PensionersRants

Monday, December 9, 2019

Hangover


A penny hang was an establishment common in port cities, and located in a cellar or basement. It featured hooks in the walls, with ropes strung in parallel from one side to another at about shoulder height. In the late evening, drunk and exhausted "clients", who had spent all their money, or were too boisterous to be allowed anywhere else, would enter the penny hang, after paying a penny, and then drape themselves over a rope, and attempt to sleep as best they could. As a crowning flourish to the glories of this place, the proprietor could come down in the morning and untie one end of the ropes, so that the clientele who had not managed to wake up and stagger out already would collapse together in a heap on the floor. In 1933, a London sleeping  establishment, known as the Twopenny Hangover
In 1933, a London sleeping establishment had just such an arrangement. At the Twopenny Hangover the lodgers sat in a row on a bench; with a rope in front of them, and they lean on this as though leaning over a a fence. A man, humorously called the valet, cuts the rope at five in the morning.  There are similar shelters in Paris, but the charge there is only twenty-five centimes (a halfpenny) instead of twopence.
There are suggestions that the word 'hangover' and the expression 'sleep tight' originated from this.