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What Happened During the Waking Hour? - Sleep Before the Industrial Revolution | Sleepy Facts About History · Sleepy Facts About History

0:04
welcome to sleepy facts about history before
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the modern era the night was often divided into
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distinct segments people went to bed slept for
0:19
a few hours woke for an interval known as the
0:22
watch and then returned to bed for a second sleep
0:25
but how common was this practice what did people
0:30
do in the middle of the night And why did this
0:33
fragmented sleep pattern eventually disappear?
0:36
This episode examines the historical evidence
0:39
for segmented sleep, drawing on diaries, medical
0:44
texts, and court records from the medieval period
0:47
through the 18th century. It explores the environmental
0:51
conditions that shaped pre -industrial rest,
0:54
the scholarly debate over how widespread the
0:57
practice truly was, and the technological and
1:00
economic shifts. From gaslighting to factory
1:03
schedules, that ultimately consolidated our rest
1:06
into a single eight -hour block. I wanted to
1:10
understand why a practice that once required
1:12
no explanation vanished so completely from our
1:15
collective memory. Exploring this history reveals
1:19
that even our most intimate biological functions
1:21
are shaped by the world we inhabit, and that
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the way we sleep today is just one historical
1:26
possibility among many. We once had words for
1:32
the middle of the night. First sleep. Second
1:37
sleep. The watch. These terms were used without
1:42
explanation because they needed none. Well, change
1:45
was not our biology, but the world that gave
1:48
those words their meaning. Imagine a night in
1:51
January, somewhere in the English Midlands, or
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perhaps along the coast of Massachusetts Bay,
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in the decades around 1700. The sun has been
2:01
down for more than eight hours already and will
2:03
not return for another six. You lie in a bed
2:08
that shares the room with a hearth. Perhaps a
2:12
child or a spouse or a servant lies beside you.
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The warmth of multiple bodies beneath heavy woolen
2:19
coverings is your only defense against the cold
2:22
that presses against the shuttered window. You
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have slept once already. The people around you
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call this your first sleep. Now you wake. The
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fire has sunk to embers. The room carries the
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faint, acrid smell of smoke from the banked hearth.
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You rise, your feet finding the cold floor, and
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wrap yourself in whatever lies at hand. A cloak,
2:51
perhaps, or the edge of a blanket. You stir the
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fire back to life. You watch the embers brighten.
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You hear the small crackle as fresh fuel catches.
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Perhaps you pray, your voice barely above a whisper.
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Perhaps you speak quietly with whoever else has
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woken. Their breathing has changed. Their body
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shifts beside you. Perhaps you take up mending
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by the faint light. Or perhaps you step out into
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the greater darkness to visit a neighbor similarly
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awake. Your way is lit by a candle whose flame
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throws a small, unsteady circle against the blackness.
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After an hour or so, you return to bed for your
3:40
second sleep. You complete the night before the
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first gray of dawn begins to show. This scene
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is not invented. It is reconstructed from diaries,
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medical advice, court records, and literature
3:55
from the medieval period through the 18th century.
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But it is also not universal. The question this
4:03
episode pursues is precise. Did people once routinely
4:07
sleep in two shifts separated by a waking interval?
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If so, what did they do during that interval?
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Why did the pattern decline? And how should we
4:20
understand the evidence without turning one documented
4:23
pattern into a law of nature? To approach this
4:28
properly, we need to begin with what sleep actually
4:31
is and what shapes it. Human sleep is governed
4:35
by two biological systems working together. The
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circadian rhythm is your internal clock. It is
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synchronized primarily to light and darkness.
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It tells you roughly when to feel alert and when
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to feel drowsy. The homeostatic sleep drive is
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simpler. The longer you have been awake, the
4:58
stronger your pressure to sleep becomes. This
5:02
pressure dissipates while you sleep. These systems
5:06
are biological constants rooted in our neurology
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and our evolution. But what they produce in practice
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is shaped by your environment. Your work, your
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household, the season, the technology available
5:21
to you, and the expectations of the people around
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you. When you sleep, how long at a stretch, whether
5:30
you wake in the night, whether you nap during
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the day, all of this is shaped by those conditions.
