Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1892 — Rouging Sleepers. [ARTICLE]

Rouging Sleepers.

In the olden time church services were so long—prayers, hymns, and sermons—that it is no wonder that many of the hard-worked people in the congregations could not keep awake. Both in the old world and in the new various devices were resorted to for the purpose of banishing sleep from the church. Among these was not the mcdern one of making the services short and interesting. Our English fathers tried several methods of breaking up the offensive practice. One method was that known as “bobbing,” a term thus explained by a writer in Notes and Queries: “My mother can remember Betty Finch, a very masculine sbrt of woman, being the ‘bobber’ at Holy Trinity Church in the year 1810. She walked very majestically along the aisles during divine service, armed with a great long stick like a flshingrod, which had a bob fastened to the end of it; and when she caught any sleeping or talking, they got a ‘nudge-. ’" Doctor Thirlwall, Bishop of St. David’s, gives in one of his “Letters” an amusing account of a Kerry custom for awakening sleepers in church. “It is by ancient custom a part of the sexton’s duty to perambulate the church during service time with a bell in his hand, to look carefully into every pew, and whenever he finds any one dozing to ring the bell. “He discharges this duty, it is said, with great vigilance, intrepidity and impartiality, and consequently with the happiest effect on the congregation; for as everybody is certain that if he or she gives way to drowsiness the fact will be forthwith made known through the church by a peal which will direct all eyes to the sleeper, the fear of such a visitation is almost always sufficient to keep everyone on the alert.”