Poisoned 

Emma, Rose and many other middle and upper class women suffered from wearing toxic clothes and accessories. Girls shoulders’ erupted in sores after a night of wearing Paris Green (fake) flowers. Lady Lillian Grey found ulcers under and around her finger nails after she wore green gloves.

Women developed headaches and stomach problems after sleeping day in and day out in bedrooms with walls papered with arsenic-laced wallpaper (arsenic is extremely soluble in water, and damp weather caused the wallpaper to emit puffs of poisonous gas).  

A group of children died after literally licking the green off the wallpaper. Queen Victoria herself removed all green wallpaper from her walls in Buckingham Palace after a visitor became violently ill. And still factories contained to churn out clothes, accessories and wallpaper dyed with lethal Paris Green dye.

Factory Workers

Hundreds of factory workers suffered from arsenic poisoning. Daily exposure to the lethal substance caused workers to develop sores on their hands and legs; to suffer from headaches and breathing problems; to have constant diarrhea and to vomit blood. Many factory workers, children and adults alike, died from arsenic poisoning. 

Paris Green might have kept its deadly hold on the Victorians indefinitely had it not been for Matilda Scheurer. That’s coming up in the next post.

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Previously: A Fashionable Death: A brief history of gowns, gloves and arsenic – Part II