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A farmer in midsummer England. Working until
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10 at night and rising at 4 to beat the heat
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sleeps differently from that same farmer in January,
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when darkness lasts 14 hours and outdoor labor
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is impossible. The biology is the same. The expression
5:56
is not. In temperate latitudes, before widespread
6:01
artificial lighting, winter nights could stretch
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to 12 or 14 hours of darkness. that is far longer
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than the seven or eight hours of sleep that most
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adults seem to need biologically. The darkness
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itself, the cold, the limited activities possible
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by candlelight or firelight, and the fact that
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most people rose with dawn regardless of season,
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all of this created conditions in which sleep
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might naturally divide into two portions with
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a waking interval between them. The interval
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had names. In English sources it was sometimes
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called the watch or simply the waking hour. The
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two sleeps were first sleep and second sleep.
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These terms appear across centuries of English
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writing. They appear in Chaucer in the late 14th
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century. They appear in medical treatises, diaries
6:59
and court records well into the 1700s. They were
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not technical jargon. They were ordinary language,
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used without explanation because they needed
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none. The historian who brought this pattern
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to widespread attention is A. Roger Eckertsch.
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In 2005, he published At Day's Close Night in
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Time's Past, a study of nighttime in pre -industrial
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Europe and colonial America. Eckertsch had spent
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years combing through English -language sources.
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He examined diaries, letters, court depositions,
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medical treatises, literary works and household
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accounts. He found hundreds of references to
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first sleep and second sleep. The pattern he
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reconstructed was not merely a biological accident.
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It was a culturally recognized way of organizing
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the night. People expected to wake. The interval
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between sleeps was not experienced as insomnia
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or disorder. It was experienced as a normal,
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even useful, part of the night. Consider some
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of the evidence E. Kirch assembled, and consider
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what it actually shows. In 1584, the English
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physician Thomas Cogan published The Haven of
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Health. This was a medical advice book that told
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readers which side to sleep on during the first
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sleep and when to turn during the second sleep.
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Kagan advised sleeping first on the right side
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to allow food to settle in the stomach. Then
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he advised turning to the left for the second
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sleep to promote digestion and comfort. The terminology
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was so familiar that Kagan needed no explanation.
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He simply used it. assuming his readers would
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understand. This matters because medical advice,
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unlike private diary entries, was written for
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a general audience. Kogan was not describing
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his own habits. He was prescribing to others.
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This suggests the terms had currency beyond any
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single household. Chaucer, two centuries earlier,
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had referred to a first sleep in the Canterbury
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Tales. In The Squire's Tale, a character falls
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asleep after the first sleep has passed. The
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reference is casual, embedded in a larger narrative.
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This tells us something important. The concept
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was so familiar that it could function as a narrative
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device without requiring explanation. A writer
9:47
deploying this term expected readers to recognize
9:50
it. He expected them to have their own experience
9:54
of the Knight's Division. Samuel Pepys, the 17th
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century diarist, occasionally noted waking in
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the night. On January 19, 1665, he recorded waking
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at about four in the morning and lying awake
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for some time. His mind was running on business.
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On other nights, he noted similar wakings. Sometimes
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he used the interval to read. Sometimes he simply
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waited for sleep to return. Pepys's diary is
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more valuable for showing how a literate, urban
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man experienced and recorded sleep than for proving
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what most people did. He was a naval administrator,
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a man of some means, living in London with access
10:43
to candles and books. His experience cannot stand
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for that of a rural labourer, a servant or an
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enslaved person. But it does show the nighttime
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waking was notable enough to record. It was sometimes
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experienced as an opportunity for reflection
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rather than as a disturbance. Court records from
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England and colonial America extend the evidence
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beyond the elite world of diarists and physicians.
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In these documents, witnesses and defendants
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described nighttime activities during the waking
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interval. They describe neighbours visiting.
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They describe quiet work. Sometimes they describe
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crimes committed in the darkness between sleeps.
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A deposition from 17th century England might
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describe a man leaving his house after first
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sleep to visit a neighbour's wife. The timing
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of the visit was understood by all parties as
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normal enough to be plausible. These records
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are especially important because they reflect
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legal testimony. They reflect the statements
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of people who came before courts for various
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reasons. They are not the self -selected reflections
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of those who kept diaries. Yet even here we must
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be careful. The people who appear in court records
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are not a random sample of the population. They
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are the legally entangled, the accused, the witnesses.
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They are those whose lives intersected with institutional
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record -keeping. What they describe may reflect
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their own experience. Or it may reflect what
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they believed would sound credible to magistrates
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and juries. The evidence is real. The terminology
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existed and was widely understood in English
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-speaking regions across several centuries. But
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this is where the scholarly debate begins. and
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it is a bait that matters for how we understand
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the past. Eckert argues that segmented sleep
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was a widespread, culturally normative pattern
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in pre -industrial Europe and colonial America.
