If you read the literature from the period of the Great Depression" (ca. 1929-1939), you find mention of a curious claim: when jobless men had to sleep out on park benches, they would wrap themselves in sheets of paper (old newspapers) to keep warm. These were referred to as “hoover blankets”-after President Hoover (who was unfairly blamed for the depression).
I foind the claim unbelievable-how would a thin piece of paper keep you warm ?
Newspaper sheets are not very big-how would you keep them from blowing away?
It sounds to me like some reporter’s invention-like the armies of nemployed men allegedly selling apples on street corners.
So, did Damon Runyon or some other writer invent this term?
Newspaper would break the wind at least. That makes a big difference IMHO.
Wood ( from which newspaper is made) is a fairly good insulator. Of course you used more than one sheet, but people used newspapers to insulate walls long before the Depression.
Also newspapers, in general, used to be bigger. Web widths (the width of the newsprint the papers are printed on) have decreased significantly in the past few decades, mainly for cost-cutting reasons but justified by publishers as “easier to handle”.
When you say literature, are you sure you don’t really mean cartoons? A jobless man sleeping on a park bench under a single piece of newspaper (with an apropo headline, no doubt) is a nice visual image like a banker wearing a barrell. No doubt there were homeless (and blanket-less) men sleeping on park benches diring the Depression but I’m sure even the unemployed are smart enough to figure out that newspaper could be better utilized by wadding it up and stuffing it under their clothing.
People use to insulate their houses with newspapers.
The phrase was used, but I think it became popular later.
Google Books gives no hits at all for “Hoover blanket” before 1940, as far as I searched.
Newspaper Archive, mostly limited to small town papers, gives only one hit:
Iola Daily Register, Jan. 8, 1932, p. 1
Note that it has to explain what the term means, meaning people weren’t expected to be familiar with it. And it wasn’t designed for outdoor sleeping.
It’s likely that it was slang that wasn’t generally used except among the underclass. People picked up on it later.
And I agree with what people have said. Newspapers used to be huge. Wrapping yourself in a paper (better than lying on a cold surface and protecting the body from wind) gave more protection than nothing at all. If the choice was between nothing and a free newspaper, then newspaper every time.
Bike riders use newpapers tucked under shirts for cold downhill rides: how to fight cold on descent? - Bike Forums
I found another 2-3 in Wisconsin papers in 1931. All the articles were about down and out people out of work. Some slept on their “Hoover Blankets” when indoors, such as spending the night in jail. Outside, you wrapped yourself in it.
I’ve seen homeless people sleeping under newspapers. Why wouldn’t they? Lots of layers of a pretty good insulator to begin with (paper) with warm air in between, once you’ve been in it for a while.
I recently watched The Conversation for the first time, and one of the characters mentions (memory is foggy here) that during a newspaper strike in some city or other, hundreds or possibly thousands of homeless people froze because of the lack of newspapers. I’m too lazy to look up whether that was based on a real incident or not.
Related: Bennett Buggy
I often take newspapers when camping. I tend to put them under rather than over me however, as you lose a lot more heat to the ground.
Not only were old newspapers bigger sheets of paper than the ones now, but most of them had more pages than modern ones as well. Even a single newspaper would be quite helpful and certainly better than nothing at all. Since a homeless person had to carry all their belongings, having something disposable and that could be readily replaced might be preferable to carrying, say, a blanket around all the time.
I don’t think that counts as an urban legend by either definition of the term.