In early workhouses, inmates sometimes took in their own bedding. In 1724, this was common practice at St Alban’s workhouse and a requirement at Hitchin, for example. It was, however, more usual for the workhouse management to furnish the sleeping accommodation.

Sir Frederic Morton Eden’s survey in the 1790s – The State of the Poor – found considerable variation in the beds that were provided. Bedsteads could be made from iron, as found at Preston workhouse, or have wooden bottoms as at Sunderland. The mattress and pillow could be stuffed with a variety of materials such as straw as at Norwich, chaff (grain husks and/or chopped straw) as at Ecclesfield in Yorkshire, or flock (tufts of wool) as used at Leeds and also at Leicester where the beds were said to be “much infested with bugs”. A rather more comfortable time was had by the inmates of the workhouses at St Alkmund in Derby, Spilsby in Lincolnshire, and at Windsor where feather beds were pro vided. Bedding, such as that found at Chesterfield and Ecclesfield, could include a pair of sheets, a blanket and a rug or coverlet. Bed sheets were typically changed every three weeks.

An auction catalogue for the contents of the Oxford Incorporation workhouse catalogue in 1859 offered items from the former Old Ladies’ Bedroom: five 3ft, three 4ft and one 2ft iron bedsteads, with each provided with a flock bed and bolster, a pair of blankets, a pair of linen sheets, and a rug. Items from the master’s bedroom included a painted bedstead, flock mattress, feather bed, bolster and pillow, three blankets, two sheets and a coverlid.

The condition of workhouse beds sometimes left a lot to be desired. In 1865, The Lancet reported that beds at St Martin in the Fields were “lumpy and comfortless” while at St Giles & St George, Bloomsbury:

The iron bedsteads, as a rule, were short of six feet, and were not more than two feet five inches in width. In many cases the sacking was in rags, loose, and dirty, the beds of flock, with dirty ticks, in some cases extremely dirty, and the flock escaping on the sacking the blankets and sheets also were dirty and ragged. The sheets we were told were changed when required, and always once a fortnight – statements we could hardly credit when looking at the articles themselves.

For the inmates of Irish workhouses, the standard provision was either a straw-filled mattress on a wooden sleeping platform, or – for the elderly, sick and infirm – there was the uncomfortable and narrow ‘harrow’ bed which comprised:

Five parallel wooden bars supported at the foot on an iron crossbar and two iron legs, and at the head it rests on a continuous rail fixed on iron uprights about 6 inches from the wall, or, failing the rail, its place is taken by two legs; there is no bed head, the tick and pillows resting against the wall, and there are no sides. The bed is 2 feet 3 inches wide, stands about a foot from the ground, and on this is placed the straw tick.

The casual ward
The worst sleeping arrangements, though, were undoubtedly those provided for tramps and other travellers accommodated overnight in the workhouse casual ward. In 1857, a party which included the Lord Mayor of London visited the West London Union’s casual wards which for the men consisted of the floor of a 12-stall stable while the women were found in an adjoining cattle-shed, huddled together on a rug on the bare ground, almost perished with cold, and without either fire or food.

In association wards, which were the norm for casuals up until the 1880s, beds could consist of a hammock-like canvas bed, a plank-bed with one end leant against a wall, a box or ‘trough’ bed containing a straw-filled canvas tick, a straw-filled pallet on the floor, or even just bare floorboards, with a rug for cover. The beds provided under the cellular system usually comprised a metal-framed bedstead with a wire mattress, for which two or three blankets were provided. Some workhouses offered the luxury of sheets, although these often concealed the very dirty state of other bedding. The sleeping quarters in casual wards were notorious for harbouring lice, fleas, or bugs which would make their appear ance during the night. Gradually, things did improve, at least at some establishments. At the Wandsworth and Clapham workhouse in 1896, a visitor recorded that:

The beds are as comfortable as one could wish to have.The bedding for old people – those over 60 – consists of a cocoanut fibre mattress, a flock bed, two sheets, two top blankets, one under blanket and counterpane, pillows and bolsters. Inmates under 60 years of age have the same bedding with the exception that the flock bed is missing.

Bed sharing
For much of the workhouse’s history, for rea sons of space or economy, bedsharing was common amongst inmates. Although this was particularly the case with children, it could also apply to adults. At the Wisbech workhouse in 1724, children slept three to a bed while the elderly were two to a bed. At Sevenoaks in 1841, 62 boys and two men occupied 17 beds, 15 of which were 6ft long by 4ft 6in wide, in each of which four boys slept; in the two others, which were about half the size, a man and a boy slept. There was a space of about 13in between each bed.

In 1844, a boys’ dormitory at Southampton work house contained 11 double beds and one single bed in a space of 34ft by 14ft 6in. Two of the double beds had four occupants each, eight beds had three, and one had two, with the single bed used by one – 35 sleepers in all. In the same institution’s venereal ward, double beds were shared by two patients exposing each “by continued juxtaposition under the same covering, to the offensive and purulent discharges which are generated by the various forms of the complaint”. The bed-sharing record, though, was probably held by Huddersfield workhouse where in 1848, up to ten children shared a bed.56 Another striking instance of bed-sharing was reported at Preston workhouse in 1866 by the inspector, Mr R.B. Cane:

Many of the infirm people, men as well as women, are sleeping together two in a bed. The sick have not all of them a separate bed to lie upon. In the ‘venereal ward’ the patients affected with syphilis are sleeping together two in a bed. Two women, owing to a want of room, have lately been placed together in the same bed in the lying-in ward, both having just been confined.
Four patients, two men and two boys, were lately sleeping together in the same bed in the ‘itch ward.’ Six men occupied two beds in this ward to-day, three in each bed. The man lying in the middle of the bed had his feet to the top of the bed, and his head came out at the bottom of it. The feet of the other two men were placed so as to be close to the head of the man who was lying between them.

Bed-sharing by adult male inmates, in operation at a number of workhouses in Lancashire until the 1860s, was deprecated by Cane as “a most objectionable and indecent custom”. Following his criticisms the practice appears to have been discontinued.