Killer Wallpaper, Surprising Mummies & Unadulterated Nostalgia
Plus a visitation of the feathered kind!
Hi there!
Welcome back to The History Edit after our little break. It has been a busy time at Revell HQ and we now have the addition of a few chickens. Say hello to Margot…
Hopefully Margot and her feathered friends will soon be providing us with scrumptious eggs for breakfast in no time. 🥰
This week, I’ve been writing down ideas and wading through thoughts for a whole new raft of history articles, including one about Henry VIII. One of the interesting things that popped up in my history mooching was a dangerous Victorian trend…
A deadly fashion
Lime, bottle, forest, British racing car: all descriptive words for the colour green (or names on a pretentious paint chart). But have you ever heard of Scheele’s Green?
In 1775, Carl Wilhelm Scheele created the perfect hue of vivid green by combining sodium carbonate, arsenious oxide and copper sulfate. It was incredibly cheap to manufacture and was used to dye fabrics, wallpapers, paints, toys, confectionary, beauty products, and much more.
Victorian Britain went mad for the fashionable decor colour du jour! Due to its cheapness and popularity, all classes with disposable income swathed and swagged their houses and themselves in the emerald shade. Walls were papered in it, dresses were sewn with it, and even faux flowers were dusted with it. They simply couldn’t get enough.
Too good to be true
Those with the eyes of a lynx will have noticed the sinister word nestling in amongst the chemicals above: arsenious!
Yes, the one and the only arsenic was a key ingredient in creating this verdant pigment, making it tremendously toxic.
By the mid 19th century, various cases of illnesses and deaths were becoming linked to the dye. It was also found that damp walls covered in Scheele’s Green wallpaper produced a poisonous acid.
Wallpaper releasing its arsenic was poisoning the occupants of homes around the country, artificial flower makers were being poisoned from the dye they used for the leaves, workers at factories using the pigment died from mysterious lung diseases, green candles were discharging their lethal vapours into the air being breathed by unsuspecting victims, and the list goes on.
Many adults and children died from breathing in the poison produced by this pigment but those that didn’t faced horrendous debilitating illnesses such as cancers, heart problems, deep skin ulcers, and gastric issues. It was even said that Napoleon succumbed to death brought about by Scheele’s Green.
Fall from grace
Scheele himself was aware of the poisonous potential of the dye, so why did it continue to be used? It was brighter than previous green dyes and its affordability ensured its popularity and the fact that most people didn’t understand the severity of the effects of arsenic meant it had staying power.
It was never outright banned in Britain, but various laws restricting the amounts of dangerous chemicals sold and the uses of them came in to being. The constantly rising numbers of ill or dying workers, stories of children dying tragically young, and the fact other European countries were beginning to ban the sale of the dye, meant it fell out of fashion and stopped being used by the end of the 19th century.
Those of you who are interested in decorating your house in a similar hue but without the toxic miasma can find it at Farrow & Ball.
The Weekly Edit
News
Recent research carried out in Warsaw has shown that an ancient Egyptian mummy that was thought to be a male priest has turned out to be a pregnant woman.
Find out more about this fascinating research here.
Guilty pleasure confession of the week
I don’t actually even feel guilt admitting this, but I absolutely love looking through old issues of the Argos Catalogue.
I love looking through the 80s and 90s issues and marveling at how ugly, mad, brilliant, basic, etc, that some of the things were. I also get a MASSIVE dose of nostalgia every time I catch a glimpse of something from my childhood.
I remember when I was quite young (under 10), myself and my two younger brothers used to spend hours going through its pages and picking what things we would have in our respective houses when we were grown ups. We would also spend a long time choosing what we wanted from the toy section (obviously!).
It’s just a really cool time capsule of everyday objects from a few decades of British life.
The Argos Catalogue is no more. It was one of the last remnants of a different era and is now rightly a small part of history and the culture of Britain.
Anyone out there who is as cool as me and would love to look through old catalogues can find a decent back catalogue here by Retromash, who has painstakingly digitised them for your viewing pleasure.
I hope you all enjoyed this issue of The History Edit. Does anyone else love an old Argos catalogue, or is it just me? 😆
As ever, you can contact me on here or Instagram with any questions or requests. A shiny new website is under construction so keep your eyes peeled for that.
See you Friday!