The People of the Abyss

[smezenen]

Sorry but my haveing my integrity in question gets my dander up. I have been looking all night but can find no pictures on the internet but plenty of references to it. some even sugest that it may be the origines of the term "hangover" for the morning after a good drunk but i dont see any proof of that.

[The Good Michael]

You have only made a written claim of what you say you did,you have furnished no proof.You do not seem to appreciate the difference.

Harry,

This appears to me to be nothing but cantankerousness. I've read many of your posts and know you to be reasonable and astute. yet, there is no reason to refute the claim of rope-sleeping except for some wild streak of stubbornness that is far removed from common logic. Why? This is a thread about the sorry times of folks in Victorian London. And if you dislike Jack London, fine, but don't deny the plausibility of something that many of us have experienced in a similar vein. Get over this, please.

Mike

[Fisherman]

Wait a sec here!

I haven´t got much insight to the history of sleeping on ropes, and I must confess that I was not aware of any material telling us that people slept STANDING, leaning on a rope. It sounds very hard to accomplish, no matter how tired you are.
What I HAVE read about, however, is the method of people sitting on benches in lines, more or less like in church benches, and having a rope for support. But I would not think that most people in such a situation did much of their their sleeping actually leaning against the rope - they would have had a support against their backs, and they would either have leant against that, or, perhaps more usual, they would simply have leant sideways, against their fellow lodgers adjoining them.

Such a thing would work out nicely, I think, if it had not been for one thing: they may fall forwards, out of the bench. And THAT is what I think the rope was all about; it was tightened against the chest area of the sleepers, thus giving them support when they tended to "fall out". And my guess is that much as most sleepers may have spent the occasional minute sleeping against the rope, it must have been distinctly uncomfortable, and people would have adjusted to that by taking their weight off the rope, and leaning on the guy sleeping next to you instead.

Please note: I am NOT claiming to have any superior knowledge, nor am I basing this on personal observations or any thorough search of source material.
It appeals to my sense of logic, that´s all.

The best,
Fisherman

[smezenen]

Well no pictures but i have found 3 pretty good references to the Victorian era practice of "sleeping over a rope" one is Magic Skin by Honoré de Balzac writen in 1831 and George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London written in 1933, thats almost 100 years apart so this may not be so uncommon a practice. Also Charles Dickens writes about the Twopenny Rope in The Pickwick Papers written in 1837 in chapter 16 he describes it like this,
So now they has two ropes, 'bout six foot apart, and three from the floor, which goes right down the room; and the beds are made of slips of coarse sacking, Stretched across 'em.' At six o'clock every mornin' they let's go the ropes at one end, and down falls the lodgers.

[Nothing to see]

Well no pictures but i have found 3 pretty good references to the Victorian era practice of "sleeping over a rope" one is Magic Skin by Honoré de Balzac writen in 1831 and George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London written in 1933, thats almost 100 years apart so this may not be so uncommon a practice. Also Charles Dickens writes about the Twopenny Rope in The Pickwick Papers written in 1837 in chapter 16 he describes it like this,
So now they has two ropes, 'bout six foot apart, and three from the floor, which goes right down the room; and the beds are made of slips of coarse sacking, Stretched across 'em.' At six o'clock every mornin' they let's go the ropes at one end, and down falls the lodgers.

Photos would be terrific if someone could find any but I don't need them to tell me that's how these people lived. Fisherman, neither you nor I come from that era. But you can't afford a bed, that's how you slept.

If you have info that says that's wrong, please share.

[Fisherman]

NTS writes:

" Fisherman, neither you nor I come from that era. But you can't afford a bed, that's how you slept."

"THAT´S" how you slept, NTS?
HOW´S how you slept?
I am saying that I find it hard to believe that people could manage sleeping standing up, leaning on a rope, and I wonder whether there is substantiation for this. What I don´t find hard to believe is that a rope may have functioned as a support for people sleeping together on a bench - plus I know that this has been portrayed in both literature and film.

The best,
Fisherman

[Sam Flynn]

I've often seen commuters dozing, upright, on a tube-train whilst holding on with one hand to a handle dangling from the ceiling. If one can take a standing nap whilst clinging on to one of those, I'm sure that a rope tucked under the armpit(s) would offer somewhat better support.

[Mike Covell]

Some posters on Phrases.org have discussed this issue before...

http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/28/messages/179.html

[harry]

Nothing to see has raised a valid point.If the method was so ordinary and widespread,why are there no photos,Practically everything else was photographed.
Mike,
Cantankerous.Why?Because you cannot prove me wrong.I refuse to follow the crowd untill someone,anyone ,offers something other than mere claims.And no I do not like or dislike Jack London.I go by his and others writings.Why is no one but me disputing the truth of his claim regarding the Victoria Cross holder.A man he claims he met many years after that person had died.And if he is untruthful about that,and I have proved he was,why believe anything else he writes?

[Nothing to see]

I guess I say again why is it so hard for anyone to accept that's how these people slept?

It's Oct/Nov. Not freezing cold but cold enough. All the warmth from the bodies around you. Wouldn't you prefer that to Jack?

[Robert]

Kingsley's "Alton Locke" has a reference, but it's called a lie down :



Werry well ; then you must keep moving all night continually, whereby you avoids
the hact ; or else you goes to a twopenny -rope shop and gets a lie down. ...

[Sam Flynn]

If the method was so ordinary and widespread,why are there no photos,Practically everything else was photographed.

Practically everything else was not photographed, and what photos we have of that period tended to be either studio-bound or taken outdoors, for practical reasons (the use of primitive flash-lighting in a confined space being one of them, I'd have thought). The majority of photographic "models" would also have been awake at the time, or at least unlikely to rip your face off if you disturbed their slumbers after a 16 hour slog down at the docks.

[Nothing to see]

Practically everything else was not photographed, and what photos we have of that period tended to be either studio-bound or taken outdoors, for practical reasons (the use of primitive flash-lighting in a confined space being one of them, I'd have thought). The majority of photographic "models" would also have been awake at the time, or at least unlikely to rip your face off if you disturbed their slumbers after a 16 hour slog down at the docks.

Sam, are there really no photos of these doss houses with the ropes, in situ? At all? Not the people lying on them but the inside with the ropes.

[Sam Flynn]

Sam, are there really no photos of these doss houses with the ropes, in situ? At all?

I've not seen any, NTS, but then a wall with a bit of rope on it might not have been too interesting to photograph - even assuming the ropes were permanently attached to the walls, which I don't think they were.

[Nothing to see]

I've not seen any, NTS, but then a wall with a bit of rope on it might not have been too interesting to photograph - even assuming the ropes were permanently attached to the walls, which I don't think they were.

Yeah well, I guess you're quite right. To them it would mean nothing. Still, a pity. But there you go.