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He connects it to the long nights and limited
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artificial lighting of the period. He suggests
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that most people before the Industrial Revolution
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experienced sleep this way. His argument rests
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on the sheer volume of references he found. It
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rests on their distribution across different
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kinds of sources. It rests on their casual, unremarkable
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quality. Writers use these terms without self
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-consciousness as part of the ordinary vocabulary
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of the night. Other scholars have pushed back.
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Their criticisms are specific rather than dismissive.
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They note that the evidence, while substantial,
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comes overwhelmingly from literate elites. These
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were people who kept diaries, wrote medical treatises,
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produced literature, or appeared in court records.
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These are not random samples of the population.
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They are the educated, the propertied, the legally
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entangled. They are geographically concentrated
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in places where records were kept. What they
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describe may reflect their own experience, or
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literary convention, or medical prescription.
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It does not necessarily tell us how servants,
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laborers, rural poor, or enslaved people slept.
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Sasha Handley, in her 2016 study, Sleep in Early
14:30
Modern England, engages directly with E. Kirch's
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argument and refines it in important ways. Handley
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does not deny that segmented sleep existed, or
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that the terminology was familiar. But she emphasizes
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the diversity of sleep practices within early
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modern England. Sleep was shaped by social status,
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geography, health, and religious belief in ways
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that resist a single narrative. She points to
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the importance of prayer and spiritual preparation
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for sleep among Puritans. She points to the different
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expectations for sleep in sick rooms and healthy
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households. She points to the ways that sleep
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advice was adapted to different social contexts.
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Hanley's work suggests that segmented sleep was
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one pattern among several. It was more common
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in some social strata and regions than in others.
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It was always subject to individual variation.
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The critics also point to variation in language.
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The terms first sleep and second sleep are primarily
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English. Other European languages do not necessarily
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have equivalent terminology. This suggests that
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even within Europe, the pattern was not universal.
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French, German, Italian, and Spanish sources
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from the same period do not consistently describe
15:59
the night in these terms. If segmented sleep
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were a biological inevitability of pre -electric
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life, we might expect more consistent terminology
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across cultures. Instead, we find variety. This
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points to cultural and linguistic specificity
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rather than universal biological determinism.
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Anthropologists studying sleep in non -Western
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societies have documented a wide range of patterns.
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This complicates any simple narrative of natural
16:33
versus modern sleep. Carol Werthman and Melissa
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Melby, in a 2002 comparative study, found that
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human sleep varies enormously across societies.
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It is shaped by environment, work demands, household
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structure, and cultural expectation. Some societies
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practice biphasic sleep with a nighttime waking
16:57
interval. Others consolidate sleep into a single
17:02
block. Others distribute sleep across multiple
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periods throughout the 24 hours. There is no
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single natural human sleep pattern from which
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modern life has deviated. The human capacity
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for sleep is flexible. Different societies have
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organized that flexibility differently, according
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to their own needs and conditions. So we must
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hold two things together. The documentary evidence
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for segmented sleep in English -speaking regions
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is genuine and substantial. But its prevalence,
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its universality, and its meaning remain contested.
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We know that some people, in some times and places,
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expected to wake in the night and use that interval
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purposefully. We do not know how common this
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was across the whole population. We should not
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project elite written testimony onto everyone
17:58
else. The pattern was documented. Its distribution
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was not. What we can trace with more confidence
18:08
is the decline of segmented sleep and the rise
18:11
of consolidated sleep as a norm. This happened
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primarily in the 19th century. It was driven
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by several interconnected changes rather than
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by any single cause. Artificial lighting is the
18:26
facts are most often cited. It is important to
18:30
understand how it changed. Candles and oil lamps
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had long existed, but they were expensive, produced
18:38
limited light, and required constant attention.
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A tallow candle might burn for an hour. Its light
18:46
flickered and was uncertain. Its smoke contributed
18:50
to the room's haze. were cheaper but dimmer still.
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The spread of gaslighting and cities during the
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early 19th century transformed the evening. A
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gas lamp burned with a steady, bright flame.
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It illuminated streets and drawing rooms in ways
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that candles could not. By the 1820s and 1830s,
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London and Paris had gaslit streets. The effect
19:20
was not merely practical. but perceptual. Dartmouth
19:24
no longer defined the boundary of activity as
19:27
strictly as before. Shops could stay open later.
