FACTORALY - E84 BEDS

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Bruce has a sheet. Simon tucks in. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello Bruce. Hello Simon. How are you today? I'm still recovering I'm afraid from the logy that I had recently. No way. Three episodes in a row. I know. Sorry about that. Oh, no problem at all. I'm sure we're all just feeling sorry for you. Oh, that's very sweet. And when I say we all, I mean the Factoralites, the lovely folks gathered around their wireless listening to this podcast each week.

Do you think they're gathered around a wireless? I'd like to think so. They're probably, you know, walking the dog, taking a break from work, AirPods in, trying to get to sleep at night in their bed. Yeah, all sorts. Oh, the other thing, of course, we've given what the subject is. Perhaps we should do the entire episode like this. Oh, what a wonderful idea. So today we're going to be talking to you on this Factorily, which is a thing that we do which tells people interesting facts. Yes, by the use of our beautiful soothing, calming voices.

That's right. And we tell people about things like, for example, beds. Beds. That's what we're going to do today. We won't maintain this level of calm because there is a very good chance you might fall asleep whilst listening to us. What people do anyway I've heard. So beds, we're talking about beds. We are. Do you have a bed? I do have a bed, thank you. Do you have a bed? I do, I have a very nice bed.

Excellent. I have a bed that has thousands and thousands of springs in it. Very supportive and helpful and it looks after me when I'm feeling miserable. Grand. Sounds very encouraging. Oh yes. That's a good bed. I have a reasonably large bed. Bruce and I are both 6 foot 2 ish, so tall people like us need slightly more spacious beds than some others might because a single bed is shorter as well as narrower and your feet have a tendency to dangle off the end don't they? My bed is actually custom-made to be longer. Oh is it? And I have had custom-made beds for some time now. I had a brass bed which had a brass railing at the foot and the head. So I had to have that made

six inches longer than usual. Right okay. Otherwise I'd end up with my feet going through the bars and then when I turned in the night and end up looking like a corkscrew in the morning. Yes absolutely yeah yeah. Did your bed have a detachable magical bed knob? Sadly no. I actually guess the bed knob was detachable. Oh it was? It wasn't magical, yes. Well, not that you know of anyway, you just didn't use it properly.

I never tried. It was a lot of unscrewing to get it off. Ha ha ha. So beds, let's start as we usually do with the etymology of the word bed. Bed comes from the old English word bed which means bed, which is very exciting. But the old English word bed comes from a Proto-Germanic word badja, which means a resting place or a piece of ground. So fairly simple. Right, but I mean, beds have been around, people have been sleeping on the ground for a while,

then they thought actually you know maybe we should put something down on the ground yes to protect us from the hardness. Absolutely. Yeah so there was a mattress. Yes of course yeah. So mattresses were what straw originally? They've been all sorts of things really, they've been you know sort of going back to prehistoric times It was just a bunch of leaves and foliage strewn on the floor and you laid on it, and it was as simple as that Mattresses have obviously evolved over the years you you get something called a tick mattress Yes ticking ticking now. I've only just heard of this whilst doing the research for this. I thought I would take mattress That's a good idea that that prevents against ticks in the sort of bed bug sense,

but it doesn't at all. Ticking is a type of material made from sort of tightly woven fabric, sort of a bag, a cloth bag, and then that's stuffed with various things. And over the years that's been stuffed with straw, hay, grass, leaves. Can you imagine laying on a mattress made of leaves? How noisy and rusty that would be. It's been filled with horsehair, wool, feathers, all sorts. Anything to sort of make it a bit softer and more comfy. And springs. And then springs, yeah.

Springs came in with the Victorians. They did, yes. They're very keen on springs. Yeah. I was surprised how old they were. I think I sort of remember an advert for a particular mattress company in the 90s talking about this revolutionary individually isolated pocket sprung mattress. Sealy Posturepedic. Bless you. What? The Sealy Posturepedic I think was the first one with individual springs. Is that right? With pocket springs. Right, okay. That was invented in 1899. Wow.

There was some bloke came up with the idea of springs had been around for a while before then but the idea of actual individual springs within a pocket within a mattress, 1899. So not quite as modern as we might think. within a mattress, 1899. So not quite as modern as we might think. I mean, but you used not just one mattress, there were people who used to sleep on up to six mattresses. With a P underneath them? Well, no, I mean, I mean, in the early modern period, which is sort of Shakespeare time, families invested huge amounts of money in beds. And depending on how important you were, you would have between one and six mattresses.

