During this time, women were required to stay fully clothed until they got into a bathing machine to change into a swimsuit. Next, someone would wheel the cart out into the ocean, so that the women could get into the water privately without being seen in their swimsuits.
Irish playwright, Walley Chamberlain Oulton, described them as "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."
The bathing machines were actively used in England until the late 1890s when they became permanently parked on the beaches. By 1914, however, most of them had disappeared from the United Kingdom.
The Victorian era's focus on modesty and decorum extended beyond just bathing machines. Another invention, almost parallel in its intent, was the "bloomer costume" popularized by Amelia Bloomer in the early 1850s in the United States.
This garment aimed to offer women greater freedom and modesty compared to the constraining dresses of the period. Consisting of a short skirt and billowy trousers, it became a symbol of the early women's rights movement, just as the bathing machines were a sign of societal norms for women's modesty. Both innovations share the common theme of trying to negotiate the space between social expectations and personal freedom.
While bathing machines focused on enabling women to participate in the then-popular activity of sea bathing without violating norms, bloomers tried to grant women more physical freedom in their daily activities.
By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, changing societal attitudes began to render both somewhat obsolete: bathing machines were largely abandoned by the 1910s, and bloomers evolved into less controversial forms of women's clothing. Yet both remain historical curiosities that offer a window into the gender norms and social values of their respective times.
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