In my last post ‘Sleep, Health and History’ I described the importance of healthy sleep to the long-term health of body and mind within early modern medical culture. Sleep was an essential restorative of health but it was also a time of vulnerability and danger where natural and supernatural threats had to be countered. These understandings were the key drivers of sleeping habits and of the cleansing regimes that centred on and around the bed. The bedstead’s wooden frame, its layers of mattresses, bolsters and textiles usually accounted for one-third of the average household’s assets. This high economic value was matched by the practical and symbolic importance of sleep’s apparatus within the home. The bed’s material and emotional significance in relation to household formation, love and marriage has been explored by Joanne Bailey and Angela McShane, but its make-up and management also reveal the unrivalled importance of these materials as guardians of sound sleep.

Diaries, letters, household accounts and receipt books document the exhaustive efforts that people made to sleep in clean, safe and airy environments. Nowhere else in the home was so heavily governed by rules of hygiene and cleansing regimes, which ranged from the beating and turning of mattresses to sprinkling rose petals on the bed’s sheets. Persistent battles were fought against bed-bugs, which regularly infested old wooden bedsteads. Hannah Glasse’s (1760) included no less than eight receipts for keeping bedsteads free from flies, fleas, bed bugs, gnats and silkworms. The hot summer months posed particular difficulties for controlling bug infestations. At this time of year Glasse advised people to place a garland of ‘Ash-boughs and Flowers’ at the bed’s head, which formed ‘a pretty Ornament’ and whose floral scent attracted flies and gnats away from the sleeper’s body. Those who lived in marshy or fenny areas might burn a piece of fern in the chamber or hang pieces of cow dung at the foot of the bedstead to keep bugs at bay. Country-dwellers were directed to bathe their hands and face in a mixture of wormwood, rue and water before retiring to bed. These parts of the body, which lay unprotected by bed-sheets and bedclothes, required additional protection.

The impulse to sleep in safety and protection extended to the bed’s textiles and it had a powerful effect on the senses. Linen was by far the most popular material for bed-sheets in seventeenth and eighteenth-century England and it varied widely in its quality, cost and availability. Whilst some were able to manufacture their own sheets by growing and spinning flax, others could purchase high-quality linen such as ‘Holland’, which was named after its place of origin. Linen sheets were prized for their cool and crisp sensations, which were believed to regulate the heat of the body’s internal organs, to absorb the its nocturnal excretions and to close its pores against dangerous pollutants in the night air. These qualities complemented the healthcare principles of the six non-naturals that governed people’s attitudes towards sleep and they also helped to foster strong attachments between individuals and their bedding materials. It was a common practice for people to take their own bed-sheets with them when they travelled. This reduced the risk of having to sleep beneath unclean sheets but it also promoted familiar scents and sensations at bedtime, which helped to offset the feelings of vulnerability that were associated with sleeping in alien environments.

For some people, the physical and psychological protection offered by bed-sheets went far beyond the natural world and offered a tangible defence against diabolical attack. When John Wesley’s family home in Epworth, Lincolnshire, was invaded by the malevolent spirit known as ‘Old Jeffrey’ in the winter of 1716-17, his sister Molly dived beneath her bed-covers for protection when she heard the latch of her chamber door rattling at bedtime. Molly’s sisters Suky and Emily also buried themselves under their bed-sheets when they heard Old Jeffrey’s familiar knock after their father Samuel had shut them in for the night. Since sleep was widely understood as a time of slippage between the natural and supernatural realms (as shown in Young Bateman’s Ghost), it seemed logical to some that bed-sheets might save them from natural and diabolical threats. The power invested in these materials was likely strengthened by the broader uses of textiles like linen, which were used to make clerical vestments and to wrap dead bodies before burial.

Efforts to control sleep’s material environments took many different forms but they collectively underline the feelings of vulnerability and danger that sleep generated. The cleansing rituals that surrounded the bed and the careful choice of its textiles were tokens of household decency but they were also effective methods of safeguarding body and soul and thus of easing anxieties at bedtime.

