Kith and Kin : Our Ancestors and Their Beds
By Ruth A. Symes
(Images copyright of Auckland Castle Trust)
What is it about Kings and carparks? First, the body
of Richard III is found in a carpark in Leicester and then, a dark oak bed, found
dismantled in the car park of the Redlands Hotel in Chester in 2010, turns out
to have belonged to none other than Henry VII and his wife Elizabeth of York.
Quite apart from its celebrated erstwhile occupants, the bed might interest
family historians because it shows how an item of domestic furniture, albeit a
rather superb one in this case, can very much enhance our understanding of how our ancestors lived.
The bed, which is superbly carved and reckoned to
bring about £20 million at auction, is on display in the Power and the Glory
Exhibition at Auckland Castle, County Durham until September 2014. It is
believed to be possibly the only surviving Tudor bed in the country and is
likely to have been a wedding present to the King and Queen who married on 18th
January 1486. The wooden structure has been carbon-dated to the late fifteenth
century from material sourced from German forests. It is known that Henry made
a trip to Northern England in 1495 and
the bed, which would have been made for easy transportation, may have been
brought with him from London to Lathom in Lincolnshire where he visited the
Stanley family who had helped him to seize the Crown at the Battle of Bosworth,
ten years earlier.
The symbolic significance of this bed is
unmistakeable: if its identification is
correct then it is possible that this was the bed in which Henry and
Elizabeth’s second son, later Henry VIII, was conceived. And since the later
Henry was the key figure in removing Britain from the jurisdiction of Catholic Rome,
the bed might truly be called ‘the cradle of our Protestant Reformation.’ The bed, known as the Paradise State Bed will
be on display at Auckland Castle until September 2014 and has already been the subject
of a BBC 4 documentary , Secret Knowledge: The King’s Lost Bed.
Surprisingly enough, the beds of our own (rather
less elevated) ancestors may well have had their own points of interest. It’s
possible that you may have inherited a family bed but, if not, look out for
them in documents relating to your family’s estate, especially wills and
inventories (see box on Key Sources). Inventories of property made at the time
of the death in order to establish the value of an estate would usually refer
to the significant value of beds. For example, the inventory of Jane Jenkins,
spinster, made in 1796 and relating to the items in and around her property
(possibly Trelan Farm, Craswell, Escley, Herefordshire), includes: from the room over the kitchen, two feather beds, bedstead and bedlinen worth
£1, 16s; and from Chamber 1, one
featherbed, bedstead, curtain and bedclothes worth £2,2s and from Chamber 2 one feather bed, bedstead and
bedclothes worth £1, 11s and 6d.
Likewise, in 1808, Elizabeth Brew of Lezayre on the
Isle of Man was fairly typical in bequeathing in her will to her daughter Jane
Brew, ‘the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds British, a feather bed, bedding,
the cow and the desk above the parlour... to [my] son Thomas, the feather bed
with the blue and white check [and] the
desk in the factory, and … to [my] daughter Elizabeth, one of the feather beds
in the room above the kitchen.’ (see: http://brew.clients.ch/willslezayre.htm)
For our ancestors, the family bed was probably the
most important item of furniture in the home. As a visit to any stately home will confirm, beds
were status symbol amongst household possessions. In brief, the more beds you had and the more
ostentatious their design, the greater your obvious wealth. Poorer families
made do with one bed: the poorest slept on the floor. The matrimonial bed would
certainly have been the locus of the most important emotional events in your family’s
history – after all, consummations of marriage, conceptions, births, nursings
and deaths all took place atop of it.
A
Short History of Beds
Archaeological evidence tells us that the earliest
beds used in Britain were shallow chests in which the bedding was placed. Next came
timber-framed beds with rope or leather supports across which a ‘mattress’ was
slung. Early mattresses were simply bags
containing a soft filling such as straw or wool, that was covered with plain, cheap fabric. By
the Elizabethan period, wealthier families turned in to flamboyantly carved and
painted beds.
By the mid-eighteenth century well-to- do households
were acquiring bedcovers made from quality linen or cotton, and comfier
mattresses were now filled with coconut fibre, cotton, wool and horsehair. Such beds were a paradise for bed bugs
(blood-sucking human parasites) which laid their eggs on wooden footboards and
headboards. To combat this problem, brass
and iron bedsteads were first made in Europe during the 1840s and were soon
manufactured on a massive scale.
