Immediately after visiting some historical websites, especially shortly after seeing the little mattresses; only one is usually left asking a question. Why is the bed so modest? As contemporary beds get bigger and bigger, it seems strange that even presidents have beds that small.
The main factor was not height that drove the size of the bed, but health. First of all, a bed mattress was not the hygienic, clean and comfortable foam and padding of our world. Innerspring mattresses were not invented until after World War I. Rather, mattresses can be filled with cotton, wool, straw, and other “soft” fillers. Buttons can be used in conjunction with other quilting strategies to keep the padding in place. These mattresses will most likely resemble today’s contemporary sleeping bags rather than the innerspring frames I sleep on daily.
With less than ideal cleanup strategies, this fill could likely be infested with a variety of insects. Would anyone have felt rested knowing what was probably on that mattress? Therefore, adults would sleep sitting up in bed. Depending on the size of the house and the number of rooms in it, small children may sleep at the end of the bed. If this sounds awkward, don’t forget that an extra floor bed mattress was usually placed at the end of the bed for the family’s favorite servant or slave.
For servants or slaves outside the home, a quilt should suffice. Working slaves have generally been given 1 quilt per year. Think how long even a well-made blanket would last, if it were all one had for bedding. Young children might not even receive this ration, preferring instead to share their parent’s or sibling’s. Others within the community may attempt to sew their own blankets, but this will be done after working a full day for the teachers and then cooking or cleaning their own homes. Servants were paid a salary, but would probably have been entirely responsible for buying their own bedding and food.
Some contemporary doctors have also speculated that lying down could already be seen as harder on the heart, which would already be more susceptible to heart disease due to the high-fat foods that are so prevalent in the diets of wealthy people. There may have also been superstitions at play regarding lying on your back in bed as the position of the dead. Lower-class people would surely have had to share whatever soft bedding they had with the whole household, making any raised bed a real luxury.
So whatever the reason behind this, one can see from historical evidence that although bed mattresses are generally quite short, the people resting on them were by no means very small. Considering George Washington (who was a career soldier); after Valley Forge, and also the other battle beds he slept on, wouldn’t the mattresses on the Mount Vernon bed really be luxurious? He probably wouldn’t have cared how modest they seem these days.