There was no such luxury as a room of one’s own, for apartments had to be shared with paying boarders. Sometimes the beds themselves had to be shared. There were rooms, including kitchens, whose floors were covered wall to wall with mattresses, each serving two or three, male boarders in one room, women in another, and it was not unheard of for people to sleep in shifts, those who worked at night taking turns with those who worked by day. When a household ran out of mattresses, two kitchen chairs with a board laid across them served as a bed. The conditions were .