A French traveller, M. Francis Wey, who published "Les Anglais Chez Eux" in 1836, describes his own experience on a Sunday morning when, having bathed stark, he had to return to his bathing machine among a party of ladies.
In reading about Victorian seaside resorts, I've come across several passing mentions of a contraption called a bathing machine.
This portrait was obviously taken by a beach photographer with his customer posing between the wheels of a bathing machine.
The mystery girl Can you see the little face peering out from behind the wheel of the bathing machine on the left of the picture?
Nearby, the natural skincare line Haeckels mixes botanicals from the chalk-reef coastline in its cliff-top lab overlooking the bay, and will soon unveil a Victorian-style bathing machine — which is essentially a sauna that wheels into the water.
Men, in particular, were expected to swim naked, albeit at their own segregated beaches, while the ladies tended to enter the water more discreetly, with the help of a bathing machine.
It would be interesting to know how many people can stand shivering on the steps of a bathing machine without wishing it were all over and that they were dry and dressed again.
What fun, for example, in the bathing machine chapter, to learn that Austen actually enjoyed being forcibly dipped on her extensive stays in seaside resorts such as Lyme Regis, Teignmouth and Sidmouth – which leads Byrne to a discussion of Austen's experience of such towns and how she used them in the novels.
No sooner have you stepped off the train then you'll come across a Victorian-style bathing machine in the railway station – one of six placed in similarly odd locations – and providing the setting for a series of unsettling one-to-one theatrical encounters.
The Prince Regent was so fond of Martha Gunn – a famous Brighton dipper, who operated a bathing machine and helped ladies in and out of the sea – that he gave her free access to his kitchens at the Brighton Pavilion until she died at the age of 89.
IDEC Corp. yesterday unveiled [JP] a bathing machine for dogs.
