Trapped 5 days in folding bed

Refer to the Daily Mail article for the illustration.

I wonder if what the article refers to as a folding bed may have actually been a Murphy Bed. You can see them in early to mid-century American movies - it folds up into the wall to free floor space in a small apartment. They were spring assisted to enable the user to raise them up from the floor since the frame was fairly weighty. Many comics used them to good effect.

But a folding bed in the form of a living room couch kind of replaced the Murphy Bed because it allowed the owner to take it with them when changing residence.

I currently own a waterbed, so I have no fear of being trapped in springs due to some malfunction - just drowning from a puncture.

I suspect it was what's now commonly called a rollaway bed. I can't picture someone becoming "wedged between the springs and the iron edge" on anything else because there's little or no space between the springs and the metal frame.

On a rollaway, the 'iron edge' could mean the leg which swings down to support the end when the bed is open. Attempting to force a bad hinge could lead someone to try to get between the leg and the springs so they could push it out and then becoming trapped when the hinge ratcheted back.

On a sofa bed, you become trapped between sections of the springs. On a Murphy bed, you become trapped between the frame/springs and the surrounding cabinet, which is wood because it isn't a load-bearing part of the unit.

I have an early 20th Century book on how to be a draftsman. It includes the basic floorplan of a multi-story apartment building. All of the units were a room, a tiny kitchen, and an even smaller bathroom. They had Murphy Beds built in. In some of them, you had to be good about closing the bed every day because when it was open, you couldn't have opened your front door more than about nine inches!