Swimsuits Parade, Sydney, Australia

The Bath Corporation official bathing dress code of 1737 prescribed, for women:
No Female person shall at any time go into a Bath or Baths within this City by day or by night without a decent Shift on their bodies.
The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker was published in 1771 and its description of ladies’ bathing costume is different to 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.