What People Did at Night Before Electricity

For most of history, people woke up in the middle of the night on purpose. Then they went back to sleep. Spend one full night in England around 1600: curfew bells, stinky tallow candles, the "first sleep", the hour called the watch, link boys, night soil men, knocker-ups with pea shooters, and how electric light made us forget it all. Chapters 0:00 Up at 2 AM on purpose 0:31 When the sun went down 1:21 The price of light 2:37 First sleep 3:36 The waking hour 4:35 Out in the dark 6:09 Second sleep 7:00 How we lost it 8:17 Would you try it? Sources – A. Roger Ekirch, At Day's Close: Night in Times Past (2005) and "Sleep We Have Lost" (American Historical Review, 2001). – Thomas A. Wehr, "In short photoperiods, human sleep is biphasic" (Journal of Sleep Research, 1992). – Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, The Squire's Tale ("She slepte hire firste sleep, and thanne awook"). – Laurent Joubert, Erreurs populaires (1578), advice on the hour after first sleep. – Candle duty: Act of 1709 (8 Anne c. 9), repealed 1831. – London lantern order of 1417 (Mayor Sir Henry Barton); Paris street lanterns under La Reynie (1667). – Gas lighting on Pall Mall, 1807 (Frederick Albert Winsor); about 40,000 gas lamps in London by 1823. – Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men (2002). – Knocker-ups: BBC and Science Museum Group features; Mary Smith of Limehouse, 1930s photographs. #history #sleep #stickman #beforeelectricity