New Hidden Killers of the Victorian Home Hidden Killers


New Hidden Killers of the Victorian Home

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The Victorian home was a place of sanctuary from the outside world,

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especially in the cities where dirt and disease hung in the air

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and danger stalked the streets.

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And thanks to advances in science, a whole host of products and services

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were promising to make life at home cheaper, easier and more convenient.

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But they were also making life much more dangerous.

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For under the guise of family-friendly products,

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mass consumption was bringing killers

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into the very heart of the Victorian home.

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With the aid of modern science, I'll seek out the deadly assassins

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that hid on every floor.

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Leaning too close to the fire and, "Boof!", they burst into flames!

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I'll be revealing what the Victorians couldn't see

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inside their homes...

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Five grams is sufficient to potentially kill a small child.

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..and showing the terrible injuries that were inflicted

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in the name of progress.

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That could completely remove the skin from the hand and the arm.

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Welcome back to the perilous world of the real Victorian home.

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Between 1800 and 1900 the urban population in Britain

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increased tenfold.

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London became the biggest industrial city in the Western world.

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City dwellers in houses like this

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were creating an unprecedented demand

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for mod cons as well as life's necessities.

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They were becoming mass consumers at the end of a production line.

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Supplying the household with the basic foods

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in the newly-expanded cities of up to 3 million people

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was a strategic challenge.

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But thankfully, by the late 19th century,

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the staples of bread and milk had become cheaply available.

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To cater for the new demands,

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the Victorians pioneered new food-processing techniques.

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This left the consumer at the mercy of the unscrupulous merchants

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responsible for each part of the food chain.

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One thing that the Victorians loved above all was profit

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and the way to make profit, of course,

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is to use the cheapest ingredients and charge a high price for them,

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so adulteration became very popular throughout the Victorian period.

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Some merchants would substitute real ingredients with cheap alternatives

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that would add weight and increase profit margins.

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Food adulteration had always gone on,

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but the new manufacturing process meant it was now big business.

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The food shops themselves change as well

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so you used to have a system whereby for example, with bread,

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the miller was the same as the baker, was the same as the retailer.

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Now the miller mills the flour, passes it to the baker,

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the baker bakes and the retailer sells.

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So you've got divorcing all the way along the chain.

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That de-personalises the food chain.

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People don't have the personal relationship with their customers,

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therefore they think they can get away with it.

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Anything that is made, manufactured,

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or passes through the hands of somebody who can adulterate it,

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by the mid-Victorian period, the chances are it will be adulterated.

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These additions were astounding -

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chalk, iron sulphate and even plaster of Paris.

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But for many, buying processed foods

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released them from the drudgery of baking,

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was time-saving and, above all, was affordable.

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Bread was particularly susceptible to tampering

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as many things could be disguised in it.

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The biggest adulterant at the time was alum

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and that's been used since the 18th century.

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It's a whitener.

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What it does is it enables you to take seconds or middlings

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or the lower grades of flour and make them look whiter.

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Alum is an aluminium-based compound often found today in detergent,

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but when hidden in bread, it not only makes it whiter

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but retains water, so the bread feels more substantial.

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In theory, the amounts used were quite small

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and in theory they were not particularly dangerous to health

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but when you've got both the miller adding alum

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and then you've got the baker adding alum as well,

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then you start to build up the dose to levels

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where it really will affect your bowel system.

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Food Historian Annie Grey has prepared three loaves for me,

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to illustrate the choice I would have had as a Victorian housewife.

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Whilst one loaf is pure, two of them have plaster of Paris,

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alum and other undesirables added to them.

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And which is which?

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Well, you're the Victorian housewife, so I would say, you're in the baker's

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and you're presented with these loaves, which one would you pick?

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Well, they all look very attractive, which is slightly worrying.

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It's really quite dense, though, isn't it, it's quite heavy.

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Listen to that!

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This one's still quite dense, but again looks nice...

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And smells really like rubber or something.

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Very odd.

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That smells fine.

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This is lighter.

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Smells more like bread that I'm familiar with.

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So my guess is that this one is fine?

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Yes, it is, although it's interesting the way that perception plays a role.

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Part of the reason that you're preferring that one, I suspect,

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is because we are predisposed now to like granary breads

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and things that look healthy, whereas with your Victorian hat on,

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you should be looking for the bread that is whitest

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and therefore will impress your dinner guests.

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So I would probably be looking not to go for something wholemeal

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that looks healthy today,

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-but for something like this.

-Yes.

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In the Victorian period people really want white bread.

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The current obsession with wholemeal, granary,

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beautiful artisanal loaves, nothing. You want white bread.

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So alum is the whitener that's put in.

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Which is which, in terms of these two? Which is the one...

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-What's got what?