In the Victorian period, taller houses were built to
accommodate more bedrooms and the members of wealthier families, at least,
slept in different rooms. With better
knowledge about the way in which disease was transmitted, it was recommended
that bedrooms were kept airy and uncluttered. Four-poster beds disappeared, bed
hangings were removed, mattresses were turned daily and it was advised that bedding was rigorously
washed every few weeks, with pillows and mattresses being properly cleaned a
couple of times a year. Beds were
strategically placed so that bedroom doors shielded them from view to maintain
privacy.
From 1865, coil spring construction became popular
for beds, and as time went on, so
popular were British beds that many brass and iron bedsteads found their way to
the outposts of the Empire – places as far away as Africa and India. At the end of the 1920s, mattresses made from
latex rubber came onto the market, and by the early 1940s, our ancestors had all
but stopped scratching at night - bedbugs were virtually eradicated in the
developed world!
Beds
and Family Events
Conjugal
Bed
Conducting an affair in
the marital bed has always been considered one of the most heinous sins – such
beds were symbols of the trust, faith and steadfastness. They were also, of course, were associated
with sex and fertility as attested by some of the superstitious practices that
went on around them - from the placing bits of wedding cake under a
bridesmaid’s pillow (as a means of bringing her luck in love) to the tying of a
laying-hen to the bed of a newly married couple (Ireland).
Child-Bed
With most children
being born at home in the past, the most likely place for your ancestors to
have entered the world was the marital bed. Since maternal and child mortality
was so high in the early Victorian period in particular, the time of being ‘brought
to bed’ must have been a terrifying experience for most women. Additional, beds
could become places of genealogical intrigue; there have been cases (possibly
mythical) where a child has been smuggled into the family bedchamber in a
warming pan or other receptacle to replace a child who had died (see, for example, the Mary of Modena bed at
Kensington Palace) . New mothers in the Victorian period were advised to lie
flat in their beds for nine days after the birth of their children and the
whole lying --in period lasted a month.
Death–Bed
As your family death
certificates will reveal, most people in the past died, not in a hospital, but in
their own beds. Household advice books had plenty to say on how a sick bed
should be maintained. As well as having the bedding regularly changed, they
should be pulled away from the wall to allow for the better circulation of air.
If the worst should come to pass, it was common for families (and even servants
in wealthier households) to gather at the edge of a bed when a loved one was
about to die. Catholic ancestors will have made their final confession and
taken their final sacrament in their beds.
What
Can Individual Beds Tell Us?
The medieval ‘royal’ bed discovered in Chester was ornately
carved and the decoration has been useful in identifying the bed’s probable
occupants. It is believed that the headboard portrays Henry VII and Elizabeth
transformed into Adam and Eve -
something which reflects the Tudor belief that this royal couple had been
chosen by God to save England from the Wars of the Roses. Is that it is hoped that their marriage will
be fruitful.
The beds of our own ancestors, even if they are
still within the family, will not, of course, point so exactly to the time at
which they were made or to the genealogy of the family. Some old beds, of
course, boast carvings which have symbolic meaning, such as the satyr for lust,
or the snake for evil. Others may bear the scratched signatures of those who
have slept in the bed. Officially-carved monograms on beds tend to represent
either the full name of one occupant (with a large surname initial in the
centre) and the initial for the first name on the left and for the middle name
on the right, or a monogram for a married couple with the initial for the joint
surname in the centre, the man’s first
name initial on the left and the woman’s first name initial on the right.
Inherited items of bed linen such as pillow cases or counterpanes may also bear
a family monogram though here the convention tends to be reversed with the
woman’s first initial on the left and the man’s on the right.
Sleep
and Our Ancestors
Two hundred years ago, in pre-industrial times, it
was common for whole families to sleep together. The idea of children having
separate bedrooms, and very young infants sleeping alone, would have been quite
shocking to most families and is a phenomenon born outa world in which people
have larger incomes, bigger houses and smaller families. Drawings of old beds
show that it was also common for people to sleep slightly propped up rather
than lying down flat.
Moreover, today’s obsession with getting eight hours
of uninterrupted slumber is actually quite an unnatural modern innovation,
according to some researchers. Diaries, letters and court records attest to the
fact that it was more usual in the past (when the long hours of darkness were
far less assailable due to the lack of electric light), for people to have two
four-hour sleeps with a one or two hour gap in between (so called ‘segmented
sleep’). At a time when there was little
to do after dark and therefore no prestige in staying up all night, these two
shifts of sleep made sense. During the middle wakeful period, people might go
to the toilet, smoke, read, write, pray, chat and or have sex. The existence of
cupboards to hold food in bedrooms from the past points to the fact that it was
common to get up and have a snack in the middle of the night.
