Nick Spurrier remembers that archetypal British invention - the bathing machine. THERE HAS ALWAYS been some dispute about the origin of bathing machines. For many years Margate, a seaside resort in the south east of England, claimed them as its invention, while Scarborough, a town on the north West coast, maintained its own priority. This civic rivalry was to some extent cleared up with the discovery of a 1736 print of Scarborough beach by John Setterington, showing a bathing machine, though it was dismissed by some as simply a hut on wheels. In fact, they generally were little more than that.
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