Some excerpts from the gothamist:
- According to Smithsonian Mag, the Murphy Bed was originally invented around 1900 in San Francisco, when William Lawrence Murphy “was falling for a young opera singer and courting customs at that time would not permit a lady to enter a gentleman’s bedroom. His invention allowed him to stow his bed in his closet, transforming his one-room apartment from a bedroom into a parlor.
- Murphy Beds have killed before, and they’ll probably kill again. In 2005, two women were entrapped and suffocated by a collapsing Murphy bed. In 1982, a man died from suffocating inside a Murphy bed.
- But perhaps the most horrifying Murphy Bed story comes from Liverpool, where “a woman’s final trip to her old family home turned into a horrifying nightmare when she discovered her grandmother’s mummified corpse stuffed into a folding bed—still wearing her favorite nightgown. Abigail Larson, 72, died when her fold-away bed—commonly known as a Murphy bed—lurched backward into its cabinet as she slept, pinning the gray-haired granny between the mattress and the wall.”
http://gothamist.com/2013/04/30/murphy_beds.php
- Murphy Bed at 40th Street and 5th Avenue, 1920. (Photo courtesy of the MCNY)