What are the bathing machines in the Regency era?
Reagan Howe
2025-05-04 15:58:20
Count answers: 4
These were like cabanas on wheels.
They were four-wheeled carriages, covered with canvas, and having at one end of them an umbrella of the same materials which is let down to the surface of the water, so that the bather descending from the machine by a few steps is concealed from the public view, whereby the most refined female is enabled to enjoy the advantages of the sea with the strictest delicacy.
Women would enter these bathing machines to disrobe down to their very flimsy muslin shifts and be dragged/lowered into the sea by either a horse or an attendant referred to as a “bathing-woman” or “dipper”.
The bather would then walk down the steps to enter the water.
The advent of the “bathing suit” would not eliminate these “bathing machines” for nearly another hundred years.
In the 1890s they were parked on the beaches as changing rooms, and by 1914, most had disappeared altogether.
Laura Mosciski
2025-05-04 15:51:24
Count answers: 2
Bathing machines were hardly machines in the modern understanding. Essentially small huts on wheels, sea-bathers would climb into the bathing machine where they could change clothes, or disrobe entirely, in private. The machines were then dragged out into the ocean, by horse or occasionally by the paid guides themselves, and bathers could enter into the sea directly from their doors. When finished, the bather would return to the bathing machine to dry off and dress and be returned to the shore. These machines varied in size, some being large enough to hold half a dozen bathers. In 1753, Benjamin Beale improved upon the basic design by adding an awning to the doorway that could be extended when the machine was in the water. Thereby bathers would never be exposed in their bathing costumes or bare skin. The first references to this solution, the bathing machine, came in 1721 when Nicholas Blundell wrote of “a conveniency for bathing in the sea.” Bathing machines remained in use until the early 1900’s when the segregation of beaches ended. After that, bathing machines made a slow transition to become the beach huts that are still commonly seen on English beaches.
Terry Boehm
2025-05-04 15:00:52
Count answers: 1
The Bathing Machine, invented in the early 1700s by Benjamin Beale, was a wooden hut built on wheels into which a lady could ascend. They were described by Walley Chamberlain Oulton in 1805 as "carriages, covered with canvas, and having at one end of them an umbrella of the same materials which is let down to the surface of the water, so that the bather descending from the machine by a few steps is concealed from the public view". Once a lady was inside the bathing machine, she could change into garments more suitable for bathing without being seen. The vehicle would then be pulled by horses or a bathing woman, known as a Dipper, out into the ocean until the water was about shoulder deep. The lady inside would descend the steps out of the bathing machine with the aid of her bathing woman and, once submerged, begin to enjoy all the healthful benefits of the sea. In such a way, the ladies of the upper class were able to enjoy the ocean, all while preserving their modesty. By the 1890s, bathing machines became stationary and were only used as changing rooms, rather than facilitators for getting into the sea.
Derek McGlynn
2025-05-04 13:45:00
Count answers: 1
To allow women to change privately into their bathing suits, the bathing machine or bathing wagon was invented.
An extract from Smollett’s Humphrey Clinker gives a flavour of how these machines worked:
Betwixt the well and the harbour, the bathing machines are ranged along the beach, with all their proper utensils and attendants…
Image to yourself, a small, snug, wooden chamber, fixed upon a wheel-carriage, having a door at each end, and on each side a little window above, a bench below.
The bather, ascending into this apartment by wooden steps, shuts himself in, and begins to undress, while the attendant yokes a horse to the end next the sea, and draws the carriage forwards, till the surface of the water is on a level with the floor of the dressing-room, then he moves and fixes the horse to the other end.
The person within, being stripped, opens the door to the sea-ward, where he finds the guide ready, and plunges headlong into the water.
Aurelio Runolfsdottir
2025-05-04 11:49:47
Count answers: 1
The very first reference to a bathing machine was in 1721 when Nicholas Blundell wrote of a conveniency for bathing in the sea. In 1753 there was the first use of the term “bathing machine”. This was applied to the improved version devised by Benjamin Beale at Margate. This had a canvas hood on hoops that could be let down on the seaward side of the machine allowing bathers a private space to swim unobserved. Not every seaside resort adopted the Beale type of machine and many had no hood or protection for the modesty of the bather at all, as can be seen in this image of an apprehensive lady being guided down into the sea by two dippers. The bathing machine persisted in use right through the 19th century and into the twentieth up to the 1920s, although with the adoption of bathing costumes that managed to combine a reasonable degree of decency with functionality for swimming, the modesty hood vanished.
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