By chance I came across a photo of a man using old railway carriages at St Leonards as bathing machines. This was in the Sunday Mirror, 30 May 1920, with the headline ‘Demobilised Major as bathing machine proprietor’.
There is a picture of the gallant Major smiling at a lady customer about to enter the carriage, and another of the same lady emerging in a bathing costume.
The accompanying text of the first photo is:
Unable, owing to wounds, to follow his profession as a veterinary surgeon, Major J.M. Richardson, M.C., has started in business as a bathing-machine proprietor at St Leonards, where he is seen ‘on duty’ above. His cabins are converted railway carriages, and their comfort attracts quite a lot of business.
The second photo has a brief caption:
Old railway carriages make first-class cabins.
James Mannington Richardson had several careers In 1893 he had received a certificate as 2nd Mate in the Merchant Marine after five years’ experience in ‘foreign parts.’
In the 1901 census he was living with his parents at Tunbridge Wells, a 29-year-old veterinary student. He was a veterinary surgeon at Deal in the 1911 census, having become a freemason there in 1907.
He became a Veterinary Lieutenant in the Territorials in 1910, and served in World War I, initially in the Leicestershire Yeomanry and then the Army Veterinary Corps. The citation for his Military Cross in the London Gazette, 8 January 1918, reads as follows:
For conspicious gallantry and devotion to duty. At a critical moment, when his wagon lines were being shelled, he proceeded to the stables, and, in spite of hostile fire and the approach of hostile aircraft, superintended the removal of the horses with great promptitude and coolness. Although wounded in the back by a bomb, he continued to encourage the men by his presence until everybody was clear. By his gallantry under trying circumstances the wagon lines were cleared with very few casualties.
In the 1919 electoral register he was at 18 Grosvenor Crescent, St Leonards, but in 1920 he was at 137 Marina.
In the 1921 census he was living in a 4-roomed flat at 137 Marina, age 49, born Tunbridge Wells, bathing machine proprietor Grosvenor Bathing Station, employer, with wife Elsie and daughter Ruth.
By this time bathing machines were declining in popularity and so there was a change of occupation. The London Gazette, 8 November 1929, has a notice that the partnership between Richardson at 137 Marina and Charles William Dicker of 9 Bexhill Road, also St Leonards, as butchers and purveyors of meat at 9 Bexhill Road as C.W. Dicker & Co. had been dissolved.
In 1954 he died at the Buchanan Hospital, but was of the same 137 Marina address. His father, also James Mannington Richardson, was a Tunbridge Wells auctioneer who retired to St Leonards in 1927 and who died at 7 Seaside Road in 1931. His detailed obituary in The Courier, 3 April 1931, mentions that one of his three sons, Charles, was killed in France in 1917.
There is a detailed Wikipedia article on bathing machines which has many illustrations of the conventional types. It claims that until the 1860s it was legal for men to bathe in the nude. Decorum was preserved by a wheeled bathing machine being entered in street clothes by the user at one end, who would change (or simply remove clothing) and would then depart at the other end into the water, the machine presumably having being pushed by horses.
A local act in 1832 insisted on their use in Hastings, divided into male and female sectors on the beach. In 1855 a local by-law said that ‘if any person should undress on the sea-beach or shore, or should bathe from such beach or shore between the hours of eight o’clock in the morning and nine o’clock in the evening, except from a bathing-machine, at any part of the sea-coast between the Priory Water and the town of St Leonards, being within the district of the said local board of health, such person should pay for every such offence any sum not exceeding 20s.’
In 1901 the legal separation of men and women for bathing on beaches ended, and their use declined rapidly, though they still had some use as stationary changing rooms. As in the case of the Major’s enterprise.