Editing Bathing machine (section)

{{short description|Device used for sea bathing during the 19th century}}
[[Image:BathingMachineGals.jpg|thumb|upright|Women posing near a bathing machine in 1902]]
[[File:Badekarren auf Wyk (1895).jpg|thumb|Horse-drawn bathing machines in [[Wyk auf Föhr]], Germany, 1895]]

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.<!-- commented out, see Talk: without violating [[Victorian morality|Victorian notions]] of [[modesty]]. --> 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.<ref name="Byrde2013">{{cite journal |last1=Byrde |first1=Penelope |title='That Frightful Unbecoming Dress' Clothes for Spa Bathing at Bath |journal=Costume |volume=21 |issue=1 |year=2013 |pages=44–56 |issn=0590-8876 |doi=10.1179/cos.1987.21.1.44}}</ref>

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 modest by modern standards, were not considered proper clothing in which to be seen in public.