So the princess and the pea was actually, because the princess would be used to having a lot of stacked mattresses, which is why it now makes sense that you should recognize a very small lump that a pea would make. Yes, okay. We talked about how much swords cost

in our episode on Vikings. Oh yeah. It cost you as much as a house. Yeah. And typically, if you had a really good bed, the bed and the textiles that go with it would account for about a third of your assets. Really? Yeah. Gosh. I mean shapes Shakespeare in his will. Yeah famously left his second best bed to his wife

Yeah, that's that's a lovely fact, isn't it? I've always thought that sort of sounds like a bit of a snub You know, she can't have the best one, but she can have the second best one but apparently the as you say, you know beds were such an asset and You could tell how wealthy someone was by virtue of the state of their best bed. And you would sort of often have your best bed on display in a room on the ground floor for people to look at and go, oh, look at their bed. And the best bed was often, well, usually reserved for guests.

Well, yes. I mean, you'd want to show off your wealth and your status to your guests. So when Shakespeare left Mrs Shakespeare the second best bed, it was it was most likely their own marital bed, you know. Yes. It was a lovely, comforting, familiar item. It's not just, ah, she can have the one from the spare room. It's not just ash, you can have the one from the spare room. Ha ha ha ha. Should we go back to the Romans? Oh, let's go back earlier than that.

Oh, you want to go back earlier? You want to go back 77,000 years? Yeah, go on. Yeah. Ha ha ha. That seems like a nice round number. What have you got? Is that the number you had in mind?

It is, yeah. Ha ha ha ha. Well done. round number. What have you got? Is that the number you had in mind? It is. Yeah. Well done. So in South Africa, they have discovered a bed that were actually a mattress, woven by hand, 77,000 years old. Yeah. And caves obviously weren't very comfy. So being raised off the floor was a way to escape sort of creepy crawlies. And they would they would do all sorts of things in bed because the bed was like,

it's like the sitting area and the sleeping area. It was where you did everything relaxing. Yes, it was multipurpose, wasn't it? Yeah. And they used to set fire to their bed. I mean, it's unusual to have found a 77,000 year old bed for several reasons. But one of which is because they used to get all sort of

full of your bodily fluids and what have you. And so that when they finished with mattress, they would just set fire to it. Oh really? This particular mattress, 77,000 years old from Africa, as you say, sort of consisted of layers of twigs and leaves and the leaves, some of the leaves came from a tree called Crypto Carrier woody and they had a natural insect repellent in them to scare away the creepy crawlies as you said, but specifically to repel mosquitoes

which would carry malaria and various other illnesses. That makes sense. The earliest example I found of an actual physical bed, a frame, an item, in Malta there's a 5,000 year old clay figurine that was discovered which portrayed a woman sleeping on her side laying on a raised platform. And that's kind of the first reference to an actual physical bed-like object. The oldest actual bed that people have found four and a half thousand years old on Orkney in Scotland. Which I've seen. Have you seen? Have you been there? Yeah, I've been to Scarabray.

Scarabray, what a beautiful looking place. A prehistoric village sort of dug into the earth and lined with slabs of stone and there are several items that are rectangular, roughly the size of a human or two, made out of slabs of stone and it is quite clearly a physical built-up feature. A raised platform. A raised platform to sleep on. So they've been around for a while. In my research list I discovered a fact which isn't about beds. No way. Which I love. Do you know what the first ever town was? Oh no. So the first ever town was a place called Katalhoyuk in Turkey. Well pronounced. Katalhoyuk was way back in the Neolithic period about

ten thousand years ago. Okay. And that was the first ever town. Right. And in that town they found raised platforms as well. Oh really? Sleeping platforms. Oh perfect. Well that outranks Scarabray by a few thousand years doesn't it? I will tell you stories about Scarabray when we finish the podcast. Grand. For my ears only. What Bruce got up to in a prehistoric village. And then from there, you know they've just been a part of every civilization. Tutankhamun's tomb had six beds in it. And they were very bed looking, you know, instantly recognizable wooden frame, headboard raised off the ground. One of them was gilded in a layer of gold. One of them was a folding bed. So it's the oldest folding bed that anyone's

ever uncovered about 3000 years old. They also sloped Egyptian beds. Oh did they? Yeah. So they were beautifully carved obviously. And they had animal feet on the bottom of the four posts. So they had like those claw feet. Oh yeah. You often see on things these days, especially on like bath clubs. Yeah. Um, but, and they weren't flat, but they bowed in the center. Oh, and they, all they sloped downwards towards the feet.

