| Chapter 1: | The Uncorseted Bostonian: Health, Physical Culture, and Dress Reform for Women in Nineteenth-Century Boston |
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and rose as an outspoken voice for women's rights.28 Lewis was a charismatic speaker whose enthusiasm helped him muster strong interest in his system, which he called the new gymnastics, within a few weeks of his arrival in Boston. One of his contemporaries captured Lewis' genuine, if perhaps overzealous, devotion to his work:
Lewis was deeply committed to physical culture for women and full participation in society. His practical establishment of a school that trained teachers in his coeducational model of physical culture and his endless advocacy for women made a deep impact on Boston in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Plate 2. Dioclesian Lewis. Photo from the collection of the Lexington, Massachusetts Historical Society.