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Theaters could schedule evening performances
19:35
with reliable illumination. People could read,
19:39
socialize and work later into the evening without
19:42
the constant labor of maintaining candles. The
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night compressed at its edges. Sleek consolidated
19:50
into a single block to preserve the extended
19:52
evening for waking activity. Industrial work
19:56
schedules imposed a new rigor that reinforced
19:59
this compression. Factory labor required workers
20:03
to arrive at fixed hours, often early in the
20:06
morning, regardless of season. The factory bell
20:10
ringing at a set time was a new kind of temporal
20:13
discipline. Sleep became something to be completed
20:17
efficiently before the workday. It was no longer
20:21
something that could expand and contract with
20:24
the length of night. A worker in a textile mill
20:28
might need to rise at five in the morning to
20:30
be at the machines by six, summer and winter
20:34
alike. The irregular rhythms of agricultural
20:37
labour had allowed for seasonal variation in
20:40
sleep timing. Longer sleeps in winter. Shorter
20:44
in summer, with the day's work flexing to match
20:48
the light. These rhythms gave way to the regularized
20:53
demands of industrial capitalism. Sleep was now
20:57
a preparation for work, bounded by the factory
21:00
schedule rather than by the sun. Medical advice
21:04
shifted alongside these changes. The shift is
21:08
visible in specific texts. 19th century physicians
21:12
began to promote consolidated sleep as healthy
21:15
and natural. They pathologized nighttime waking
21:19
as insomnia. Where Thomas Cogan had calmly advised
21:24
on positions for first and second sleep, later
21:27
medical writers treated any interruption as a
21:29
disorder to be cured. The American physician
21:33
William Hammond in his 1869 book sleep and its
21:37
derangements described insomnia as a widespread
21:40
modern affliction he recommended various remedies
21:44
for those who woke in the night the very experience
21:49
that koken had taken for granted waking between
21:52
sleeps had become within three centuries a symptom
21:56
requiring medical intervention this was not dishonesty
22:01
It reflected genuine observation of what seemed
22:04
to work in changed conditions. But it also helped
22:08
consolidate the new pattern by defining the old
22:11
one as defective. It reinforced the cultural
22:14
shift with medical authority. Urbanization and
22:18
changing household arrangements played their
22:21
part too. Smaller households, more private bedrooms,
22:25
and reduced crowding altered the sensory environment
22:28
of sleep. In a shared bed or a single room dwelling,
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one person's waking naturally affected others.
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The stirring of a body, the whisper of prayer,
22:40
the movement to tend the fire, these were shared
22:45
experiences. Sometimes they were welcome for
22:49
the warmth and companionship they brought. Sometimes
22:53
they were disruptive. In more private arrangements,
22:56
the sleeper who woke might simply lie still.
22:59
trying not to disturb anyone. The interval became
23:03
isolation rather than a shared social occasion.
23:07
The physical space of sleep changed. With it
23:11
changed the social meaning of waking. Yet even
23:15
as these changes pushed toward consolidation,
23:17
other patterns persisted and complicated the
23:20
picture. Naps during the day remained common
23:23
in many occupations and regions. A farmer might
23:27
sleep briefly after the midday meal during harvest.
23:32
A shopkeeper might close for an afternoon rest.
23:36
Night watch, work, guarding, tending fires, caring
23:41
for livestock, nursing the sick, created sleep
23:44
patterns that were neither segmented nor consolidated
23:47
in the simple sense. The watchman who slept briefly
23:52
before his rounds and again after them, was not
23:55
following either pattern neatly. Childcare interrupted
23:59
sleep for parents then as now. The cry of an
24:03
infant cut across any theoretical organization
24:06
of the night. Illness, pain, anxiety, age and
24:11
physical labor all shaped who slept how. Individual
24:16
variation was as important as any cultural norm.
