The Big Foto » bath http://thebigfoto.com Life stories in photos Fri, 18 May 2012 02:46:46 +0000 en hourly 1 Bathing machines http://thebigfoto.com/bathing-machines http://thebigfoto.com/bathing-machines#comments Wed, 26 May 2010 08:30:05 +0000 admin http://thebigfoto.com/?p=1732 The bathing machine was a device, popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, to allow people to change out of their usual clothes, possibly change into swimwear and then wade in the ocean at beaches. Bathing machines were roofed and walled wooden carts rolled into the sea. Some had solid wooden walls; others had canvas walls over a wooden frame.
The bathing machine was part of sea-bathing etiquette more rigorously enforced upon women than men but to be observed by both sexes among those who wished to be “proper”.
Especially in Britain, men and women were usually segregated, so nobody of the opposite sex might catch sight of them in their bathing suits, which were not considered proper clothing to be seen in.

Once mixed gender bathing became socially acceptable, the days of the bathing machine were numbered.

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