Fall Asleep to The Forgotten Sleep Habits of the Victorians | History for Sleep

Before the light switch, there was the lamplighter, the tallow candle, and the long careful business of coaxing a household toward its rest. This is a slow walk through Victorian Britain at the close of the day, moving from the grand houses of the West End to the penny doss-houses of the poor, watching a whole country put itself to bed. Along the way, we consider the history of light itself, why candles were a luxury and rushlight was the glow of the very poor, and how the coming of gas changed the shape of the evening forever. We also stop at a stranger corner of Victorian sleep history: the old divided pattern of first sleep and second sleep, in which people woke in the small hours as a matter of course, and how that ancient rhythm quietly faded as cheap light crept into more and more homes. From a duchess dressed for bed by three servants to the poorest souls leaning on a rope to sleep, this is the full and quiet range of a Victorian night.