Right. So sometimes they would have like a little footboard at the bottom to stop you from sliding off. Oh, brilliant. That's great. Um, the Romans had quite a thing about beds. They had lots of different beds for different purposes, each of which have their own individual Latin name which I won't go into because lots of pronunciations, but they had a bed for sleeping obviously,

they had a bed for reclining and lounging, a bed for studying, a bed specifically for newlyweds, don't know how that would differ, a bed for eating and a bed for working and even a bed for laying a deceased person on at a funeral. They were bed crazy. Yeah, I mean my image of a Roman is of somebody sort of fairly large, chewing some grapes that have been fed to him whilst laying reclining on a bed. Absolutely. But if we come along a bit to medieval beds, in fact this afternoon I'm going to the Victoria

and Albert Museum. And in the V&A, there's a bed called the great bed of where yes Oh, I love this so the great bed of where is 10 foot long by 11 foot wide Yes, and they reckon it could sleep about well for couples. Hmm. It dates from 1590 it's very ornate and intricately carved and it was again. It was one of those kind of like Oh, you must come and see our bed. Yeah. Or when you're when you're visiting, come and sleep in the in our great bed. Yeah. I think one of its first

locations was at a coaching in wasn't it? I think it sort of yes, went from one into another to another. So it was sort of that size to accommodate lots of traveling guests all at once. Simultaneously. Yeah, because you because you wouldn't want to pay for your own bed. You'd want to share. Of course, absolutely, yeah. And that's on display at the V&A, is it?

Yes, that's on display at the V&A these days. Brilliant. I found that the Great Bed of Wear is actually mentioned in Twelfth Night. Sort of as an indirect reference, I think someone was given a sheet of paper and he said, it's so big, it could cover the Great Bed of Wear. Yes, wear yes so it was it's been famous for a while

they reckon that beds last longer than marriages really okay so on average a bed lasts about twelve and a half years. Right. And a marriage on average lasts about 11.4. Oh gosh. So the bed will outlast the marriage. What a sad statistic. I know. I know. Crikey. So if you're happy at one. Hmm. There's about six billion dust mites in your bed. Cool. Yeah that instantly makes me more cheerful and not at all itchy. And you spend about 25 years in bed. Do you really? Yeah if you live an average life. Crikey. 25 years of your life. That's why it's really important to have a good bed. Yeah. The Great Bed of Wear, you mentioned there, was a four-poster. Yes.

And I can't explain why, but I find four-poster beds intriguing. Maybe because they're just so popular of a certain era, you know. I love going to National Trust properties and castles and palaces and things like this. And there's always a beautifully ornate four poster bed with curtains and rails and all this sort of thing. And- Have you ever slept in a four poster? Yes, I have.

It was a bit short for me. They can be a bit short for us tall people, but they're actually designed to be the warmest place in the house. Yes, okay, yeah. Because you'd have thick curtains around. So the room could be cold. Yeah. But you'd be in this like box of warm air that you'd created. That's right. And you'd stay nice and snug. And they actually have a top to them as well. A canopy. Or I saw the word

tester. So which is an actual wooden panel that lays flat atop the four posts so it actually has a little roof. So it is entirely enclosed, you know, it's not just you've got some curtains, but then the top is open. It is actually fully enclosed. They're like small rooms. Yeah, yeah, and I sort of think of four posters as being from, you know, everything from Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol opening his curtains to see the various ghosts,

right the way through to King Louis and the three musketeers lounging around on his four poster and all these things. I just think they're a fabulous item. I remember reading ages ago a fact which I think has been disproved, which was that the original idea of putting a canopy above a bed was to stop mouse droppings falling onto you from the rafters above. I think that's been disproved, but for ages I thought that was why fall posters existed, to stop mice pooping in your open mouth as you slept. Maybe it helped in that respect as well, but like you say, it was a comfort and warmth thing. Other than four posters, in Shakespeare's time, I don't know why they seem to be so popular. Maybe we've just got to that point in history where everyone values their sleep

a little bit more, but the sort of 1500s, 1600s seemed to have been quite an era for different types of of beds as well as the four poster we've mentioned. They had box beds which kind of looked a bit like a coffin. Back in the days when your mattress was just a cloth bag stuffed with stuff it sort of had a tendency to spill all over the place and not keep its shape very well. So they had box beds which had four little walls to it to sort of contain the mattress and all the other bed linen. One of the walls was a sliding door. Oh was it? Yes. So you could step in and out easily. Yes. That's brilliant. Yeah. Some beds were strung with rope. They sort of had rope criss-crossing across the bed frame

to make a base. You had to tighten the ropes every now and then because they would become slack. Another expression, probably this isn't where it's from, but I choose to believe it anyway, is the expression sleep tight. You would sleep better if the ropes of your bed were tight. I think it's been debunked, but I still like it.

