Margate, Beach Scene with Bathing Machines

Margate, Beach Scene with Bathing Machines

Watercolour on Paper

Indistinct Signature

Overall Size   370 mm by 293 mm

Image size   225 mm by 137 mm

The bathing machine was a device, popular from the 18th century until the early 20th century, 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, others canvas walls over a wooden frame, and commonly walls at the sides and curtained doors at each end.

Margate, Beach Scene with Bathing Machines

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

Especially in Britain, men and women were usually segregated, so that people of the opposite sex should not see them in their bathing suits, which (although extremely modest by modern standards) were not considered proper clothing in which to be seen in public

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathing_machine