Don't Let the Bedbugs Bite!

The beds in the hotel we stayed in last night seemed small to me. Actually, they seemed to be about the same size as the replica of the bed President Lincoln died on in the Peterson House (one of our quick stops while in Washington, DC). I'm not complaining; it just got me to thinking about "hotel" travel during the early 19th century, when all beds were probably that size.

The earliest travelers would have slept on the ground as they camped, but as the country became more "civilized," a traveler would have the option of staying in a tavern. A couple of years ago, I took a tour of the Arkansas Territorial Museum in Little Rock, which included a reconstruction of one of these taverns. Downstairs was a large room with tables and a bar from which customers were served; upstairs were the rooms for the patrons who would be spending the night. And here's where things start to break with the pattern we are familiar with. Since the tavern was more than likely the same building the owners lived in, there were a limited number of rooms for customers to sleep in. As a result, a family or a couple didn't get a private room. Instead, all the men bunked together in one room, and women stayed together in another. Actually, according to the tour guide at the Territorial Museum, during the early years of the century, if a man was traveling with a female companion, he would find a reputable family in the community with which the woman could stay. As I recall, he said the woman would carry a letter of introduction which would be presented to the family as a way of assuring them this was a woman of good reputation.

Whether she stayed with a local family or in the tavern, the sleeping conditions for a woman and her male companion were the same. Just as there was no private room, there was no private bed. As many patrons as could fit in a bed would sleep together. Somehow I always imagine this to be three people, though I suppose it could be more. The thought of having to share a bed with a single stranger is unpleasant enough, but when I think of being crammed into a small bed like the one we had last night with two strangers.....we have certainly developed a different idea of privacy over the past two centuries! Imagine that one of those strangers snores incessantly, or one has a cough, or one has a tendency to roll over frequently during the night....I'm beginning to think I would prefer to sleep on the ground in the woods!

Add to that the fact that sanitary conditions were probably not up to 21st-century standards, either. We expect the sheets in a hotel to have been changed and washed between visitors to a room; I doubt our ancestors had the same expectation. It was probably more likely to sleep on linens that were washed maybe once a month (or less frequently - see the earlier post about laundry). I also imagine that there were beings sharing the bed other than those snoring, coughing strangers -- I bet it was a common occurrence to find lice or bedbugs in one's sleeping quarters.

On second thought, I have nothing to complain about!