In Victorian London, there were places, I suppose, sort of like homeless shelters, called coffin houses. And you could hire a four penny coffin for the night. Not actually a coffin, but heck, they look like a coffin. Very small rectangular box with a bit of a mattress thrown in it and homeless folk could go and get a cheap night's sleep. Even poorer folk could get something called a Tuppany Hangover which was essentially a big long communal bench with a rope sort of tied from each end of the room above it and you would sit on the bench and you would sort of drape your arms over the rope and it would sort of suspend you by the armpits and you would pay two pennies for this. It was called the two penny hangover. There is a suggestion again, who knows, that that's where we get hangover from because someone might have spent all their money on having a night out and the only thing they could afford was a hangover. But the hangover was the

expensive option there was also a penny sit-up. Oh was there? Yes. Even cheaper? Even cheaper. Before that people would hold court like royalty would hold court from bed. Oh yes of course. And there would be you know the consummation of marriages would be witnessed. Yeah. In the bed. But by several courtiers who would sort of go, yes, they, you know, they're at it. Making sure they've done it. Yes. Yes, that's fine.

The closer you were to the personal life of the monarch, the more power you were next to and you could exert influence. Yes. Yes. There's that in it as well. Yes. The idea of the bed, the so and so of the bed influence. Yes. So there's that in it as well. Yes. The idea of the bed, the so and so of the bed chamber. Yeah. ["The Bedchamber"] Beds, dangerous places though.

Are they? You're gonna astound me with some kind of figure of how many millions of people die in their beds each year. Well, no, no, loads of people die. No, but people used to hang knives above a baby's cradle to ward off evil. That... what? Huh?

Like a mobile. That seems counter-intuitive. You think? Well, the thing is that Christians used to believe that they were very vulnerable from spiritual attack as they slept. Yes, of course. You know, there's all sorts of stories about the devil's powers being at their peak during the hours of darkness. The Bible's full of examples of people being murdered in the night while asleep. So there was a load of bedtime rituals. People used to have charms and amulets made from coral, coral. Okay, which is thought to preserve life and they would also wear wolves teeth around their necks at night And all sorts of things and so the knives above the baby's cribs would be iron

Iron being something which wards off evil. Okay, well, let's hope they're tied on pretty firmly because that could have the opposite effect. So beds made of what? Wood? Well, they started off being made of wood, didn't they? But then the Victorians decided that wood wasn't good enough. Did they? Oh, metal. And they started to make them. So until about the 19th century all beds were

made of wood pretty much. But then you get to the 1860s and people started to become aware of health and hygiene and realised that just a wooden frame on the floor probably wasn't going to cut it. So they started to make these iron beds and iron bedsteads. Right. Which had a raised mattress, which raised you off the floor. Yes, okay, yeah. And they were sort of easy to clean and more hygienic. The aforementioned brass bedstead that we had. But there's lots of other materials that one could make beds from.

Such as? Air. Air. You know what Airbnb stands for, don't Airbnb stands for well air bed and breakfast yes air beds have you ever slept on an air bed I have yeah yeah they're not very comfortable are they they're not the best thing in the world again it doesn't help when you're taller than the air bed in question they're okay in an emergency I suppose I had one which was fairly old and the

compartments that I was sleeping on started to part, the glue came apart. Oh no. So it's like there's this massive bang and eventually we were sleeping like hanging onto the sides of a balloon oh dear which wasn't fun. What a great way to wake up. But I've slept on beds made of water. I was just about to say how about water beds. Have you seen the sort of guy who might have slept on a water bed or two in your time? Yeah, absolutely. I had a water bed back in the day. Very, very nice actually. Really comfortable. Because what you do is you, it doesn't make any slushing noises because you get all the air out of it. Yeah. And also there's a there's a heating element at the bottom. Oh really? The water is actually warm. Oh, I didn't realize that. So it's lovely. It's like

so you just lay there and it'd just be floating. Yeah, brilliant. I've never tried one. It's lovely. So we talked about the Victorians, Dickens. Dickens had several houses, he was quite wealthy. And all of his beds were aligned north to south. Oh really? He liked sleeping north to south. To be in tune with the earth's magnetic field. I think he was just a bit eccentric.

Sounds like Dickens. Yeah. And the other fact I found, which I thought was quite interesting, and I don't know whether this will apply to you, is that the majority of men sleep on the door side of the bed. Yeah, you're right. I did. Now I wonder if that's a well, I'll speak from personal experience. I used to sleep on the on the door side of the bed on the basis that my wife would prefer me to be the first person to get attacked if an attacker was to come into our bedroom, which is fine. So beds come in all sorts of fantastic shapes and sizes now as well. I mean, I've seen like magnetically levitating beds. Oh, have you?