-This one is the alum-based one,

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and this one is the one with plaster of Paris and bean flour.

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From a baker's point of view, this one's brilliant because a third

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of the dry solids in this are not pure flour,

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so you're making a reasonable saving

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on even the sort of low grade flour that you're using.

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But this housewife's choice had dire consequences for the consumer.

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If you were a worker eating two pounds of bread a day

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and not much else, when you consider that a third of what you're eating

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just won't benefit you at all, you can see why chronic malnutrition

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is such an issue, and when your adulterants are things like

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plaster of Paris and alum, you can also see why chronic gastritis

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is a problem in late Victorian England.

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If you're in a workhouse and you're a three-year-old,

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you're going to start off with constipation.

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You're then going to have irregular bowel movements,

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and that will lead to diarrhoea.

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And if you are a three-year-old in a workhouse,

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and you have got chronic diarrhoea, then that will lead to death.

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Another reason for adulteration was a desire to make food

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more attractive and appealing.

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Colour was a key component.

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And so there were things like colourants.

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You might have something like lead chromate,

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which is a very vivid yellow colour.

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In fact, it's the yellow that's used in the paint

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of American school buses. It's that really bright yellow.

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And that was put in things like mustard

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to give it an authentic mustard colour

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without having to actually include too much of the real ingredient,

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which is expensive.

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Tea is adulterated with everything from iron filings, to dust,

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to used tea leaves, then black lead to make it look black.

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Green tea has Prussian blue in it. I mean, they're pretty lethal.

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Sir Arthur Hill Hassall, a London-based physician,

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identified adulteration in 2,500 products

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and published his results in the Lancet.

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This led to the first wave of legislation in 1868.

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The food adulteration laws were not very strong

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when they were initially put in, and they were not particularly

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effective either. People simply continued

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because it was very difficult to police,

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it was very difficult to prove.

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And even after it is known about, even after Ackham and Hassall

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start to publicise food adulteration, people just simply don't know what

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adulterated food looks like versus non-adulterated food.

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So you might know that your bread is probably adulterated,

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but either you don't have a choice or you just assume blithely

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that it happens to other people.

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Bread adulteration might ultimately kill you

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because of malnutrition, but there was a greater,

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more immediate danger that was part of every child's diet.

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For the Victorians, milk was a cheap and important source of calcium.

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A healthy food, it was thought.

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However, in 1882, 20,000 milk samples were tested

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and revealed that one-fifth had been adulterated.

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A clue as to what was going on

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came from the domestic goddess of her day, Mrs Beeton.

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The Victorians sought advice on all manner of things,

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and when it came to food, Mrs Beeton was their guru.

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According to the 1888 edition of her Book Of Household Management,

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"Milk", she said, "could be purified by preparations

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"of which the principal constituent is boracic acid,"

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and she adds, "It is said that most of the milk that comes to London

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"is treated in this way."

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She concludes, "Fortunately for the consumer,

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"it is a quite harmless addition."

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But was it as harmless as Mrs Beeton believed?

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Microbiologist Matthew Avison has devised an experiment

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that tests Mrs Beeton's advice.

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Boracic acid was a component of a product called borax,

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an alkali which was used during the Victorian period

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to prolong the life of milk.

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This milk doesn't taste very nice, so you would throw it away.

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The Victorians would say, "That's a waste, so let's do something to it

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"that removes the sour taste",

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and what they would have done is added alkalis.

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When fresh, milk has a neutral pH measurement of around seven,

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but over time, as it sours or spoils

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and becomes contaminated with bacteria,

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it becomes more acidic and its pH measurement drops.

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So the Victorians worked out,

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probably by trial and error,

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that if you add alkali to this, it would neutralise the acid

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and I've calculated that that will neutralise the acid in this milk,

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so just give it a bit of a shake

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and then we'll show, hopefully, that it gives a pH closer to neutral.

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So you can see this has gone back to 6.6, which is approximately neutral.

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It's neutralised the acid, it's now made this milk palatable again.

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This new wonder alkali, sold in the shops as borax,

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was so popular it became a staple of the Victorian larder.

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But alarmingly, borax wasn't only used to treat milk -

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it was also marketed as a wonderfully versatile product,

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as I found when I read the journals of the time.

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I'm just looking at these ads and there's a sketch from 1893

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and there's this absolutely extraordinary one-page ad -

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"Californian Household Treasure."

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It says, "It's absolutely pure and absolutely safe.

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"It possesses qualities that are exceptional

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"and unknown to any other substance and it purifies water,

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"destroys bacilli..." It promises everything.

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In fact, borax promised too much -

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as well as "purifying" milk,

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it was brilliant at cleaning your bath and your loo.

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So what happened when borax ended up in the body?

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borax, or sodium borate,

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if inhaled or ingested, can cause severe irritation.

