At the end of Nights in White Satin there is a section of poetry (which appears to be a continuation of the poem that starts the album). A couple of the lines are:
“Bedsitter people look back and lament,
Another day’s useless energy spent.”
What are ‘bedsitter people’? Is this an English term?
A “bedsit” is what you rent when you can’t afford an apartment. It consists of a single, small room that is meant to double as a bedroom/sitting room - if you’re lucky you might get a microwave or a gas ring to do your cooking. A bedsitter is, of course, someone who stays in a bedsit. (There was also a very surreal film about thirty years ago by Spike Milligan called “the Bedsittingroom”, which told the story of a man who was slowly becoming a bedsit. Not a bedsitter, a bedsit.)
I think “bedsitter” is a variant on “bedsit” rather than a term for the person who inhabits it.
It occurs to me that I haven’t heard the term in general conversation for years now: it might have been supplanted by “studio flat”, which is a similar thing.