People have found themselves tied to the bed for all sorts of unsettling reasons. It was once very common for robbers to break into homes, tie the occupants to their beds, and take everything they could. There were also cases of children being tied to beds while a parents lit the home on fire. Below are a few more interesting reasons why people were once tied to their beds.
1. Thrust Feathers In Her Ears
I live for articles such as this.
Back in 1901, Mrs. Rose Rasslina filed for divorce. According to her statement, her husband had become rather eccentric and began to punish her in odd ways if she refused to do some menial task or other. One time, after she refused to do what he said, he “threw a rope around her neck and tied her to a bedpost, where she was kept for three days.”
As if that wasn’t bad enough:
“When she shouted for help, her husband thrust feathers in her ears, nose, and hair, saying she ought to look like an Indian chief if she was going to yell like one.” [1]
2. Insane Asylums Were Full
In 1941, it was reported that all of the insane asylums were full in North Carolina. In fact, they had so many crazy people to tuck away that some were winding up in the jails. As a last resort, insane people who had family to care for them were being kept at home, tied to bed posts for their own protection. [2]
3. Bad Parenting Skills
What do you do if you have a kid, can’t afford a babysitter, but need to go to work? One father from Yakima, Washington decided to tie his four-year-old to the bed. According to the 1909 report, a laborer would tie his son to the bed each day before he left for work so that the child was “safe.” When the humane officers discovered how the child was being kept, they took the little boy away from his limited solitary confinement.
Where was the boy’s mother? She was in Seattle. She had to leave home to find work and the father was left in charge of their son. [3]
4. Rabies
While the rabies vaccination was first developed in 1885, there were still many people, including doctors, who did not believe the disease was real. In fact, many doctors believed that rabies, commonly referred to as hydrophobia, was a mental condition.
Victims of rabid bites usually died horrible painful deaths, such as was the case in 1894 when a Tennessee man was mauled by a rabid dog. At first the wounds were carefully tended to, but then the madness set in and the family had no choice but to tie the man down to his bed and watch him die a horrible death. [4]
5. A Force of Nature
In a freak accident, one could got tied up in their bed due to a lightning storm back in 1908. According to a newspaper report, Mr. and Mrs. Gallagher were sleeping in their iron bed one night when lightning struck through the roof of their home in Cleveland, Ohio. The lightning “twisted the clothes and the iron about the couple in such a curious fashion that they were actually tied in bed.”
The couple began screaming, of course, and eventually the neighbors heard them and came to their rescue. Fortunately for all, no one was hurt. [5]
6. It Started Over a Dime
In 1915, Jack Hughes murdered Larue Holloway over a dime. The crime took place in Columbia, Mississippi on October 21. By October 31st, Jack Hughes was strung up to a tree by an angry mob.
According to newspaper reports, masked men broke into the jail. They found the jailer in bed and tied him into place. With pistols pointed in his face, the jailer understandably told them where the keys to the cells were. There were no other guards at the jail that night, so it did not take the men very long to reach Jack Hughes and take him to the appointed hickory tree where he was later found swinging six feet off the ground. [6]
