How Dickens got a good night’s sleep

On this page a while ago my colleague “Glow-worm” discussed research demonstrating that resting ruminants tend to align themselves along a geomagnetic north-south axis.

This finding seems to lend support to a belief among many people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that the earth’s magnetic field could have a positive impact on your health if you slept in a bed that had been aligned so that your head pointed north.

In an article on “The best way to woo sleep”, the New York Times of 24 March 1912 cited a “specialist on nervousness”, who claimed: “The proper direction of the bed is of the utmost importance for the regular circulation of the blood and many disturbances of the organism have been cured by simply placing a bolster in a different position of the compass.”  

One person who was convinced of the truth of this theory was the author Charles Dickens, whose daughter wrote: “He could be a fidget . . . with regard to the furniture of a room in an hotel at which he might be spending only a single night, rearranging it all and turning the bed north and south to suit the requirements of the electrical currents of the earth.”

Not only did Dickens believe he had to sleep with his head pointing north, he also had to lie exactly in the middle of the mattress. He would extend his arms sideways and wriggle until he sure he was in the centre. Only after this routine could he begin to enjoy his slumber.

Dickens engaged in these rituals because of a continuing problem with insomnia. For a while he had tried drugs, using a combination of opium and alcohol that left him with a terrible hangover. But realigning his bed seemed to do the trick.

This may not have been good news for his followers, since Dickens had dreamt up some of his best tales while walking the London streets at night when unable to sleep. Easing his problem by turning his bed may have deprived posterity of further insomnia-generated stories.