Description

Arsenic is rightly infamous as the poison of choice for Victorian murderers. Yet the great majority of fatalities from arsenic in the nineteenth century came not from intentional poisoning, but from accident.

Kept in many homes for the purpose of poisoning rats, the white powder was easily mistaken for sugar or flour and often incorporated into the family dinner. It was also widely present in green dyes, used to tint everything from candles and candies to curtains, wallpaper, and clothing (it was arsenic in old lace that was the danger). Whether at home amidst arsenical curtains and wallpapers, at work manufacturing these products, or at play swirling about the papered, curtained ballroom in arsenical gowns and gloves, no one was beyond the poison's reach.

Drawing on the medical, legal, and popular literature of the time, The Arsenic Century paints a vivid picture of its wide-ranging and insidious presence in Victorian daily life, weaving together the history of its emergence as a nearly inescapable household hazard with the sordid story of its frequent employment as a tool of murder and suicide. And ultimately, as the final chapter suggests, arsenic in Victorian Britain was very much the pilot episode for a series of environmental poisoning dramas that grew ever more common during the twentieth century and still has no end in sight.

Features

• The vivid history of arsenic in the nineteenth century and how the Victorians used it in their daily life
  
• How the Victorians accidentally poisoned themselves with their use of arsenic in everything from candles and candies to curtains, wallpaper, and clothing
  
• Tells its sinister parallel story as the Victorian poison of choice for murder and suicide
  

Reviews

"A compelling and entertaining read, with much tongue-in-cheek humor, but it is not for the fainthearted, as symptoms and distress are graphically described and illustrated. The narrative is a complex mix of quotation and the author s own words, which creates the feel of a Victorian melodrama. It is well researched and finely detailed with the history of legislative controls, medical advances, and the development of medical jurisprudence all successfully interwoven throughout the narrative. Although the text has wide popular appeal, it will also be of interest to scholars researching environmental, legal, and medical history." -- Journal of British Studies

Product Details

440 pages; 12 integrated halftones; 7.7 x 5.1; ISBN13: 978-0-19-960599-6ISBN10: 0-19-960599-8

About the Author(s)