Short beds- myth?

[Doug Harding]

Re: Short beds- myth?

I have noticed in my travels throughout the South, where houses had higher ceilings that the furnature was made to fit, ie taller. Beds with higher head and foot boards then we are used to seeing will give the allusion that the beds are shorter. My questions would be First; how much shorter than the standard used today is the bed really?
Second; how tall was the person that teh bed was made for?
Given that the standard bed is 6 feet long today, how many beds are really shorter then that?

I too have heard that people slept reclined to breath better. I've also heard that they did not want the blood rushing to thier head while sleeping.

Doug

[redleggeddevil]

Re: Short beds- myth?

I think the question of perceived length versus real length is important. Beds, when viewed from odd angles through plexiglas barricades, can look very distorted. There is also the question of mental distortion. I was touring an 18th century home in the Delaware Valley when we entered the parlor. Unlike many tours, we were permitted to walk right up to the furniture.

A woman near me looked at what my Great Aunt would have called a "fainting couch", a day bed with angled back rest. "Oh my!", she exclaimed, "How SMALL it is!"

I looked down at the couch, knelt beside it and stretched out my arms. The horizontal surface was longer than the span of my arms (at least 6 feet) and the angled back was at least another 2 1/2 feet. That means an eight and a half foot tall person would have fit comfortably on the couch without dangling off the end.

Whatever was small, it wasn't that bed.

[KathyBradford]

Re: Short beds- myth?

Winterthur has a cutaway of a bed showing all the layers. This picture doesn't answer the length question, but it shows the rope bed, straw mattress, feather mattress, layers of blankets, feather bolster, and down pillow.

[Spinster]

Re: Short beds- myth?

There is not a bed in my house that Mama did not call 'that old junk'

Case in point, the bed Grandmother started housekeeping on, that I rescued from the corn crib some 65 years later. Goodness only knows where they got it from, though it is manufactured and not homemade.

Its oak, with a six foot headboard, and a four foot endboard, with unaltered oak sideboards. I am 5' 3". If I point my toes and stretch my neck, I touch headboard to endboard, so lets say, about 5' 7" in total sleeping length. Luckily, Dear Husband is a short man, and quite accomodating, or I could not have married him.

Over the years, we've found that we've gradually added pillows--2 or 3 each to this bed, to accomodate respiratory challenges.

As to my Grandparents--my Grandfather was over 6 feet tall. Since only the oldest child has any memory of the bed being in the house, and all the others remember a different bed--I can only attribute this particular short bed to the enthusiasm of newly weds.

Two other period beds in my home are of the folding variety, with a flat metal spring to support the body. Each is of a length to take a modern twin sized air mattress, though slightly narrow for a true modern twin mattress.

Our late 18th century rope bed is just slighty under a normal modern double bed.

I also note that these beds fit the walls and scale of my turn of the 20th century home---beds fit the house visually and traffic pattern, house fits the beds.

The only bed we have trouble with in positioning is the one modern queen size bed in the guest room. It eats up the whole room and there is no wall that it fits on. You'd think in a 3000 square foot 5 bedroom home there would be room for this thing, but its awkward and out of place.

And literally--its a matter of inches, and in our own concepts of personal space. When I started housekeeping 30+ years ago, the fact that we had a queen sized bed was virtually unheard of---it took a special effort to buy sheets, and folks were amazed at such a luxury for young folks starting out.

So this is not only an interpretive challenge, but a shift in societal perceptions of required personal space.

And, to illustrate that, a story I should not tell, but will anyway. Through a series of circumstances truly necessary at the time, but not worth explaining here, I found myself occupying a 3/4 sized rope bed in an 18th century cabin. Like some of the illustrations above, the bed was made into place to fit the corner, beside the door. Also in the bed, was Sister and Sister's New Husband. Before that frigid night was over, the husky dog came out from under the bed, and wiggled his way in as well. We're all good sized folks, and we all slept well, until the British army burst through the tavern door, demanding breakfast.....:tounge_sm

[Drygoods]

Re: Short beds- myth?

Wow, what an idea? Well, I have 10 different period antique beds which I keep for various events and only two of them have been lengthened. One of them is a wooden rope bed that screws into the foot and headboard, yet along the side rails has a wrapped metal plate with rivets which is where we assume that it was lengthened with a piece of wood to make it longer.
The other bed is a cone and socket iron and brass bed that has flat metal bar sides that was changed with a sliding metal insert and the person who did this adjustment was a decent welder or smithy, but not the best person for the job. This bed does have the advantage though of being adjustable to those who are very tall, but a nuisance to a short toady like myself.
This does remind me of another bed that we have, a cannon-ball style rope maple bed that still has the key wind in the foot rail. The sad part of this bed is that it shows where it was once used on a ship from it's floor mountings, but the worst part is that someone tall must have used it because they cut out the foot board.

[Robert A Mosher]

Re: Short beds- myth? or just poor chronology?

I believe that it isn't so much a question of whether 'they' did it but rather a question of when they stopped doing it. Living in Virginia and having lived in Ireland for several years, I visited enough period houses to have heard the same explanation for all the short beds on display. BUT these all represented houses and bedding from the 18th Century - much of which survived obviously into the 19th Century by which time as indicated by your 1835 quote, the fashion had changed. I will gladly try and help out because this is an interesting question.

Robert A. Mosher