Beds are for 'dead people' - social history q

[Susu49]

A couple of times, I've come across mentions in fiction about London evacuees (children) not sleeping in beds but underneath them because beds were "for dead people".

I've never come across any factual reference to this in documentaries, history books or hearsay.

I'd love to know more about it, I'm sure it was true for some people but am really interested in who and why and when etc

Does anyone know?

Meaning that by sleeping under your bed you have protection in the event of the house being bombed?

Oh, maybe! Hadn't thought of that.

I'd got the impression, though, that it was to do with poverty. Sheets and mattresses, etc, being an expensive luxury for many people.

I agree with PP it’s because during the raids you would sleep under the bed to avoid the bombs/falling debris. If you slept in the bed you’d be gone if the house was bombed

People who didn't have an Anderson or Morrison shelter, often made the kids sleep under the bed as protection against falling rubble, as getting to a shelter during a raid was potentially as dangerous as staying put.
If you had a Morrison, (metal cage indoors) then the temptation was to sometimes just want a night in a bed. (Lots of men in particular got fed up with sleeping with the family and sexually inactivity as a result.)
'Beds are for the dead' was a riposte.

A lot was done to nudge peoples behaviors in the war and people were as happy to judge then as they are now.

Bit of anecdotal social history. Fil was discharged, badly disabled, into the middle of the London blitz. WC and poor accommodation. Unable to move he used to lie there yelling at MIL to get the baby into the public shelter, while she used to shelter under the table crying from fear but refusing, because she didn't want to 'leave him to die in his bed.'
She found the idea terribly shameful.
(She wouldn't get under the bed with the baby because the combined weight of FIL and rubble if the house came down, didn't make for a survival space.)

Staying in bed during nighttime air raids was seen as stupid, profligate, and bringing disaster on yourself, but quite a few people used to take the chance and attitude of 'if it's my turn, it's my turn.'
Fil had no choice in it, but it was still going against expected behavior.

Poor Fil who'd already been blown to bits doing his bit, felt horribly responsible for the potential death of Mil and baby, but Mil said she wouldn't be able to deal with the whispering going to the shelter would bring.

@Elleherd the stress of that situation sounds horrific. Night after night.

Elleherd what a nightmare your in-laws had. I'm sorry.

I'm German and this has made me realize for the first time what a disadvantage British victims of bombing were at due to the fact that so many buildings in the UK don't have cellars. They're nearly universal in Germany, and where everyone went during bombing raids. There were still heavy metal doors, supposedly fire-proof and inscribed 'Bombenkeller', in apartment block cellars in Berlin in the 1990s. Always gave me the creeps.

Even with cellars the raids were terrifying. In early 1945, a man who had survived several nights of bombings in his cellar in Cologne was staying at my grandfather's house in the countryside. When shelling started there (the SS trying to drive British troops back out), he flatly refused to get into the cellar. Just wasn't doing it again. He died that night.