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

Before the modern era, the night was often divided into distinct segments. People went to bed, slept for a few hours, woke for an interval known as "the watch," and then returned to bed for a second sleep. But how common was this practice, what did people do in the middle of the night, and why did this fragmented sleep pattern eventually disappear?

This episode examines the historical evidence for segmented sleep, drawing on diaries, medical texts, and court records from the medieval period through the eighteenth century. It explores the environmental conditions that shaped pre-industrial rest, the scholarly debate over how widespread the practice truly was, and the technological and economic shifts—from gas lighting to factory schedules—that ultimately consolidated our rest into a single eight-hour block.

I wanted to understand why a practice that once required no explanation vanished so completely from our collective memory. Exploring this history reveals that even our most intimate biological functions are shaped by the world we inhabit, and that the way we sleep today is just one historical possibility among many.