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# English bathing machines for women and their spread across Europe in the 19th century
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/mashiny-dlia-kupaniia-konechno-zhe-izobretenie-anglichan/
- Published: 2020-04-13T09:55:17.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T19:09:09.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Observations, Mores

Bathing machines are naturally an invention of the English. At the end of the eighteenth century, the champions of piety devised this way for women to enjoy the sea without loss of dignity or visible propriety. By the middle of the nineteenth century, in the heyday of Victorianism, machines for secluded bathing had spread across the whole of Europe. A woman in a special bathing costume (often little short of a crinoline, and assuredly a dress to the floor) was delivered straight into the water in this contraption, which was pushed along by horses or by dedicated bearers. Depending on her means, the lady was accompanied by other women, whose task was to help her down into the water and keep her from drowning, or else she was simply tied by a rope from her belt to the machine itself, so that she should not drown, just in case. By the beginning of the twentieth century, of course, the fashion in swimming had changed, and bathing machines became a rarity on European beaches. Still, who knows, perhaps mankind will yet return to this original idea?

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_2589@13-04-2020_12-55-17.jpg)

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_2590@13-04-2020_12-55-17.jpg)

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_2591@13-04-2020_12-55-17.jpg)