'Til Morning is Nigh

NOTE: This episode is a rebroadcast. There may be minor differences between the episode and the transcript you see below.

PETER: Now as you can imagine, the more people were able to get done after sunset, the later they went to bed in the evening. As it turns out, that shift had fundamental consequences, not just for when people slept, but for how they slept.

To find out more about this, I sat down with Roger Ekirch, an historian at Virginia Tech. We started was what had counted as a normal night’s sleep back in my century, the 18th century.

ROGER EKIRCH: Typically, people went to bed between 9:00 and 10:00 PM. They would then sleep for several hours until some time shortly past midnight, whereupon they would awaken from what was widely termed first sleep. They would then remain awake, up and about for up to an hour or more.

PETER: And what they do, Roger? It’s dark.

ROGER EKIRCH: Anything and everything.

PETER: Yeah.

ROGER EKIRCH: They typically meditated, prayed, made love, not necessarily in that order. They pondered dreams, from whence they often had just awoken. Some visited neighbors, still others plundered a neighbor’s orchard.

Most people then took a second sleep of several hours, roughly the same duration as their first sleep. And then they would awaken for good around between 4:00 and 5:00 in the morning.

PETER: So what happened? Here we are by 1900, and it’s probably earlier than that, you could certainly say by then the idea of a good night’s sleep means one night’s sleep. It’s not two night’s sleep. What happened?

ROGER EKIRCH: There was a shift in cultural attitudes during the 19th century, propelled by the Industrial Revolution, that certainly made consolidated sleep far more appealing and attractive than it had ever been.

PETER: Well, Roger, are you talking about the workday in factories and offices, to impose time discipline on labor?

ROGER EKIRCH: Yes. And the growth in time consciousness–

PETER: Right.

ROGER EKIRCH: –and the desire on the part of the middle class, but other segments of the population as well, to achieve maximum productivity and efficiency, not just at work, but in their daily life.

So their arose a reform movement arguably every bit as popular as the temperance movement, entitled early rising. And what early rising referred to was getting up after your first sleep. By now, owing in part to the prevalence of artificial lighting, people were going to bed later, so we’re not talking about getting up after the first sleep, immediately after midnight. But they were urged to forsake their second sleep, which increasingly was regarded as being unhealthy, unproductive, and a temptation to immoral nocturnal visions.

PETER: Ugh, we can’t– this is a family show. We can’t describe that. So let’s talk a little bit more about this reform movement. Who were these reformers and what were they up to?

ROGER EKIRCH: Generally, middle class. But one reason why I think it has not attracted much historical interest is that it was a movement that required self-policing, self-discipline. There was little that one could do is a group, even though there was an early rising men’s association formed in New York City and also one in London.

More to the point, parents were urged to socialize their young children at a very early age to this new regiment. As early as 1829, an article appeared in the Philadelphia-based Journal of Health. The author reflected, if they, referring to young children, turn upon the other ear, to take a second nap, they will be taught to look upon it as an intemperance, not at all redounding to their credit.

PETER: Well, how about alarm clocks? Did they come into wide use then? Is that a part of the new regime. I mean, you’re supposed to internalize it so much that you are your own alarm clock. But this is the heyday of the mass distribution of time pieces, isn’t it?

ROGER EKIRCH: Exactly, both clocks and watches. And there was in England an alarm clock bed that was–

PETER: Whoa.

ROGER EKIRCH: –displayed at the London World’s Fair, at the famed Crystal Palace in 1851. And essentially, the front legs of the bedstead folded underneath after a bell sounded, thus depositing the sleeper upon his or her feet. At the base of the bed, reported one newspaper account, and I’m quoting now, “A cold bath can be placed if he is at all disposed to ensure being rapidly rendered awake.”

PETER: That would do it. That would do it. Wouldn’t you say Roger that the routinization of a good night’s sleep, it’s being compressed, as you describe, into the usual eight hours, is central to our modern time consciousness? In many ways, it’s the new way of sleeping through the night that sets our internal clocks–

ROGER EKIRCH: Yes.

PETER: –and calibrates them with the clocks that are pervasive in our environment.

ROGER EKIRCH: Yes. By the early 20th century, sleeping through the night had become, as one newspaper put it, the usual rule.

Interestingly, only in the early 20th century does the variety of insomnia that we refer to today as middle of the night insomnia, quite widespread, is that perceived as a medical problem. No one in the pre-industrial age referred to being awakened naturally in the middle of the night as a problem. No medical text referred to it in that vein. It was thought to be utterly natural.

PETER: Hey, Roger. Thank you so much.

ROGER EKIRCH: I’ve enjoyed it tremendously. Peter, sweet dreams.

PETER: All right, you too.

Roger Ekirch is a professor of history at Virginia Tech and the author of At Day’s Close, Night in Times Past. You can a hear longer version of our conversation at backstoryradio.org.