What is "bathing machine"

Bathing \Bath"ing\, n. Act of taking a bath or baths.

Bathing machine, a small room on wheels, to be driven into the water, for the convenience of bathers, who undress and dress therein.

n. (in the 19th and early 20th century) A portable changing room that was rolled down a beach to the edge of the sea to allow people to paddle in the sea modestly.

n. a building containing dressing rooms for bathers [syn: bathhouse]

The bathing machine was a device, popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, to allow people to change out of their usual clothes, change into swimwear, and wade in the ocean at beaches. Bathing machines were roofed and walled wooden carts rolled into the sea. Some had solid wooden walls while others had canvas walls over a wooden frame.

The bathing machine was part of etiquette for sea-bathing more rigorously enforced upon women than men but to be observed by both sexes among those who wished to be proper.

Especially in Britain, men and women were usually segregated, so nobody of the opposite sex might catch sight of them in their bathing suits, which (although extremely modest by modern standards) were not considered proper clothing in which to be seen.