Sailors who were too drunk to make it back to their ships after a long evening at the tavern would to a room in the back of the tavern,
In that room would be two ropes stretched from wall to wall:
1. about waist height
2. just below armpit height.
The top rope was slightly offset, horizontally, from the bottom rope.
Apparently the idea was that you would walk up to the bottom rope, lean forward and drape your head and arms over the top rope. The top rope would sit under your armpits and would hold you up while you slept off the night of boozing.
That makes these "capsule" rooms seem not so bad.