snip
None whatsoever, but it’s yet another good example of people jumping to completely the wrong conclusion on the basis of knowing a bit of esoteric information.
There really was once a sleeping system like that. The principal reference I have for it is George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London of 1933: “At the Twopenny Hangover, the lodgers sit in a row on a bench; there is a rope in front of them, and they lean on this as though leaning over a fence. A man, humorously called the valet, cuts the rope at five in the morning. I have never been there myself, but Bozo had been there often. I asked him whether anyone could possibly sleep in such an attitude, and he said that it was more comfortable than it sounded — at any rate, better than bare floor.” It’s mentioned in a work of a century earlier, The Magic Skin by Honor� de Balzac, which was translated into English by Ellen Marriage in 1895: “We ... made it a point of honour to find out whether you were roosting in a tree in the Champs-Elys�es, or in one of those philanthropic abodes where the beggars sleep on a twopenny rope.”
The connection sounds pretty convincing, with Orwell actually using hangover to describe the method. But the historical evidence for the word in the alcoholic sense shows that it’s from the idea of something that remains or is left over — a remainder or survival or after-effect — not of a person literally being hung over anything.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-han4.htm
about the author: http://www.worldwidewords.org/personal.htm
and this
hangover (n.)
also hang-over, 1894, "a survival, a thing left over from before," from hang (v.) + over. Meaning "after-effect of excessive drinking" is attested by 1902, American English, on notion of something left over from the night before. As an adjective, in reference to a person, overhung (1964) has been used but is rare; that word meaning generally "placed so as to project or jut out" (1708).
https://www.etymonline.com/word/hangover
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