The use of arsenic in Victorian clothing and wallpaper
Saint Patrick’s Day is coming up soon, meaning people’s minds are beginning to turn to all things green. However, unlike broccoli and good St. Patrick, not all green things are good for you.
In the Victorian era, as in March, bright green was a popular color, particularly for wallpaper and dresses. However, this shade, known as Scheele’s green, got its bright yellow-green color from copper arsenite which contains arsenic.
Scheele’s green was invented by a Swedish chemist, Carl Scheele, in 1775. By 1814, a German company had used Scheele’s discovery to create an even brighter shade, called Emerald green.
This color quickly found its way into widespread use, especially in women’s clothing. According to Tees Valley Museums, “Green was the ‘it’ color at parties and balls up and down the country.” However, wearing arsenic soon became an issue. The women who wore dresses made with Emerald Green pigment developed symptoms of arsenic poisoning from wearing the pigment so close to their skin.
Tees Valley Museums said, “The British Medical Journal wrote that a woman who wears these arsenic green fashions ‘carries in her skirts poison enough to slay the whole of the admirers she may meet with in half a dozen ball-rooms.’” As people realized the danger, they began making cartoons depicting these arsenic-clad ladies as skeletons, bringing death to the ballrooms.
Though people did eventually start to acknowledge that the use of arsenic had negative repercussions, it was slow going.
In the Victorian era, arsenic was also used in food colorings and beauty products, since the common wisdom was that arsenic was safe to use in small amounts, even internally.
The effects of arsenic poisoning from wallpaper also occurred very slowly. With the primary victims of the wallpaper being children and the elderly, it took some time for people to recognize and accept the actual problem. However, the knowledge that certain wallpaper shades could give off foul odors and even cause insanity became well known enough to be included in literature, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s haunting short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
Even once knowledge of arsenic’s negative effects became more widely known, some did not believe it. William Morris, a successful wallpaper designer and the son of the owner of the country’s largest arsenic producer, referred to people’s concerns over arsenic-laced wallpaper as hysteria. He claimed that he had wallpaper in his home made with arsenic and hadn’t gotten sick. However, he did eventually cede to the public pressure and stop making wallpaper with arsenic.
One widely-publicized victim of death from arsenic poisoning was the 19-year-old Matilda Scheurer. Scheurer’s job was to dust the leaves of fake flowers with arsenic dye to make them look more realistic. Before dying, she told the doctor that everything she looked at was green. An autopsy confirmed her death from arsenic poisoning; even her fingernails and the whites of her eyes had turned green. Stories like these led people to eventually avoid the Emerald green shade they had previously sought.
It’s interesting to consider how, like the Victorians and their green dyes, there are probably many things we use in our everyday lives which have toxic effects on us. For example, azo dyes, a type of synthetic dye, have some concerning ingredients such as the carcinogenic compounds benzidine and toluidine, as well as heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and chromium.
This is not to say, of course, that you should swear off colored clothing or stop wearing green for Saint Patrick’s Day. It’s just important to remember that although we have made certain advancements, such as not putting arsenic in our walls or lead in our pipes, we aren’t perfect and, like the Victorians, we don’t always use the best ingredients in our clothes. But hey, at least our ‘luck o’ the Irish’ shirts don’t have arsenic in them!