How Green Paint Poisoned So Many Victorians | Hidden Killers | Absolute History

it doesn't actually matter how the arsenic is absorbed into the body whether you breathe it in whether it comes in through the skin or the other membranes or whether you actually eat it it actually has a very similar effect because it's effective via the blood stream so the ask Nick gets into the bloodstream and travels around the body but one of the problems with the slower arsenic poisoning of a small amount over a longer time is that it could cause very vague symptoms and obviously if you're being poisoned by something in a particular room of the house and when you left that room you got a bit better it would could come and go and so it was much harder to differentiate it from other illnesses or to round at the time [Music] and one of the most dangerous pollutants [Music] mr. Troy the Victorians were really rejecting the idea of the eighteenth-century classicism the restraint the delicacy the white walls that was all over they wanted clutter they wanted color they wanted excess they they really furnished to show that for them color and clutter and objects that was wealth and that was that was importance and that was britches one thing that particularly indicated both good taste and status was wallpaper the richer the pattern and the darker more vivid the color the better why because with the introduction of gas lighting for the first time in history there was enough light in the house ordinary people to have and enjoy intense color on their walls as a result there was something of a wallpaper craze manuals like castles household guide which told the Victorians how to do everything outlined principles of good taste and told them which patterns of wallpaper to buy they were influencing a massive market wallpaper sales had shot up from around 1 million pieces a year in 1834 just 32 million by 1874 castles even gifts what its cause its theory of color it describes his rules for the artistic appreciation in dress in furniture and it recommends green it calls it a color of repose says the eye experiences a healthy and peculiarly grateful impression from this color as opposed to something like yellowish red which it says is the preference of impetuous robust men and savage Nations a particularly brilliant green known as shields green was all the rage Shearer was the swedish scientist who first mixed the pigment to produce an intensely vivid color that didn't fade its incredible popularity meant that it was used in everything from carpets Barrymore's candles and children's toys but most of all it was used in industrial quantities in wallpaper there was one strange coincidence as wallpaper sales escalated so did reports of unexplained deaths and illnesses in the home but there was nothing mysterious about it the magic ingredient that was giving the wallpaper its rich green hue was arsenic these were samples of what would be considered tasteful wallpapers to have in a Victorian home this on the walls would have been loaded with arsenic actually in the printing of the book it's also used arsenical dyes see this book that you've shown me now has asked the confused miss Christmas there's quite a lot of or stick in that it's not I don't believe what you're saying but could you prove it it's phase you do if I use this instrument which is a portable XRF it tells us what contaminants metallic contaminants are present and items and basically consider that this got large amounts of copper in it was got large amounts of arsenic in it yes [Music] the actual salts used in this pigment or copper arsenate in this book you to touch probably I wash my hands afterwards modern science can prove the Victorian wallpaper contained arsenic but this danger wasn't fully understood at the time to confuse matters further the symptoms of arsenic poisoning were very similar to cholera which had been rampant in Britain in living memory the immediate effects would be of pain swelling of the esophagus very dry throat and difficulty in swallowing and then what's described is agonizing abdominal pains as the whole digestive tract is affected by the arsenic vomiting diarrhea and sounds terribly unpleasant and then people would die which was said to be quite a relief because it's such an agonizing way to die newspaper headlines continue to report mysterious illnesses and deaths and links were made with arsenic in the second half of the 19th century the newspapers are full of cases like this one six-month-old child dies as a result of chewing on a piece of emerald green wallpaper but even if you hadn't eaten the wallpaper you weren't safe in fact the wallpaper was endangering the health of the nation in another hidden and much more insidious way thanks to a chemical reaction poisonous fumes are thought to have infiltrated the very air they were breathing there's a lot to be it what about the production of arsenic gases from the wallpaper the actual surface author the more people particular flock wallpapers could come off and your house would be covered in arsenical dust but also in Victorian houses which weren't centrally heated the relatively damp you put damp together with wallpaper paste and cellulose which is another wallpaper itself and you got fungal growth and as many fungi can actually evil art lies those arsenic assaults and their volatile form of arsenic and they're highly toxic these things were billowing out arsenic in the home in which obviously the windows were hardly ever opened because of the smog they sat there in this lovely ferg of arsenic thinking they're in this perfect virtuous healthy home it doesn't actually matter how the arsenic is absorbed into the body whether you breathe it in whether it comes in through the skin or the other membranes or whether you actually eat it it actually has a very similar effect because it's effective via the bloodstream so they asked nick gets into the bloodstream and travels around the body but one of the problems with the slower arsenic poisoning of a small amount over a longer time is that it could cause very vague symptoms and obviously if you're being poisoned by something in a particular room of the house and when you left that room you got a