HOW BEDS EVOLVED

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 255, 24 July 1937, Page 6 (Supplement)

HOW BEDS EVOLVED

Primitive Sleeping Habits

In the early ages skins were generally used both for bed and pillow. In travelling, the wayfarer was content to take a stone for a pillow, and having spread his upper garment on it, to sleep without any further preparation. Carpets were sufficient for this purpose with most of the people in later times, and had the advantage of being easily transported from one place to another. In order to take up his bed and walk, a man had nothing to do but to roll it up and place it under his arm. This seems to have been the only purpose for which carpets were used in ancienttimes. The old practice in England was to strew the floor with rushes, so that visitors who could not find any other seat, might, without much inconvenience, deposit themselves upon the floor. But even as regards the interests of neatness, it would have been quite as well to have left it bare, for Erasmus, in describing respectable English houses, gives us to understand that under the rushes with which the floor was spread lay a collection of fragments, bones, beer and other dirt. He says that no doubt the frequent plagues in England were owing to this unsavoury practice; and there has been no example of that disorder since the great fire in London, in the time of Charles 11, purified the city.

In the times of the Hebrew kingdom the bed resembled a divan, consisting of a low elevation running round three sides of a small room. This was covered with stuffed cushions of the same width, and bolsters were put on the back against the wall. They also had beds resembling our sofas; but these were luxuries—a carpet was enough for the greater proportion of the people. The Romans, luxurious as they were, do not appear to have made use of feather beds much before the time of Pliny. In the early republican times they slept on leaves; afterward they used hay and straw. Till the close of tlie thirteenth century straw was common even in palaces. The kings of England used to sleep, fathc• and son. in the same chamber.

The present kind of bed is the result of gradual improvement. First, a coverlet was thrown over the person in his straw couch; then followed the practice of entirely undressing, and an additional supply of bed clothes was used; next, linen .sheets came into use iu the place of blankets; and at one time hangings or curtains were hung over the bed to secure both privacy and comfort. To the English belongs the merit of having carried improvements in beds, as in many other domestic arrangements, to the highest perfection.