Q: Two "cabinnes" in the same "rowme" (1674)

[Joel S. Berson]

At 9/30/2010 09:07 PM, George Thompson wrote:
>Perhaps two enclosed beds?  Enclosed by wooden sides rather than by  curtains?

Not impossible.

But I would like to see a quotation with a description of a
"cabin[ne] bed" or a "cabinet bed" somewhere else in the same period
-- or at least before airplanes and not on board well-berthed ocean
vessels.  (The OED has "cabin bed" = "a berth", with, oddly, just one
quotation, from 1719, Crusoe.)  Of the first 30 hits for "cabin bed"
in GB before 1900, not one I think is other than a berth aboard ship;
the same is the case for the entire about 23-30 hits before 1800.

There are "cabinet beds" by the 1870s (in English), but at least one
illustration is a bed that folds out from a cabinet, like a Murphy bed.

Joel



>GAT
>
>George A. Thompson
>Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre",
>Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>Date: Thursday, September 30, 2010 10:08 am
>Subject: Q: Two "cabinnes" in the same "rowme" (1674)
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> > I have a sentence from 1674 that describes a male and female being
> > accused of too familiar activities, including "haveing their Cabinnes
> > together in the same rowme".
> >
> > [Maine Records, 2:290.]
> >
> > Assuming "rowme" is "room", I am puzzled by "Cabinne".  Nothing under
> > "cabin" in the OED seems to fit.  Surely not the cell of an
> > eremite.  "A small room, a bedroom, a boudoir"?  But the two cabinnes
> > were in the same room.  "A berth (in a ship)"?  But this was not a
> > ship but a house.  A "cabin-bed, a berth"?  Perhaps, but not a berth.
> >
> > Any suggestions?
> >
> > Joel

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