Did people in the old days sleep wearing those long caps?

[Dog80]

I am watching some old Pink Panther cartoons and when one of the characters go to sleep they will invariably wear a long cap that ends to a ponpon, similar to the cap worn by Santa Claus.

Did people really wear those caps back in the old days? Was there a practical reason?

[Paul in Qatar]

I often wore a sleeping cap when sleeping outdoors in cold areas. It could lead to world-class hat-hair.

Lot of heat leaves through the head. Wearing a hat keeps you warm.

A long, cone-shaped hat has the advantage of being one-size-fits-all, you just rolled the hat's edge up until the hat fit your head.

[Derleth]

People wore more to bed before central heating. The standard full-body pajamas with socks and cap on someone who's going to sleep under a thick eiderdown means he's sleeping in the winter in a temperate climate without the benefit of any heating more advanced than fireplaces or hot water bottles heated over said fireplaces. (I don't know how long this garb lasted into the era of steam heat.)

[susan]

Me, I wear a snowboarding cap to bed in the winter. It's light, warm, and doesn't have that long tail to wrap around your neck at night.

[Vox Imperatoris]

Originally Posted by Derleth

People wore more to bed before central heating. The standard full-body pajamas with socks and cap on someone who's going to sleep under a thick eiderdown means he's sleeping in the winter in a temperate climate without the benefit of any heating more advanced than fireplaces or hot water bottles heated over said fireplaces. (I don't know how long this garb lasted into the era of steam heat.)

This. It was cold as Hell without one, and most of your heat is lost through the head.

Valete,
Vox Imperatoris

[Sailboat]

Originally Posted by Vox Imperatoris

most of your heat is lost through the head.

I'm wondering if that well-known fact applies when you're lying down -- heat rises, and your head is on top when you're standing/sitting, but not really so much when you're lying down. Of course, your face isn't covered when you sleep, since you have to breathe, so maybe it still holds...but I'll bet the conventional "most of your heat is lost through the head" advice is given for outdoor recreation, and not specifically for sleeping attire.

[Tyrrell McAllister]

Originally Posted by Vox Imperatoris

most of your heat is lost through the head.

Only because the rest of your body is covered. There's nothing special about the head in that regard.

Cite: Scientists debunk the myth that you lose most heat through your head

When it comes to wrapping up on a cold winter's day, a cosy hat is obligatory. After all, most of our body heat is lost through our heads – or so we are led to believe.

[...]

Rachel Vreeman and Aaron Carroll, at the centre for health policy at Indiana University in Indianapolis, rubbish the claim in the British Medical Journal this week. If this were true, they say, humans would be just as cold if they went without a hat as if they went without trousers. "Patently, this is just not the case," they write.

[Canadjun]

Originally Posted by Sailboat

I'm wondering if that well-known fact applies when you're lying down -- heat rises, and your head is on top when you're standing/sitting, but not really so much when you're lying down.

"Heat rises" would only be relevant if your blood wasn't circulating (and if it wasn't circulating, what you were wearing really wouldn't matter any more ).

[Oregon sunshine]

I was just reading the "how cold can a house get before it's unhealthy" thread and thinking about the unheated bedrooms in the Ohio farmhouse where I grew up. We had to wear hats to bed in the winter so that we could get to sleep. Otherwise, in the wintertime your ears would be just too damn cold to be able to sleep. In some situations (especially the "unheated bedroom" scenario that used to be way more common back in the day) wearing a hat to bed is imperative.

[Koxinga]

I vaguely remember from some Edgar Allen Poe story or another that there was some function of binding one's jaw so as not to be sleeping with one's mouth wide open.

[DrCube]

Originally Posted by Koxinga

I vaguely remember from some Edgar Allen Poe story or another that there was some function of binding one's jaw so as not to be sleeping with one's mouth wide open.

Are you thinking of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens? I'm pretty sure he describes Marley as such (mouth tied shut with a strip of cloth around the head), and I'm positive he's got his jaw bound in one of the movies. I asked my mom when I was a kid about that, and she said it was so dead bodies didn't open their mouths while hanging around the house before burial. I didn't know people did that to themselves before going to bed!

ETA: Here's wikipedia's illustration of Jacob Marley's ghost with jaw tied up.

[Koxinga]

No, it was "The Premature Burial".

But I see that I had misunderstood:

The movement of the jaws, in this effort to cry aloud, showed me that they were bound up, as is usual with the dead. I felt, too, that I lay upon some hard substance, and by something similar my sides were, also, closely compressed. . . . The bandage about the jaws was a silk handkerchief in which I had bound up my head, in default of my customary nightcap.

So ordinarily a nightcap wouldn't bind the jaws, but here the protagonist freaked out because he woke up with a handkerchief tied around his head that did so.

"Never mind."

[susan]

It's in "Premature Burial."

ETA: Well, that's what comes of having multiple tabs open.

[Markxxx]

Originally Posted by Oregon sunshine

I was just reading the "how cold can a house get before it's unhealthy" thread and thinking about the unheated bedrooms in the Ohio farmhouse where I grew up. We had to wear hats to bed in the winter so that we could get to sleep. Otherwise, in the wintertime your ears would be just too damn cold to be able to sleep. In some situations (especially the "unheated bedroom" scenario that used to be way more common back in the day) wearing a hat to bed is imperative.

I remember when I was a kid in the 70s, we'd go up to Hibbing Minnesota and I'd see all these babies out in the freezing cold on a porch. My mother was like "So what they're all bundled up and in the sun. Babies need fresh air."

Hibbing is north of Duluth so it gets really cold there. But a lot of the mothers simply bundled their kids up and put them directly in the sun. So I think cold has a bit of a climate thing.

As for the one size fits all, I have a knitted skull caps, and it's one size fitz all you don't need to have that elongated portion of it.

[chappachula]

okay, so we all agree that a head covering is important for sleeping in cold climates--
but we still need an answer to the OP---which specifically asks about "those long caps.

I can remember that it bugged me when I was 5 years old (1950's):
The drawings in old nursery rhyme books* looked silly to me even then. Children were shown wearing pyjamas that looked like a dress, and a cap with a point that was longer than their body.



* ("off to bed sleepy head", "Winkin,Binkin and Nod", etc..... No TV in our house.)

[phouka]

Heck, I get cold so easily when I sleep that I often wrap a blanket around my head and shoulders to stay warm. I can totally see why people wore nightcaps.

[WhyNot]

Originally Posted by chappachula

okay, so we all agree that a head covering is important for sleeping in cold climates--
but we still need an answer to the OP---which specifically asks about "those long caps.

While I don't know for sure, I would, if given such a cap, use the long end to cover my ears, my neck, my cheeks etc., as one would do with a scarf today. This would serve the dual purpose of direct warmth, but also keeping the cap on my head while I sleep. The only thing worse than not being able to sleep in the cold because you forgot a hat is waking up due to the cold because your hat fell off!

[Hazle Weatherfield]

Originally Posted by phouka

Heck, I get cold so easily when I sleep that I often wrap a blanket around my head and shoulders to stay warm. I can totally see why people wore nightcaps.

Same here. I wore a hat all night last night. It's amazing how much warmer I am when I have my head covered. It works just as well when I'm lying down.