Bed Jackets

Knitted Garments for All - January '44

I remember bed jackets from my childhood in the 60s.  They were the sort of thing that my granny wore, or Great Aunt Hilda in Liverpool who was confined to bed with rheumatoid arthritis.  As a girl I didn't wear them, despite the fact that the house was freezing for half the year. 

We had no central heating, there was a coal fire in one of the downstairs rooms, a paraffin stove in my disabled grandmother's room - the other downstairs room.  My parents had a gas fire in their bedroom, but there was no other heating.  When it was really cold my parents put a small paraffin stove on the landing, but it made very little difference and we were poor enough that putting an extra shilling in the gas meter to run the gas fire was fairly unusual.  My grandmother needed to be kept warm, so often that was the only warm room in the house.



I regularly woke up in the winter with 'Jack Frost' on the window.  We were cold a lot of the time, and vests and thick woollies were the order of the day.  

So I can understand the attraction of bed jackets.  A neat little top that you could wear in bed, so that you could sit up and read, or chat to 'girl friends' in those shared rooms and hostels that must have been common for women in war time.  You were even decent if you had to leap out of bed to head for the cellar, or the air raid shelter.

So, it wasn't just changes in fashion that were the death knell for the bed jacket, it was central heating.  I wouldn't wear one now, the house is warm enough for me to sit up and read in bed without needing a cosy jacket.