parents, though, persevered with the therapy, and soon they could hardly keep her dry. Terrified of the water, she begged her mother and father not to take her into the ocean. ![]() When they finally came off, her doctor recommended swimming to strengthen her legs, but little Annette wanted nothing to do with it. At age two, she was fitted with clunky leg braces and would wear them for the next five years. Either way, she suffered as a young child from weak and deformed legs. Annette Kellerman emerged at just the right moment-as the rising popularity of women’s swimming competitions was colliding with the ridiculous encumbrances of Victorian morality-and she had the moxie and entrepreneurial savvy to smash two centuries of prudery to pieces and come out rich and happy on the other end.īorn in Sydney, Australia, in 1886, to musician parents-her father was a violinist, her mother a piano teacher-Kellerman was hit early by what might have been polio or perhaps rickets. ![]()
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