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So if it's swallowed, it can cause abdominal pain, nausea,

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vomiting, diarrhoea.

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If you have a large amount of it,

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it will start to affect other organs,

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like the brain and the kidneys.

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And if you have enough, it can prove fatal.

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But just how much borax is harmful?

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I've added a small amount of borax to neutralise the acid in this milk,

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but of course, if you had a pint of milk you'd need more borax,

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so I calculated that you need this much borax to neutralise

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a pint of milk that has gone sour.

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This is five grams and, according to some people,

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five grams is sufficient to potentially kill a small child.

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So the addition of borax was not as harmless as Mrs Beeton suggested.

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Enough of it could kill.

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But by reducing the acid in the spoiled milk

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and disguising the sour taste,

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borax was concealing another deadly threat.

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The real problem is, it doesn't get rid of the bacteria,

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the underlying cause of the acid,

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and those bacteria could still kill people.

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Bacteria like brucella, which causes undulating fever,

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it's a nasty fever that can go on for weeks at a time,

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that's not particularly lethal, but what would be lethal would be TB.

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The bovine TB bacterium is present in cow's milk

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and this is what was able to flourish undetected in the milk

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with devastating effects.

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Bovine TB, it's not the same TB that would cause the coughing symptoms

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that we associate with TB, but what's called non-pulmonary TB,

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which spreads out into the extremities,

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includes damage to internal organs,

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damage to the bones, and particularly problematic in children.

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What other effects could drinking milk contaminated

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with the bovine TB bacterium have?

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Bovine TB could also cause damage to the bones in the spine.

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For example, it could cause an abscess

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in the bones of the spinal column

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which would soften the bone,

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which would then collapse to form a wedge shape.

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And if several of these vertebrae collapsed at once,

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it could cause massive deformity of the spine.

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This woman was actually particularly lucky because her TB damaged

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only the bones of the spine and not the spinal cord itself.

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If the abscess had tracked and burst backwards into the spinal column,

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it would have compressed the spinal cord and caused paralysis at best

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or death at worst.

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Effectively, purifying this according to the standards of Mrs Beeton

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is like removing the bio-hazard tape

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and now, it's basically pot luck

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as to whether we have something that is contaminated and could kill us

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or something that is not contaminated and is safe to drink.

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Adding borax to milk allowed bovine TB bacteria to grow undetected,

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exposing a generation to a lethal infectious disease.

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It's estimated that virtually all children were exposed to

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Bovine TB at some time during their upbringing, and it's known

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that many of those children succumbed to that infection.

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So you're saying that hundreds of thousands of people,

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mostly perhaps children, died as a result of that?

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There are many studies, one of which was a series of post mortems

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done in London in the 1890s,

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and they did postmortems on 1,300 children who had died.

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30% of those children had died as a result of TB - non-pulmonary TB...

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Almost certainly that came from milk.

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If we extrapolate that up, it's considered likely

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that half a million children died of TB from milk

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during the Victorian era.

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Despite these horrendous deaths, the purification of milk with alkali

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was not banned by legislation in the Victorian period.

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And the problem of adulterated food continued,

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until gradually, consumer pressure led manufacturers

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to advertise their wares as "pure" and "unadulterated".

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The next hidden killer lies not in the room,

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but between the levels of the Victorian house.

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The dangers weren't just the result

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of products introduced into the home,

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they were built into the very fabric of the new Victorian houses.

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One of the most common death traps was right under their feet.

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Stairs have always been dangerous.

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Even with today's building regulations,

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at least 300,000 accidents occur every year in the UK.

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But in Victorian times it was even worse.

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There's numerous accounts of people falling down staircases

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and breaking their necks or breaking their legs

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and dying later of septicaemia.

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Why were there so many deaths and injuries from stairs?

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The finger points to the urban population boom.

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The number of Victorians per square mile

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increased from 390 in 1871

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to 558 by 1901.

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Houses were thrown up and packed into smaller plots

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with little concern about regulation or standardisation.

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The problem was is the way that the house styles changed.

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Houses become very much more narrow.

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So what you've got is very high ceilings, 10-11 feet,

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with a very narrow frontage.

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It's a straightforward geometrical problem

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because if you've got 11 foot and only a very short space

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to get into it, the staircase has to be steep.

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In middle-class homes, the stairs that were most likely to be

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cheaply constructed, to be the steepest and the narrowest,

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were those that led to the servant quarters.

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Upstairs/downstairs came from the difference in staircases

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from the decorated staircase which was the main one

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in the house which was there as a show of wealth.

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It was a...

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It was a statement to say, "Look, this is how much money I've got."

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As you came through the front door, there's these wonderful double

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bullnose stairs, highly decorated with spindles and volutes

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and balustrades and goosenecks.