Young Bateman’s ghost, or, a godly warning to all maidens (London, 1760) courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

In my last post, ‘Does sleep have a history?,’ I set out some of the lessons that history can offer about how sleeping habits and sleep-quality are shaped by the societies, cultures and environments in which we live. Sleep’s importance to physical and mental health has been recognised by most individuals and societies throughout history but there are important variations in how this essential period of rest was believed to affect body and mind, and consequently, in the time and resources that have been dedicated to the pursuit of peaceful slumber. Changing ideas about sleep’s purpose and its relationship to human health are thus central to its daily experience.

In early modern England (the focus of my current research), the widespread practice of bi-phasic, or ‘segmented’ sleep, has captured most media attention to date. This refers to the habit of sleeping in two separate cycles during the night, rather than in one consolidated sleep-cycle of 7-8 hours, which people called their ‘first sleep’ and ‘second sleep’ (Ekirch, 2001). On 31 January 2016, the psychologist Richard Wiseman, even encouraged readers of The Guardian to ‘consider segmented sleep’ if they were having trouble dropping off at night. Whilst segmented sleep has been singled out for special notice, it is worth noting that early modern sleeping habits of many different kinds formed the bedrock of a rich, holistic culture of preventative healthcare that was designed to safeguard the long-term health of body and mind.

We all know the delightful moods and sensations that sound sleep can bring, and we miss them when we are sleep-deprived, or forced out of bed too soon to go to work, comfort a crying baby, or dash to the airport to catch an early morning flight. The grumpiness associated with the phrase ‘getting up on the wrong side of the bed’ neatly conveys the negative effects that too little, or poor-quality sleep, can have on our bodies, minds and moods. Today, we have a sophisticated set of medical explanations to pinpoint exactly why we feel out of sorts – irritable, hungry and lacking in energy – when we don’t get enough sleep. These feelings and sensations were just as familiar however to people in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who had their own set of bodily gestures and expressions to describe them.

‘Getting up on the wrong side of the bed’ was in fact a well known early modern phrase and its etymology opens a window onto the influential body of healthcare knowledge known as the ‘six non-natural things’, which was central to the way that people thought about sleep and how they practiced it. The main ambition of this system of healthcare, which was based on the medical wisdom of the ancient world, was to preserve human health in harmony with the natural environment. The body’s four humours (blood, choler, melancholy and phlegm) were kept in balance by paying careful attention to the six non-natural things – a set of environmental and dietary rules that related to fresh air, food and drink, sleeping and waking, motion and rest, excretion and retention, and the passions of the soul. A healthy and long life depended on the individual’s careful management of all six categories. Regular habits of sleeping and waking kept the humours in check and prevented their corruption, which warded off disease. In 1539, Sir Thomas Elyot, the lawyer, humanist scholar and ambassador to King Henry VIII, spoke for many when he stated that perfect sleep made ‘the body fatter, the mynde more quiete and clere’ and ‘the humours temperate’. Elyot offered this advice to a large audience of readers in his best-selling healthcare guide The Castel of Helth and his words were echoed in different forms and formats well into the eighteenth century.

As well as supporting overall good health, a sound night’s sleep had a more specific function in supporting the process of digestion, which shaped a range of distinctive sleep-related activities. Chief among them was adopting the correct sleep posture at bedtime. Most healthcare guides (also known as regimens of health) advised people to sleep ‘well bolstered up’, or with their heads slightly raised with the aid of a pillow or bolster. The gentle slope that this position created between the head and stomach was believed to speed the process of digestion and to prevent food being regurgitated during the night. It was just as important for sleepers to rest first on their right side of their bodies, before turning onto their left side during the second half of the night. Resting first on the right, which was judged to be hotter than the left side of the body, allowed food to descend more easily to the pit of the stomach, where it was heated during the initial stage of digestion. Turning onto the cooler left side of the body after a few hours released the stomach vapours that had accumulated on the right and spread the heat more evenly through the body.

