death bed :: SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board

I visited the "death bed" today.

About a quarter mile up the road from me is a house built in1685 called the Abbot House, originally built by Benjamin Abbot. Once a year they offer tours so I went and checked out today. Pretty cool.

Seven years after the house was built, the owner became involved in the Salem witch trials. Eventually most people in this town were involved in some way or other. Benjamin had a neighbor named Martha Carrier, and there was a dispute about the boundary between their property, which led to words and some bad blood, so in 1692, when Carrier was accused of being a witch, he testified against her, along with a few other neighbors.

The house stayed in the Abbot family for 10 generations, and today stands in almost the same condition it was built, although there are additions to it(also very old).

Indian raids were a significant problem, so the walls were built fort like, with a layer of brick between the wood. A water well was built within for the same reason. The first thing you notice when you walk in is the smell lingering from the ancient fireplace, which in the main room, is almost the length of the wall, as they used to have a long space for cooking. Must have filled the old house with smoke.

Anyway, the death bed. The original house is 2 stories. Upstairs was for sleeping, downstairs for everything else. When someone was badly ill, or dying, it would have been uncomfortable to sleep upstairs. It was cold, and the stairs were narrow. So what they did was build a bed whose frame hung on the wall in the main room downstairs. The frame was wood, the rest was made of rope. When in use, straw was placed on the rope, and the ill or dying person on the straw. That way they could be tended to all day. This is where the saying "sleep tight" comes from. There was a tool used to tighten the ropes for a more comfortable rest.

They had the bed in the house on display in a side room built in 1711. No one can say how many, but a substantial number of people had died on this bed. The house was in the family for more than 10 generations, and typically about 10 people lived there. Most would have eventually died...on the death bed, which came to be called that because that's where you went to die.

Another surprising fact about the house, and a scary one. The house, built rock solid without nails, but with the wood fitted and pegged, shows signs of substantial earthquake damage. There was a huge earthquake in the early 1700s, which I was aware of as the Cape Anne quake, but apparently there was another one in the 1800s, and there was a journal entry from the resident that described "a shaking and sulfurous smells emitted from the Earth as though the world were ending". I never read about that quake, but the damage is visible in the house.

Thought someone might find this interesting.