Bathing machine

The bathing machine was a device, popular from the 18th century until the early 20th century, to allow people at beaches to change out of their usual clothes, change into swimwear, and wade in the ocean. Bathing machines were roofed and walled wooden carts that rolled into the sea. Some had solid wooden walls, others canvas walls over a wooden frame, and commonly walls at the sides and curtained doors at each end.

The use of bathing machines was part of the etiquette for sea-bathing to be observed by both men and women who wished to behave "respectably."^[1]

Especially in Britain, even with the use of the machine to protect modesty, bathing for men and women was usually segregated, so that people of the opposite sex would not see each other in their bathing suits which, although extremely modest by modern standards, were not considered proper clothing in which to be seen in public.