Table of Content
Bread was not the only food being altered - tests on 20,000 milk samples in 1882 showed that a fifth had been adulterated - but much of this was done not by manufacturers but by householders themselves. Boracic acid was believed to "purify" milk, removing the sour taste and smell from milk that had gone off. Mrs Beeton told consumers that this was "quite a harmless addition", but she was wrong.
The new science of microbes only intensified the Victorian preoccupation with tackling germs, which they now knew could lurk out of sight. Chemical cleaning products to eradicate dirt and disease were heavily advertised and highly effective, but their toxic ingredients, like carbolic acid, were contained in bottles and packages that were indistinguishable from other household products. In September 1888, the Aberdeen Evening Express reported that 13 people had been poisoned by carbolic acid in one incident - five died.
The story behind Hidden Killers of the Victorian Home
As houses were thrown up rapidly, one area of design that was often overlooked was the staircase, especially those installed for the use of servants. Made too narrow and too steep, with irregular steps, the servants' staircase was a deadly construction. Add the weight of carrying trays or the complication of long skirts, and the stairs could easily prove fatal. Much of their ingenuity was a response to the challenges of living in the newly booming cities - in 100 years, the urban population of Britain had leapt from two million in 1800 to 20 million at the turn of the 20th Century. By 1850, London was the biggest city the world had ever seen, and such enormous concentrations of people posed brand new problems of feeding, watering and housing the masses.
Ugly items of decoration, be they imitation stags’ heads or faux marble flooring, not only deceived the onlooker, but they polluted the atmosphere of the home. Such objects emitted a sort of unwholesome and dangerous miasma into the air, which infected the family who lived among them. Yet, for the notoriously strait-laced and moralistic Victorians , it was crucial that an abundance of possessions had no hint of turpitude. Instead, in their evocation of the home, consumption became a moral act and things took on moral qualities. "A correct purchase could elevate a household’s moral tone; the wrong choice could exert a malevolent influence" .
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With the help of experts in history and science Dr Lipscomb brings the late Victorian Home, and the killers that lurked there, frighteningly to life. Suzannah Lipscomb takes us back to Tudor times in search of the era's household killers. Domestic refrigerators began to enter the home in the Edwardian era. They were tremendously useful and exciting new goods, with which the consumer could demonstrate fashionable wealth, but their initial designs were fatally flawed. They leaked toxic gases such as ammonia, methyl chloride and sulphur dioxide, which damaged the respiratory system and could easily lead to death. The late Victorian period saw the introduction of gas lighting and central heating into British homes but at first these were extremely hazardous, as the systems lacked stopcocks and release valves.
The introduction of oil and gas lamps, and the abolition of window taxes, meant that, for the first time, the Victorian middle classes could put deep, vivid colours on their walls. There was a particular fashion for wallpapers in Scheele’s Green, a brilliant, long-lasting green which was made from copper arsenite and therefore, unbeknownst to many consumers, potentially poisonous. The Times estimated that Victorian British homes contained 100 square miles of arsenic-rich wallpaper. Victorians linked cleanliness to ideas of morality and respectability - the idea that it was next to Godliness was deeply ingrained.
Hidden Killers: The Victorian Home - preview
We still don't know the full number of deaths that have resulted from it because it remains a lethal hazard. A magical new element was discovered in the Edwardian era - a source of energy and brightness that delighted and fascinated the Edwardians - radium. It was used, like asbestos, in all manner of products, such as cigarettes, condoms, makeup, suppositories, toothpaste and even chocolate. Above all, there was a craze for glow-in-the-dark watch faces, which were painted by the "radium girls".
The welcoming hearth of the well-ordered home behind a solid front door signified a place of seclusion and repose; a perfect antidote to the corruptions and hazards of the working world. A desire for social status and a higher standard of living meant these newly-enriched middle classes filled their homes with conspicuous commodities and contemporary technological innovations (newly termed ‘gadgets’), produced as a result of the successes of industrial manufacture. The aspiring British middle classes were themselves a product of the age. Successful industrialisation meant that between 1851 and 1901 the middle class expanded from 2.6 million people (12.5 per cent of the population) to 9.3 million people . Following a long period of increasing prosperity and peace, in the 1850s, often termed the ‘mid-Victorian calm’, the British middle classes suddenly found themselves able to build a comfortable haven of domesticity. Historian Dr Suzannah Lipscomb undertakes another investigation into the deadly consequences of ordinary life in the late Victorian era, which aired on BBC FOUR on 10th December 2013.
The Tudor Home
There were dangerous miasmas in the air, but they carried mortality, not immorality. Virtue and respectability weren’t just a question of who you were, but what you had. Poor aesthetic judgement promoted immorality, "household goods became household gods" and bad taste could do as much moral damage to society as taking a mistress.
Victorian women’s corsets could exert enormous amounts of pressure on the inner organs, and distort the liver, constrict the lungs, and even displace the uterus. Besides making basic exercise uncomfortable, they predisposed women to more serious conditions like pneumonia and prolapse of the uterus, and many women continued to wear them during pregnancy, with unhappy results. Suzannah Lipscomb nominates five potential 19th-century death traps – from wallpaper to children's toys. Suzannah Lipscomb reveals the killers that lurked in every room of the Victorian home. Suzannah Lipscomb reveals the killers that lurked in every room of the Edwardian home.
As the 19th century drew to an end the burgeoning middle class of Great Britain were wealthy and prosperous and filled their homes with the latest gadgets and time saving devices. At first, people didn't know how to use it - warning signs advised them not to approach the electric socket with a match. In the early 20th Century, electricity companies sought to interest consumers in electric products beyond lighting. The newspapers are full of cases of people electrocuting themselves. When basic staples like bread started to be produced cheaply and in large quantities for the new city dwellers, Victorian manufacturers seized on the opportunity to maximise profit by switching ingredients for cheaper substitutes that would add weight and bulk. Bread was adulterated with plaster of Paris, bean flour, chalk or alum.
Small amounts of boracic acid can cause nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhoea, but worse, it was what boracic acid concealed that was particularly dangerous. Before pasteurisation, milk very often contained bovine TB, which would flourish in the bacteria-friendly environment created by the substance. Bovine TB damages the internal organs and the bones of the spine, leading to severe spinal deformities. It is estimated that up to half a million children died from bovine TB from milk in the Victorian period. Not for these rising middle classes the fabled perils of Victorian factory life or the cholera of the poorest streets – this was a group of people whose lives were more comfortable than those of any other group of humans who had ever existed on the planet.
