Girl Once a Physical Wreck, Now Does Astonishing Feats, Easily Toys with Weighty Barbells [1899]

As a „strong woman“ Miss Charlotte Dunphy, the 17-year-old daughter of a West End Avenue millionaire, is the latest marvel. It was only last June that Miss Dunphy was graduated from the Institute of Holy Angels, at Fort Lee, a physical wreck, as so many young girls who aim for high honors find themselves at the close of their school days. It was thought that she was going into a decline, and many specialists were consulted, but there seemed no organic disease, simply a strong tendency toward nervous prostration. Drugs were ineffective, walking was exhausting. Ordinary gymnastics, such as are usually practiced in schools for girls, did not seem to do any good.

More in a joke than anything else Miss Dunphy called at the studio of a professional athlete just three months ago and informed him that she wanted to be a „strong woman.“ It did not look very promising, as she was slight, weighing less than ninety pounds, and was weak and ill. But there is nothing this athlete will not try, and so he put her through his twenty-five different sets of dumbbell exercises with the lightest bells, adding to their weight as her strength increased, until she could swing five-pound bells with perfect ease.

Taking a set of bells home, Miss Dunphy began exercising before breakfast, and soon found the work delightful and easy; her appetite increased, and she began to long to do greater feats. For variety’s sake her instructor allowed her to learn several weight lifting exercises, and found to his astonishment that she could actually do them, and do them gracefully and firmly. From one feat to another she went, until now she has mastered every sort of strong woman feat, and her teacher himself gazes on her with astonishment.

Miss Dunphy has a most wonderful back, and the muscular development of the entire body comes to its support so that she does Max Unger’s tricks. One of these is the lifting of a big barbell from the floor with one hand, turning it and holding it high above the head without a tremor. This same barbell she then places upon the floor and lies down flat on her back with the bell at her head, and raises it with both hands until it is straight above her head, then holding it with one hand only, rises to a sitting and then a standing position with the bell high above her head still.

Another feat Miss Dunphy does with the same bell in connection with the „Roman chair.“ This chair has a strap across the seat, into which she slips her feet, then she leans over the back until her head rests on the floor, reaches over her head for the bar and rises with it to a standing position on the seat of the chair, with the bell high over her head, then descends in the same manner and lays it on the floor above her head again. These feats require enormous strength, as any one can easily ascertain by trying them.

Some of her friends belonging to a yacht club have been inveigled by her brother to come home with him and visit the gymnasium on the top floor and try some of these feats. But with all of their boasted athletic achievements Miss Dunphy easily outdistances them all. In fact, these college bred young men are just as jealous of this little slip of a girl as they can be, and her uttle private gymnasium has become the center of attraction on the upper west side.