People in the Regency time period also liked to travel, and, as with now, they often went to the beach. For Accidentally His, I enjoyed researching and writing about a Regency seaside experience (it certainly made for good sensual scenes). Plenty of men swam in the nude and some women, too, which was facilitated by the fact that men and women had separate beaches. For the more modest, there were bathing gowns and the machines in which to change into them. I honestly don’t know why they called them “machines.” There’s nothing machine-like about them. They’re simply boxes/covered wagons that had openings at either end. You went in on one end, changed your clothes as the “machine” was being towed into the water, and then climbed down into the water on the other end. You can see pics of the bathing machines at Jane Austen’s World and my Pinterest page about the book.