Eadweard Muybridge was undoubtedly a most peculiar man, but his huge collection of photographs of naked people doing quite simple things has proved an invaluable resource for studies of human locomotion.

His images also help give us an idea of how nineteenth century people did some quite ordinary tasks such as washing themselves.

Muybridge doesn’t have (as far as I can find) an image of someone using a hip bath but he does have this photograph of a naked woman helping another wash while using a bath not that different from the classic hip bath

which gives a general idea of how one might use a hip bath. I’ve also found a wood cut of a woman being helped to bathe by her maid

which is not dissimilar from Muybridge’s photograph, and reminding us that having a bath was not a totally private experience – there would have had to be servants to heat the water and sluice one down.

Bathing with a ewer and basin would have been a bit more private, as seen in this animated gif based on a Muybridge set of images of a nude woman washing her face

but even so someone would have had to heat the water in the ewer first showing how dependent the nineteenth century middle classes were on their servants.

(incidentally Muybridge’s models seem to have had fun doing the bath sequence – there’s a photograph of one woman pouring presumably cold water over the other closely followed by a woman jumping from the bath…)