Talk:Sea bathing

To quote:

Female bathing costumes in particular were derived from what was worn at Bath and other spas. By the 1670s nude bathing there had given way to clothed bathing. In 1687 Celia Fiennes gave a detailed description of the standard attire for women:

The Ladyes go into the bath with Garments made of a fine yellow canvas, which is stiff and made large with great sleeves like a parson’s gown; the water fills it up so that it is borne off that your shape is not seen, it does not cling close as other linning, which Lookes sadly in the poorer sort that go in their own linning. The Gentlemen have drawers and wastcoates of the same sort of canvas, this is the best linning, for the bath water will Change any other yellow.[9]

The Bath Corporation official bathing dress code of 1737 also prescribed, for women:

No Female person shall at any time hereafter go into a Bath or Baths within this City by day or by night without a decent Shift on their bodies.[7]

The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, published in 1771, contained a description of ladies’ bathing costume which is different from that of Celia Fiennes a hundred years earlier:

The ladies wear jackets and petticoats of brown linen, with chip hats, in which they fix their handkerchiefs to wipe the sweat from their faces; but, truly, whether it is owing to the steam that surrounds them, or the heat of the water, or the nature of the dress, or to all these causes together, they look so flushed, and so frightful, that I always turn my eyes another way.[10]