a small wooden cabin set on very high wheels with steps leading down from a door in the front. The bather entered and, while he was changing, the machine was pulled into the sea by a horse. When water was well above the axles the horse was uncoupled and taken ashore. The bather was then free to enter the sea by descending the steps pointed away from the shore. Machines of the 18th and early 19th century were frequently equipped with an awning which shielded the bather from public view as she or he descended the steps to enter the water. These awnings were left off the bathing machines during the last half of the 19th century. Such machines were used to a great extent in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Claudia B. Kidwell. Women's Bathing and Swimming Costume in the United States. (1968)
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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—After having bathed, he re-ascends into the apartment, by the steps which had been shifted for that purpose, and puts on his clothes at his leisure, while the carriage is drawn back again upon the dry land; so that he has nothing further to do, but to open the door, and come down as he went up—Should he be so weak or ill as to require a servant to put off and on his clothes, there is room enough in the apartment for half a dozen people. The guides who attend the ladies in the water, are of their own sex, and they and the female bathers have a dress of flannel for the sea; nay, they are provided with other conveniences for the support of decorum. A certain number of the machines are fitted with tilts, that project from the sea-ward ends of them, so as to screen the bathers from the view of all persons whatsoever—The beach is admirably adapted for this practice, the descent being gently gradual, and the sand soft as velvet; but then the machines can be used only at a certain time of the tide, which varies every day; so that sometimes the bathers are obliged to rise very early in the morning
Tobias Smollet. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker [describing the beach at Scarborough] (1771)
[rap music] Not only do I get invited to the Clam Bake Club, but I get to ride in Celery Savoy's bathing machine. Just when I thought I couldn't have another greatest day of my life, here I am.
Lilian: Celery, is there anything I need to know for the initiation ceremony?
Celery: No, you do a bathing rite in the ocean and then we all stuff ourselves with clams.
Comedy Central. Another Period, season 1: Rejects Beach (2015)
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Betwixt the well and the harbour, the bathing machines are ranged along the beach, with all their proper utensils and attendants.
Tobias Smollett. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771)
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wherever you go to on the English coast you find a number of bathing machines in the sea, some children digging in the sand with wooden spades, then a row of lodging houses, and behind them a railway station.
Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland (1865)
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“Sentry-boxes” were used before the 1870s at beaches where the terrain did not encourage the use of the bathing machines. At Long Branch, New Jersey, and at one of the beaches at Newport, Rhode Island, lines of these stationary structures were available to the bather for changing, one half designated for women and the other half for men. Hours varied but it was the practice to run up colored flags to signal bathing times for the ladies and then the gentlemen. A male correspondent wrote from Newport in 1857
Claudia B. Kidwell. Women's Bathing and Swimming Costume in the United States. (1968)
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The many-hued bathing-vans could be counted on the distant beach. Everything seemed perfectly normal.