The move to a single longer sleep, it is believed,
came with improvements in street and domestic lighting, and, because of the
opening up of such places of nightly entertainments as coffee houses in which the
urban upper classes might fraternise until late in the evening. After 1684, when London was first lit by wax
candles in glass lamps at night, respectable people first started to cut short
the hours they were abed and to indulge in legitimate social activity. This
coupled with the new working timetable brought in by the Industrial Revolution meant
that segmented sleep became a thing of the past. It was only, apparently, in the late nineteenth century that some of
our ancestors started to articulate their worries about interrupted sleep in
diaries and letters.
Last
paragraph…
All in all, the family bed witnessed most of the
activity that made our ancestors human, from defecation in the bed pan to
prayers at the bed’s edge, from illicit and licit liaisons under the covers, to
births, deaths, sacraments and sickness. You never know, family records might
well suggest that the beds your ancestors slept in are worth investigating
further.
One
Man and his Bed: Edmund Harrold, Manchester Wigmaker and Diarist
Unless
your ancestor actually made notches in the bedpost, you are unlikely to find
out much about exactly what went on between his or her sheets. Occasionally,
however, personal papers from the past – diaries or letters- have revealed some
of the intimate secrets of the bedroom.
Edmund
Harrold was born in 1678 and worked for probably his whole life in Manchester
as a barber surgeon and wigmaker, selling books to make some extra cash on the
side. Between 1712 and 1715 (when he was
between 34 and 37 years old) he kept a diary recording aspects of his day-to-day
working and domestic life and his problems with alcohol. Notably, he recorded
the frequency and variety of the marital sex he had! When the diary was first
published in 1867 the references to sex were cut out so as not to shock a
Victorian audience, but the recent edition (2008) is uncensored. And as the new
editor puts it: ‘there is no other known published plebian diary which makes
such candid reference to sexual activity.’
Harrold records the number of times he had intercourse with (or, as he
puts it ‘did’ or ‘enjoyed’) his wife on ‘the new corded bed’ and ‘on the roof
bed’ and notes the positions they adopted (whether ‘old fashion’ or ‘new
fashion’). Harrold did not record the sex for salacious reasons, rather he saw
marital intercourse as a religious duty necessary for procreation, and as a sensible
means of containing his lust. His activities in the bedchamber produced nine
children in all, seven died young.
Find
Out More
Wills
and Testaments -
Testators often left beds to family members or friends. To find details
of your ancestors’ wills made between 1858 and 1966 view the National Calendar
of Wills available at see www.ancestry.co.uk.
To get a copy of an actual will (for a fee) you can visit The Central Probate
Registry (First Avenue House, Holborn, London) in person. You are advised to
make an appointment beforehand. Alternatively, order the will via the website www.justice.gov.uk/courts/probate/copies-of
grants – wills. Wills made before 1858 may be held in local or National
Archives. To find out more visit www.nationalarchives.gov.uk.
Inventories
-
From 1530-1782, executors of wills had to provide the registry of the
appropriate probate court with an inventory of the deceased’s goods, together
with their value. After 1782, this was no longer obligatory but any interested
party could request such an inventory. Inventories, which were usually compiled
by reputable neighbours, listed everything from the deceased’s personal
property to his or her so-called ‘chattels’ - furniture, clothing, cash,
livestock and the tools of their trade. Inventories may often be found attached to
other surviving testamentary records (in the Probate Registry or archives – see
above), but have occasionally been
indexed separately.
Museums
–
The Paradise State Bed found in Chester is available to view at Aukland Castle,
County Durham until September 2014 (http://visitors.aucklandcastle.org/about/paradise_bed/).
The Victoria and Albert Museum, London houses a collection of famous beds
including the State Bed from Melville House, Fife and The Great Bed of Ware
(three feet wide and able to accommodate up to four couples!) which was
constructed in about 1590 and was a tourist attraction in the town of Ware for
many generations. This bed bears the scratched initials and remnants of wax
seals left by tourists over the centuries.
Websites
See the video about the Great Bed of Ware at
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/videos/g/video-great-bed-of-ware/
Books
Roger Ekirch,
At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, Phoenix 2006
Celia Heritage, Tracing
Your Ancestors Through Death Records: A Guide for Family Historians, Pen and
Sword Books, 2013.
Craig Koslofsky, Evening’s
Empire, A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe, New Studies in European
History, CUP 2011
Judith Flanders: Inside
the Victorian Home: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed. Harper
Perennial, 2004
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