Nice. It costs thousands and thousands. I mean you'd have to be a millionaire to have it. Yeah. But this guy spent years inventing the maglev bed. Oh that's brilliant. There are other beds which are sort of inflatable and circular and ones shaped like the yin and yang sign. You get heart-shaped ones in yes tacky romantic hotels in America oh yes and vibrating ones of naturally yes there's one in motels there yeah coin operated vibrating beds in motels I think there's one in one of the Superman movies isn't there could well be brilliant and all there are beds that go into walls as well so there's some flippy up things yes So there's some- Flippy upy things.

Yes, so there are some that flippy up and there are some that actually go sort of like level into the wall. Oh really? Designers seem to enjoy looking at how to make beds work. Yes, yeah. And you know, there's one, there's loads of storage underneath

where you lift up the mattress and there's a whole storage area underneath. You get beds with built-in speakers and a TV that sort of rises out of the foot end of the bed Yeah, and then of course during wartime when you have to take shelter Hmm in a bunker. Yes, the bed that you have in a bunker is called a bunk bed No, a bunk bed comes from a bunker. Yes If I take nothing else with me from today's episode that's my favourite fact. Brilliant.

So normally Simon at this time of the show you would give me some records about whatever the subject is that you're talking about. Indeed, yes. I'm assuming you have a few. I do have a few. Do you have this one, the biggest bed? Oh, I have. Now, I love it when we both go for the same record because quite frequently we have totally different numbers. So go on, what's your world's largest bed? Mine's Dutch from 2011.

Yep, same one. Go for it. Okay. So that one's 86 feet, 11 inches long. Yes. And 53 feet, 11 inches wide. wide yes I can't even I how would what I mean what constitutes a bed that's a house to me yes I suppose it's it's a raised platform possibly with some soft coverings that is specifically

intended for the purpose of laying. Have you seen this bed? I've seen a picture of it, yeah, it's quite big. What other records do you have for us? I've got the fastest time to make a bed. Oh, they have competitions, the hotels have competitions. That's right, yes, that's exactly what this is. And actually that's changed the way that I put my pillows inside pillowcases. Oh really, has it?

It's actually changed your method. Yes. That's brilliant. Cause in that speed, speed making the bed thing. Yeah. They fold the pillows in half sideways. Right. And then slip them in much more easily.

Brilliant. Very nice. I now do that. Well, it's always good to have a little cheat isn't it? So what is the record? So this was exactly one of these competitions. This was a Chinese gentleman named Chow Ka-Fai and he was from the Cordis Hotel Group. And in 2018, he entered one of these competitions

and he made a king-sized bed in one minute and nine seconds. With hospital corners and everything? Yep, proper hotel-looking bed. Wow. The last record I have is the largest number of people crammed onto a single bed. Okay. Have a guess.

Is it like the great bed of where? Or is it just a normal single bed? No, single bed. Single bed. Average standard size single bed. So what's that, three foot wide by six foot long? Yeah, give or take. And are they all on top of each other

or are they just side by side? I'll let your imagination run wild on that one. Okay, well I'm gonna assume they're on top of each other. Go for it. So I would assume that would probably be about 30 people. Pretty close, 54. And this is definitely worth putting a video on the blog for. so this was in 2013 and

they sort of lattice these people in between each other so there's a group of people who lay sideways on the single bed and then another group of people lay in between them and then a group of people stand on the bed in between them and And then a group of people stand on the bed in between them and then other people are sort of woven in between the people who are standing and it sort of ends up... Do you remember stickle bricks? Yes. It ends up looking a bit like a stickle brick made of people so you sort of have this tower of 54 people upon this single bed.

All smiling and laughing and enjoying themselves. How about the ones at the bottom? Oh, I bet the ones at the bottom are crushed. Wow. But there you go, 54 people on a single bed. Well, that's me tucked in, I think. Yes, I think all my bed facts have been made. Very good.

They are fascinating things though, aren't they? Yeah, they are. Yeah, very interesting. We do lots of stuff about fascinating things, even if they don't sound fascinating to start with. That's what we're here for. So if you want to hear more of them, then please subscribe to the channel.

Yes, please do. Because we come up with a new one every week. Yep, and in between the new ones each week, you can go back and listen to all the other 80 odd that are already there at Factorily.com. 80? Yeah. We've done 80 of these. It's going well. Crazy. And once you've liked and subscribed please go forth and share this podcast with all of your nerdy friends who would be equally intrigued to listen.

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