References to sleep posture were rarely worthy of note in personal diaries or letters but English folk beliefs suggest that there was a widespread perception of a right and a wrong way to lie in bed, and to rise from it. Rising on the right side of the bed was considered by some to be an unlucky omen for the day ahead. In an astrological text of 1652, the Church of England clergyman John Gaule judged it folly ‘to bode good or bad luck, fortune [or] successe, from the rising up on the right, or left side’. Despite Gaule’s objections, this seems to have been a familiar saying, with obvious links to healthcare knowledge. Since physicians encouraged sleepers to spend the second part of the night on their left side, rising on the right may suggest that body and mind were disordered by a failure to heed this advice. Even more dangerous than sleeping on the wrong side of the body, was sleeping flat on the back, which was believed to flood the base of the brain with excessive moisture, trigger nightmares, invite the visit of an evil spirit known as the ‘incubus’, or even to herald the sleeper’s early death. Early modern people took great care to moderate their bedtimes, and manage their sleeping environments, and they may well have been similarly diligent about their sleep-posture to increase their chances of resting well and securing their wellbeing. These intricate daily habits reveal the high value that was attached to sound sleep, which was encouraged by the long-term preventative culture of healthcare that characterised this period.

‘The Nightmare’ (London, 1827) © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

This is the first in a series of blog posts in which the historian, Dr Sasha Handley, reflects on what history can tell us about the meaning, practice and quality of human sleep.

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When I first contacted the editor of my new book, ‘Sleep in Early Modern England’, to pitch my project, my email was met with a mixture of curiosity and surprise: ‘I didn’t realise a history of sleep was possible!’ declared my editor. His reaction is now very familiar to me – a hastily raised pair of eyebrows is the bodily gesture that I see most often when I talk about my work. I can hardly blame people for these expressions of wonder (and occasional incredulity). Sleep is, after all, a biological necessity that spans all of human history. No man, woman or child can live without sleep and so it is logical to assume that it is an entirely natural impulse that has remained the same since time immemorial. Some aspects of sleep’s practice appear remarkably consistent across time and space. Most humans appear to sleep for an average of 6-8 hours each night, usually during the hours of darkness. They also prefer to rest, where possible, in enclosed and secure settings to counter the feelings of vulnerability and powerlessness that usually accompany sleep’s approach. In the words of diarist John Evelyn, it was ‘in our Beds & sleepe’ that Christians could ‘take least care of ourselves’.

Sleep is such a familiar feature of our daily lives that we rarely stop to think about how our material environments and cultural worlds might shape its nature, timing and quality. This is where historians can play a vital role in uncovering distinctive variations in attitudes towards sleep and approaches to it. Speaking as an historian who has spent many years agonising over such issues, one thing is certain: the value that people attach to a good night’s sleep has a direct effect on the time and effort that they invest into procuring it, which in turn has a very real effect on sleep-quality. In most modern western societies, we turn to our doctor, our local pharmacist, or to a healthcare professional for advice when suffering from sleep loss. This contrasts sharply with cultures of sleep-management in early modern England, which were firmly rooted in the home. A rich seam of evidence from diaries and letters, from books of healthcare and household management, from sermons, visual images, sleep-related objects, and from household inventories, shows just how carefully people attended to the details of their sleeping lives to try and ensure a sound night’s sleep. Bedtimes were closely monitored to discourage sloth; bedside prayers and meditations were routinely performed to beg for God’s protection during the night, to calm the body and unburden the mind; soporific liquids and herbal preparations made of roses, lavender or chamomile were prepared to ease sleep’s onset; and sleeping environments were carefully arranged, personalized and cleansed so that people could lie down each night in familiar and stable surroundings. The nightcaps worn by Tobias and Sara in this image were typical of the kind of linen nightwear that was valued for regulating body temperature and for keeping sleepers safe from natural and supernatural dangers. Such attention to detail may seem excessive yet it was symptomatic of a culture in which healthy sleep was cherished not only as a natural refreshment for body and mind, but also as a safeguard of spiritual health and personal reputation. The distinctive nature of early modern sleep culture thus offers an ideal pilot study for weighing the importance of culture and environment in shaping experiences of sleep and our attitudes towards it.

Tobias and Sara on their Wedding Night (ca.1520), © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Histories of Sleep explores the latest research into sleeping habits throughout the ages. Sleeping hours, sleeping environments, sleeping postures and bedtime routines have been heavily shaped by different socio-cultural forces in a wide variety of historical contexts. Histories of Sleep invites contributions from those pursuing research into these themes and from those with a more general interest in historical sleeping practices.

Header image credit: Pillow Cover (1725-50), National Trust Inventory No. 500311.3