‘Making Beds in Early Modern England: Sleep, Matter and Environmental Change’ by Dr Holly Fletcher has been published in the August edition of Historical Research.

This article brings environmental history, the history of medicine and the history of poverty into conversation with material culture studies, to argue that sleep management in early modern England involved environmental practices in which bodies and matter were interwoven.

Holly uses new archival findings relating to the Worshipful Company of Upholders in London, the chief manufacturers of beds in the city, to reveal for the first time the range of animal and plant materials upon which early modern people slept. During this period, legal restrictions dictated the kinds of materials which could be used to fill pillows and mattresses on the grounds that unlawful matter would lead to damaging health consequences. The Company of Upholders undertook regular searches of the city to prevent illegal bedding from being sold and the Company’s court records detail countless cases in which early modern Londoners were found to be in possession of beds containing prohibited fillings. These records enabled Holly to uncover a wider range of materials used in early modern bedding than previously recognised. Besides more predictable fillings like feathers and wool, these included dog hair, goat hair, rabbit fur, ‘fen-down’ and thistledown – the fluffy seeds of cattail/bulrush plants and thistles, respectively.

‘Typha Cats-taile’ in John Gerard, The herbal, or Generall historie of plantes, 1636, p. 46.

The article uses these findings as a starting point to explore how bedding materials were understood to affect sleepers’ health in this period, as well as the environmental implications of different bed fillings. Fen down, for instance, was an extremely popular bed filling among poorer communities prior to the introduction of widespread drainage projects, beginning in 1625, which had a devastating impact on the traditional ecology of the fenlands. These efforts appear to have put an end to the use of fen down in bedding from the mid seventeenth century onwards. Moreover, since many prohibited materials, like fen down, offered a cheaper alternative to better-known fillings the article offers new insights into the sleeping conditions of the early modern poor.

This research is part of Holly’s work on the Wellcome Trust funded project ‘Sleeping Well in the Early Modern World: An Environmental Approach to the History of Sleep Care’ led by Professor Sasha Handley. You can read more about Holly’s and the rest of the teams’ research into early modern sleep on the Project blog.

Image credits:

Image 1 (Header): Detail from Jan Luyken, Embleem: nacht, 1695-1705. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Public Domain.

Image 2: ‘Typha Cats-taile’ in John Gerard, The herbal, or Generall historie of plantes, 1636, p. 46.

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