BY
Jonathan Tan

Lead Editor

Hype Issue #60

Published on

December 6, 2024

After a particularly long autumn day in 1878, a 27-year-old Robert Louis Stevenson, having spent the last twelve days slogging through France’s southern highlands, needed a rest. He set up camp in a small clearing shrouded by pine trees, and after a hearty meal of bread, sausage, and brandy, he climbed into a sleeping bag and dozed off as the sun set.

Instead of sleeping until dawn, however, the weary Stevenson arose from his slumber a little past midnight. He spent the hour awake smoking a cigarette as he stared at the night sky, before returning to sleep. 

In his journal, Stevenson wrote an entry reflecting on the mysterious forces that awaken everybody in the middle of the night. “At what inaudible summons, at what gentle touch of Nature, are all these sleepers thus recalled in the same hour to life?”

To me, this journal entry from 1878 came across as an isolated story of one man’s restless night. But, in a scientific journal on the history of sleep, Roger Ekirch, a distinguished professor of history, proposed a more unusual theory: Stevenson’s unusual sleep pattern that night was once a common practice among humans in the past. 

“Until the modern era, up to an hour or more of quiet wakefulness midway through the night interrupted the rest of most Western Europeans,” Ekirch argued. In his reference, Ekirch found mentions of sleeping twice a night across various historical sources.

Interestingly, Ekirch’s conclusion begs several questions: How did this sleeping pattern work? Why did people do this? And most importantly, why did we stop?

Communal Mattresses were the norm in the past, and many people would spend the night snuggled with others. Photo from Getty Images.

For people living in the 17th Century, a night of sleep usually went like this. 

By as early as 9pm, most would begin to lie down onto mattresses in preparation for the first half of their sleep. In those days, most people slept communally; typically sharing a bed with their family, their friends, or sometimes even with strangers. 

And after a few hours of rest, people of the past would start to wake up from their slumber. This moment of wakefulness usually occurred some time past midnight, and lasted an hour or so. Interestingly, this collective awakening was not caused by alarms of any kind. 

“Although in some descriptions a neighbor’s quarrel or a barking dog woke people prematurely from their initial sleep, the vast weight of surviving evidence indicates that awakening naturally was routine, not the consequence of disturbed or fitful slumber,” Ekirch wrote. 

Now, what did people do with this hour of wakefulness? Well, according to Ekirch, many who left their beds merely needed to relieve themselves. The rest who awoke, however, would use this time to tend to their worldly duties.

“For others, work awaited,” Ekirch noted. “The 17th century farmer Henry Best of Elmswell made a point to rise ‘sometimes at midnight’ to prevent the destruction of his fields by roving cattle. In addition to tending children, women left their beds to perform myriad chores… suffice to say, domestic duties knew no bounds.”

Many criminal activities also took place during twilight hours, such as petty theft and even murder. Photo from Getty Images.

Most importantly, this period of wakefulness was invaluable for couples living in the past. It was difficult for exhausted couples to spend time together after a long day of manual labour. Thankfully, the first sleep allowed tired partners to get some well-needed rest, and the time afterward was considered ideal for romance and intimacy.

Finally, after spending a couple of hours awake, people would return to sleep; this time, their second rest would typically last until sunrise.

Our sleeping patterns have clearly changed since the 17th Century. This change raises a very important question: Why did we stop sleeping twice a night?

Ekirch’s research noted a gradual abandonment of the two-sleep system around the start of the 19th Century, which he attributed to one main factor: The development of artificial lighting. 

During the Industrial Revolution, artificial lighting became better and more prevalent. During this time, gas street lamps slowly appeared along city streets across the Western world. “By 1823, nearly forty thousand lamps lit more than two hundred miles of London’s streets,” Ekirch wrote. After gas came electrical lighting, and soon, the city streets gradually outshone the stars in the night sky.

Not only did the advancement of artificial lighting affect the natural circadian rhythm of humans, it also allowed people to stay up later than ever before. With people sleeping later and later, the duration of their sleep became shorter and more compressed, which soon led to people no longer waking up during their rest.

The invention of artificial lighting finally allowed humans to extend their schedules past sunset. Photo from The American Menu.

Fascinatingly, this shift in our sleeping patterns may have also affected our attitude towards sleep. As later bedtimes became the new norm, staying in bed slowly became associated with laziness and unproductivity.

“People were becoming increasingly time-conscious and sensitive to efficiency, certainly before the 19th Century,” says Ekirch. “But the industrial revolution intensified that attitude by leaps and bounds.”

Examples of our changing perceptions toward sleep can still be observed today. The fading popularity of the Spanish siesta, for instance, reflects a modern aversion to taking naps during the day. 

A tradition widely adopted across the region, a siesta is a short rest taken in the middle of the day, typically after lunch. This famous tradition, however, is slowly becoming less common among the Spanish population. A survey conducted in 2016 found that 60% of Spaniards never actually sleep during the siesta, while only 18% do so more than four times a week. In modern times, many Spaniards living in cities find themselves unable or unwilling to take a midday nap. 

This societal pressure to stay awake is not unique to Spain; in Singapore, sleep deprivation is a growing epidemic. In a 2022 survey on the sleeping habits of 43 cities, Singapore was named the third most sleep-deprived city, with only one in four Singaporeans getting more than seven hours of sleep daily. Chronic sleep deprivation has become ingrained in the Singaporean lifestyle: employees routinely work late into the night, children remain glued to their screens, and students burn the midnight oil slogging at their desks. 

Today, we live in a world that is constantly moving. The modern work culture rewards hustle and productivity, encouraging longer hours and a relentless pursuit of efficiency. Unsurprisingly, sleep has fallen to the wayside, as people become busier and busier. So, if we can appreciate how things have changed and why we struggle with our sleep habits today, perhaps we can start to make getting enough sleep a priority in our lives.