bit better it would could come and go and so it was much harder to differentiate it from other illnesses thought around at the time some doctors began to question the use of arsenic in war people mystery deaths were reported in the home The Lancet too took up the cause there appears good reason for believing that a very large amount of sickness and mortality among all classes is attributable to this cause and that it may probably account for many of the mysterious diseases of the present day which so continually baffle all medical skill [Music] in 1856 a couple in Birmingham reported to their doctor dr. Heinz that they were suffering from inflamed eyes headaches and sore throats even their pet parrot was drooping they decided to go on holiday to the seaside and their symptoms disappeared they suspected something in their house and they had recently applied bright green wallpaper to two rooms at home dr. Heinz wondered if that alone could be responsible for their ailments people went to the seaside and took the waters and took the spa well effectively they were doing is moving out of a toxic environment into a healthy diluted environment where you had fresh air water that came from a known source not relying on what was in a concentrated area within the property they moved away from a toxic environment what's really astounding is how much arsenic there wasn't a Victorian drawing-room when you add up all the materials that contained arsenic pigment certainly we know that it was a huge amount of arsenic in say Victorian living room which had 100 square meters surface area could contain up to 2.5 kilograms of arsenic that's a lot of food you went to or some other medical practitioners became an outspoken critic of the use of arsenic pigment in Germany arsenical wallpapers had been banned but not in the UK the war people manufacturers didn't want people to think there's anything wrong with their products and they say the lancets in the British Medical Journal or a long campaign to bring this in the public for so there was quite a lot of speed to what's going on some doctors and newspapers called on the British government to ban the poisonous paper but others were quick to belittle the claims of the killer wall paper some manufacturers even offered to eat it to prove how safe it was one of Britain's most celebrated wallpaper designers was William Morris a leading light of the Arts and Crafts movement he was also one of the fiercest critics of the heartless industrialists of this period but what is not well known about this champion of handicraft is that he was a director of the biggest arsenic producing mine in the world Devin great consoles William Morris was making with this money from arsenic that's quite a surprise isn't it because of course we associate William Morris as being you know this leader of the Arts and Crafts movement as someone who's you know going back to the place it's going to look back to natural things but he's got this mind that potentially is certainly selling arsenic whether he's using English papers or not sometimes we said there was enough arsenic produced from that line to kill the entire planet and every creature on earth [Music] some of the people who came out with the processes had vested interests in other locations that they would own arsenic mines they would own areas where it was in their interest to include arsenic into payments dyes whatever they don't feel amorous ever except that he was doing this or did he continue to deny it well there's a interesting letter there was a customer complaining that the wallpaper was poisoning him and his family and basically William Morris said there was which fever so that was this for tolerance we have it was which fever in other words he thought he was being accused of something that just wasn't she well he was just saying it was these doctors were saying the new article wallpapers were killing people and damaging people's health news are saying you it's it's mumbo-jumbo basically what he was saying contrary to Morris's claims the evidence building up became impossible to deny [Music] but it would take intervention from the very top before things started to change one of the tipping points of that recognition was when Queen Victoria herself had had wallpaper of shield green and she had a diplomat who actually came to stay with her who fell ill overnight and she wasn't the record so that she was quite put out to be perfectly honest she'd been stood up early in the morning and he hadn't turned up but axes the poor chap had actually killed over overnight he was actually effectively poisoned by the arsenic in the wallpaper she was a little skeptical about it but then they actually came out in the papers and the world actually quite a lot of publications around that time was actually that she done that it was then that step change in maybe we need to think in how we regulate this unbelievably the use of arsenic and wallpaper was never officially banned but as consumers understood its danger they stopped buying these wallpapers and forced commercial practice to change Morris wallpapers and other astute manufacturers started to advertise their product as arsenic-free certainly by 1872 even the star guides had switched to safer printing but we'll never know how many died a slow death through the prevalence of arsenic in Victorian products I cannot see that having this amount of arsenic dust fully around a Victorian home wouldn't lead to chronic health problems it's a as a class 1 carcinogen as a human carcinogen so years of exposure to this would have led the cancer is basically [Music] you

Channel: Absolute History

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Keywords: history history documentary funny history fun history school, timeline, tv shows - topic, full length documentaries, documentary history, absolute history, history documentary, hidden killers of the victorian home, dr suzannah lipscomb, suzannah lipscomb, suzannah lipscomb documentary, suzannah lipscomb hidden killers, victorian documentary, victorian documentary bbc, victorian history of london, victorian history for primary schools

Id: MvxnXOoFl20

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2019