24:20
Carnal sleeping, in which multiple people shared
24:23
beds or rooms for warmth and economy, meant that
24:26
one person's sleep pattern was never entirely
24:29
separable from another's. The historical record
24:33
of sleep is not a record of individual biology
24:35
alone. It is a record of households, economies,
24:40
seasons and technologies interacting in ways
24:43
that resist a simple categorization. The modern
24:47
consolidated eight -hour sleep which many listeners
24:51
probably assume is biologically fixed and universal,
24:54
is itself historically contingent. It emerged
24:59
from specific technological, economic and cultural
25:02
changes in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is
25:06
not unnatural. Consolidated sleep works well
25:10
for many people under modern conditions. But
25:14
it is not the only natural pattern either. The
25:18
human capacity for sleep is flexible. Different
25:22
societies have organized that flexibility differently,
25:25
according to their own needs and the conditions
25:27
they faced. This brings us back to our winter
25:31
night. The person who wakes after first sleep,
25:35
stirs the fire, prays or talks or works quietly,
25:39
then returns to second sleep, this person was
25:43
not living in a lost golden age of perfect sleep.
25:47
Nor was this person suffering from a disorder
25:50
that modernity would later cure. They were experiencing
25:54
one documented way that some people, in some
25:57
times and places, organized their nights. The
26:01
long darkness, the limited light, the cold, the
26:05
shared household, the absence of industrial time
26:09
discipline, all of these created conditions in
26:12
which segmented sleep made sense and was recognized
26:15
as normal. What changed was not human biology,
26:19
but the world in which biology expressed itself.
26:23
When gas lamps lit the streets of London and
26:26
Paris, when factory bells regulated the morning,
26:29
when medical texts redefined normal waking as
26:33
insomnia, when private bedrooms isolated the
26:36
sleeper from the shared warmth and disturbance
26:38
of communal rest, the pattern shifted. Not everyone
26:43
shifted at once, and not completely. A rural
26:47
household in England might maintain older patterns
26:50
decades after urban centres had changed. A working
26:55
-class family in a single room might still experience
26:58
the night in ways that middle -class medical
27:00
writers did not recognise. But the terminology
27:04
of first sleep and second sleep largely disappeared
27:08
from English sources by the 19th century. With
27:12
it went a particular way of understanding the
27:15
night. It was a vocabulary for experience that
27:19
had once needed no explanation. We should not
27:23
romanticize the lost pattern. Segmented sleep
27:27
had its discomforts. There was the cold of a
27:31
January night when the fire sank low. There was
27:35
the darkness beyond the candle's small circle.
27:38
There was the vulnerability of nighttime waking
27:42
in a world without locks and streetlights. There
27:46
was the labor of maintaining fires and the cost
27:49
of fuel. There were the diseases that worsened
27:53
at night. There was the uncertainty of what the
27:57
darkness might hold. Nor should we accept the
28:01
modern consolidated pattern as the only right
28:03
one. Shift workers, parents of infants, people
28:09
in different climates and economies, all know
28:12
that sleep is negotiated, not given. The eight
28:16
-hour block is an aspiration rather than a biological
28:19
guarantee. What remains valuable in this history
28:23
is the understanding that even our most intimate
28:26
experiences are shaped by the world we inhabit.
28:30
Sleep feels private, biological, universal. And
28:35
in part, it is. But when we sleep, how we interpret
28:41
waking in the night? Whether we experience that
28:44
waking as opportunity or affliction, these are
28:48
shaped by light, by work, by household, by season,
28:53
by the expectations embedded in our language.
28:57
The person in our opening scene, waking after
29:01
first sleep in a long winter darkness, stirring
29:04
the embers back to life, feeling the weight of
29:07
blankets and the presence of other sleepers nearby.
29:11
was not obeying a biological mandate different
29:13
from ours. They were responding to conditions
29:17
different from ours. They had a set of concepts
29:21
and expectations that made sense of their experience
29:24
in ways we have largely forgotten. The evidence
29:28
for segmented sleep is genuine. Its prevalence
29:32
is uncertain. Its decline is traceable through
29:36
the spread of artificial light, the discipline
29:39
of factory time, the redefinition of medical
29:42
normalcy, the privatization of bedrooms. Its
29:47
significance lies not in proving that we modern
29:49
sleep wrong, but in revealing that sleep, like
29:53
every human activity, is embedded in history.
29:57
The night we imagine, 14 hours of darkness, a
30:01
fire banked low, the quiet interval between sleeps,
30:06
the return to bed before dawn. was one way that
30:10
people have lived. It is not the way. It is not
30:15
the natural way. It is a way documented in some
30:19
sources, debated by scholars, shaped by conditions
30:23
that changed. Understanding this does not tell
30:27
us how to sleep tonight. It tells us something
30:30
more valuable. Even in darkness, with our eyes
30:34
closed, we are making history. And history is
30:39
making us.