What Did People Do Before TV on a Long Winter Night?

Full transcript

It's 1850, you're a farmer's daughter, and the sun just set at 4:30. Dinner is over. Now what?

There is no television. No phone. No radio. Your house has one main source of heat and light, and it's a fireplace.

So what did people do before TV on a long winter night? More than you'd think, and most of it involved work.

Quick warning. This is the 1800s, so your night has a smell. Mostly smoke, wet wool, and candles made from animal fat.

Here's the plan. We'll light the room, sew, play cards, hear a ghost story, and find out when you went to bed.

And there's a twist. Some historians, most famously Roger Ekirch, argue that many people didn't sleep through the night at all. We'll get there.

First problem: light. Electric bulbs exist by the 1880s, but in the countryside, you'll wait decades for one.

In the US, only about one farm in ten had electricity as late as 1935. Plenty of your great-grandparents lived this way.

So you reach for a candle. Cheap ones are tallow, which is rendered animal fat. Sheep or cattle, mostly.

Tallow burns smoky and drips. Every few minutes, someone has to snip the wick, or the flame sputters and stinks.

Beeswax candles burn cleaner and smell like honey. They're also pricey, so they're for church, wealthy homes, and special occasions.

Poorer households used rushlights: a dried rush plant dipped in grease. It gives a tiny, flickering glow and burns down quickly.

Your family doesn't light ten candles. You light one, and everyone shuffles close, like moths with chores.

Then there are oil lamps. Whale oil was popular early in the century, but it got expensive as whales got harder to find.

Around the 1860s, kerosene lamps change everything. Suddenly, a middle-class family can afford a bright lamp on the table.

In big cities, gas lamps light the streets, and some homes have gas pipes. Your farmhouse has neither.

So the family gathers around one lamp. That one bright spot decides where everyone sits, and who gets the good chair.

Now, don't picture lazy relaxing. In the 1800s, an evening was often the second shift. Your hands stay busy.

You're sewing. Many clothes were still made at home, and every sock, shirt, and sheet eventually needs mending.

Your grandmother knits by feel in the dim light, not even looking, while telling you to sit up straight.

Lace-makers had a clever trick. They put a glass globe of water in front of a candle to focus the light.

Meanwhile your brother whittles a spoon, your dad repairs a harness, and your little sister shells dried beans into a bowl.

Sometimes the work becomes a party. In the US, neighbors held quilting bees and corn-husking bees, where work and gossip happened together.

At a husking bee, a red ear of corn supposedly earned you a kiss. Historians aren't sure how common that was.

So here's a mini mystery. If everyone's working, when does anyone have fun? The answer is: during the work.

One person reads aloud while the others sew. Books were pricey and light was scarce, so one copy serves everyone.

Charles Dickens was perfect for this. His novels came out in instalments, and families waited for the next one.

Dickens himself toured, reading his stories aloud to packed halls. Imagine paying for a ticket to watch a man do voices.

Chores done, the fun begins. Cards come out. Popular games include whist, cribbage, and one with the unfortunate name of loo.

Some religious families frowned on cards, calling them the devil's picture books. So those households played checkers or dominoes instead.

Checkers needs just a board and twelve pieces each, and a board can be drawn on any scrap of wood.

Then come the parlor games. Charades was popular, and so was Blind Man's Buff, where one person stumbles around blindfolded.

A popular Christmas game was snapdragon. You grabbed raisins from a bowl of burning brandy, and yes, fingers got burned.

Ready for a new question? Where did the music come from? Because there's no speaker. There's you.

Middle-class families bought pianos and daughters were often expected to play for guests. Nobody asked if the guests wanted that.

No piano? You sing. Hymns, folk songs, and ballads filled the room, usually led by the loudest relative.

Someone has a fiddle or a concertina. The kitchen becomes a dance floor once the table is pushed against the wall.

Sometimes the entertainment left the house. Towns held lectures, church socials, and magic lantern shows, which projected glass slides onto a wall.

A magic lantern is basically a lamp, a lens, and a glass picture. It's an ancestor of the movie projector.

In a pub or tavern, many men gather to drink, argue, play dominoes, and hear someone read out the newspaper.

Literacy was rising but uneven, so a neighbor reading the news aloud could be a genuine social event.

Back home, someone tells a story. Folk tales, family gossip, and ghost stories all rolled out as the fire burned low.

Victorians loved a ghost story at Christmas. Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843, and it has four ghosts.

Storytelling wasn't just entertainment. Elders passed down family history, local legends, and warnings about what lived in the woods.

Kids also got riddles and tongue twisters. Think of it as a podcast, except you can't skip the boring uncle.

Not everything was group time. Some people read alone by the lamp, and cheap printed stories were booming.

In Britain, penny dreadfuls sold cheap thrills for a penny. Think highwaymen, pirates, murders, and mysterious castles, all printed on rough paper.

Almanacs were everywhere, too. They offered weather guesses, recipes, jokes, and moon phases, which mattered if you needed to see outside.

The Bible was sometimes the only book in a household, and many families read it aloud together every evening.

Letters were another night job. Britain's Penny Post began in 1840, and people suddenly wrote a lot more.

Diaries were popular too. Historians love them, because they record the weather, prices, and exactly who annoyed whom.

If you were young and single, evenings were also for courting. A visit meant sitting in the parlor with the family nearby.

There's a famous story about a 'courting stick', a tube for whispering. Many historians doubt it was ever widely used.

Around eight or nine, the household starts winding down. The lamp is turned low, and the fire is banked with ash.

Covering coals with ash keeps them glowing until morning, which saves you the trouble of starting a fire from scratch.

Now the twist I promised. Historian Roger Ekirch found many references to a 'first sleep' and a 'second sleep' in older records.

His idea is that people slept for a few hours, woke around midnight for an hour or so, then slept again.

In that quiet hour, people might pray, chat, smoke a pipe, visit neighbors, or, ahem, spend time with their spouse.

Is this proven? Not completely. Some historians doubt it, and the evidence is stronger for earlier centuries than for the 1800s.

Either way, you're in bed early. With dim light and an early chore list, nobody was staying up for late-night shows.

Bedrooms were often freezing in winter, so you might warm the sheets with a hot brick or a warming pan.

Beds were shared more than you'd expect. Siblings often slept together, which meant cold feet were a family problem.

A chamber pot sat under the bed, because the outhouse was outside, in the dark, in winter. Nobody argued with that logic.

You carry a single candle upstairs in a little holder. Then you blow it out, and the house is properly, completely dark.

So what did people do before the internet? They worked, sang, played, told stories, and stared at each other.

Was it better? Not exactly. Your eyes hurt, your fingers ached, and a single candle cost real money.

But the evening was shared, loud, and strangely social. Nobody sat alone staring at a glowing rectangle.

That's life before electricity: slower, darker, and weirdly busy. Subscribe, and we'll spend another lost evening together.