Sea Bathing

The bathing machine circa 1890. The swimmer would enter from one end and change into a 'bathing suit' while a horse or men would drag the wagon into the surf. The swimmer could then exit into the ocean from the other end.

On my morning walk today at work I spied a prematurely golden leaf flutter to the ground. I thought, ‘How lovely, to see leaves blowing in the breeze.’ Then I realized, sadly, that there was no breeze, and it was in fact late August.  This leaf was a tell-tale sign of the coming fall, of pending freeze and heavy coats, of long commutes in pitch black dark- I can already feel February around the corner. So let me snap out of my seasonal anxiety and talk about happier times before they are even over.

Sea bathing is the subject of this Footnote. A summer ubiquity (much like watermelon and summer ale), swimming is now a days taken for granted by so many a beachgoer. We’ll spend untold amounts on a skimpy lycra suit and dive headlong into the salty, thrashing ocean without a bat of an eye. But it was not always so. This now booming industry of sun and surf had humble beginnings.

In England, sea bathing became popular in the 18^th century an accepted therapy for a multitude of health problems. Resorts and spas sprang up around hot springs and sea sides, the most famous of course being Brighton and Margate. But ocean recreation had humble beginnings. The following is a long quote, but stay with me- it is fairly complete picture of what the experience of sea bathing was like in the 18^th century.

Betwixt the well and the harbour, the bathing machines are ranged along the beach, with all their proper utensils and attendants. You have never seen one of these machines. Image to yourself a small, snug, wooden chamber, fixed upon a wheel-carriage, having a door at each end, and on each side a little window above, a bench below.

The bather, ascending into this apartment by wooden steps, shuts himself in, and begins to undress, while the attendant yokes a horse to the end next the sea, and draws the carriage forwards, till the surface of the water is on a level with the floor of the dressing-room, then he moves and fixes the horse to the other end. The person within being stripped, opens the door to the sea-ward, where he finds the guide ready, and plunges headlong into the water.

After having bathed, he re-ascends into the apartment, by the steps which had been shifted for that purpose, and puts on his clothes at his leisure, while the carriage is drawn back again upon the dry land; so that he has nothing further to do, but to open the door, and come down as he went up. Should he be so weak or ill as to require a servant to put off and on his clothes, there is room enough in the apartment for half a dozen people.

The guides who attend the ladies in the water, are of their own sex, and they and the female bathers have a dress of flannel for the sea; nay, they are provided with other conveniences for the support of decorum. A certain number of the machines are fitted with tilts, that project from the sea-ward ends of them, so as to screen the bathers from the view of all persons whatsoever. The beach is admirably adapted for this practice, the descent being gently gradual, and the sand soft as velvet; but then the machines can be used only at a certain time of the tide, which varies every day; so that sometimes the bathers are obliged to rise very early in the morning.

                -The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett (1771)

In the earlier days of sea bathing women were typically tethered to their dippers, were thrashed around in the ocean for a matter of seconds to minutes, or dipped according to doctor’s orders, then ushered back into the bathing machine.

Furthur reading:

Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels. Diedre Le Faye

http://www.jasa.net.au/seaside/Bathing.htm

http://austenonly.com/2010/03/20/austenprose-sanditon-group-read-a-match-for-every-disorder-sea-bathing-in-the-early-19th-century/