Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the British ambassador, stopped in Sofia on the road to Constantinople and walked into the women's bath still in her riding clothes. Hot marble, steam, light only from the roof, and about two hundred women bathing, talking and drinking coffee. European men liked to imagine these baths very differently. She wrote that there was "not the least wanton smile or immodest gesture" and called the bath "the women's coffee-house, where all the news of the town is told".

The women invited her to undress and join them. She refused, they insisted, so she opened her shirt and showed them her stays. They believed she was locked inside that machine and could not open it herself, and they blamed her husband.

She kept her corset. They kept their coffee-house. Everybody went home sure the other one was the prisoner. In a Finnish sauna, the corset stays outside the door.

Which of them would you have pitied?

Sources: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, letter of 1 April 1717 (Old Style), Letters, 1790 edition (Project Gutenberg 17520), public domain.
Sounds: forest and jay recordings by Yle Arkisto (Freesound), CC BY 4.0. Other sounds CC0 or Apple-licensed.