ghostingthespace asked: What's a bathing corset for?

A bathing corset would be worn under a bathing costume because, after all, even when sea bathing it was considered improper, crude, and shocking to be seen without a corset (comparable to seeing someone’s nipples showing through their shirt in today’s world). Both bathing corsets and costumes were typically made of wool or wool flannel - designated as a bathing fabric because it wouldn’t cling to the body’s form when wet.

Sea bathing became popular in the late eighteenth century for it’s reputed health benefits. Still, the Georgian and later Victorian society became increasingly concerned with the opportunity for a lack of morals when it came to sea bathing, so bathing machines were invented so that a woman (or a man, if he wished) could be taken into the sea in the machine and placed directly into the waters, with the least amount of visibility out of water in her bathing costume as possible.