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You had people spending thousands and thousands

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and thousands of pounds on these staircases.

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And then the downstairs staircase was for the servants.

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It was built out of the cheapest soft wood that you could possibly buy.

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You'd be lucky if there was handrails and spindles.

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Rises of nine, ten, 12 inches.

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Safety really wasn't high on the agenda.

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Tragic really, because by 1847, visionary builder

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Peter Nicholson had calculated how to build a safer staircase,

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transforming the art of stair-building into a science.

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He came up with a mathematical formula for working out

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the rise and go of a staircase.

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He worked out that if you went up a certain height,

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you could travel a certain distance with great ease

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and he developed a formula around that.

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Nicholson's formula considered how

0:21:530:21:55

someone could take a normal stride

0:21:550:21:57

yet still allow them to rise six to eight inches with every step.

0:21:570:22:02

Until you get those factors right then the stairs is always

0:22:020:22:04

going to be a dangerous place.

0:22:040:22:06

There is a science to stair building

0:22:080:22:11

but in the rush to throw up houses, it was a science that was

0:22:110:22:14

often overlooked in the late Victorian period.

0:22:140:22:16

I've come to Manchester Metropolitan University

0:22:230:22:25

to see what modern science can tell us

0:22:250:22:28

about the dangers of the Victorian stairs.

0:22:280:22:30

I've been wired up to a motion-capture device which will

0:22:320:22:35

track every step I take to find out how my body adapts to the stairs.

0:22:350:22:39

Professor Costas Manganaris...

0:22:410:22:43

OK, I'm just going to clip you into the harness.

0:22:430:22:45

..and Professor Neil Reeves are experts in biomedical research

0:22:450:22:49

and are going to demonstrate two staircases.

0:22:490:22:52

We'd like you to go to the top of the staircase,

0:22:540:22:56

stand facing this way and just walk down

0:22:560:22:58

at your own comfortable speed as you would normally.

0:22:580:23:00

This first staircase has been set to dimensions similar to

0:23:020:23:05

a main Victorian staircase, following Nicholson's principles.

0:23:050:23:09

The going, or width, of each step has been set to 11 inches

0:23:100:23:14

and the height, the rise, to 12 and a half inches.

0:23:140:23:18

Well, apart from all the get-up, it felt pretty easy

0:23:200:23:23

coming down those stairs.

0:23:230:23:24

I'd be happy running up and down those, no problems at all.

0:23:240:23:27

Now they set the stairs

0:23:270:23:29

as they might have been in the servants' quarters.

0:23:290:23:32

This definitely breaks Nicholson's formula.

0:23:340:23:36

With the going narrower and a steeper rise.

0:23:380:23:42

Can you walk down as you would normally?

0:23:420:23:44

Predictably, this is not comfortable at all.

0:23:480:23:51

In fact I'm really having to slow down,

0:23:510:23:53

change the way I take each step and hold the handrail.

0:23:530:23:57

Imagine if I had to carry a tray or the linen,

0:23:570:23:59

and couldn't see where my foot fell because of a long skirt.

0:23:590:24:03

If we measure your foot, this is about 26 centimetres,

0:24:090:24:15

which is much larger than the 17.5 centimetres room you had.

0:24:150:24:19

I had to turn it sideways.

0:24:190:24:22

You had to turn your foot sideways.

0:24:220:24:24

Well, otherwise...

0:24:240:24:25

Otherwise, what will happen is an important part of the foot

0:24:250:24:29

will come out of the edge

0:24:290:24:31

and then you would have an increased likelihood of encountering a slip.

0:24:310:24:35

Yes, yes, and I have fallen down the stairs before

0:24:350:24:37

-so I was very conscious of not wanting to do it.

-Absolutely.

0:24:370:24:42

From the data input, the scientists reveal

0:24:420:24:45

that on the servants' staircase, we are six times more likely to fall

0:24:450:24:49

than on the grand one.

0:24:490:24:50

It may seem obvious that a steeper staircase would be more dangerous,

0:24:500:24:54

but there was another hidden danger -

0:24:540:24:57

many Victorian homes were built with non-uniform steps.

0:24:570:25:01

This video of a New York subway stairs illustrates what happens when

0:25:040:25:08

one stair out of 16 is a fraction of an inch higher than the others.

0:25:080:25:12

Professor Jake Pauls,

0:25:150:25:17

a specialist in stair safety, studied the stairs

0:25:170:25:20

and worked out that this tiny change has a dramatic impact on the misstep

0:25:200:25:25

and fall incidents that is not equated to any other stair defect.

0:25:250:25:30

In other words, you're more likely to fall

0:25:300:25:33

if the stair is not uniform than for any other reason.

0:25:330:25:36

What is it about that video? What does it tell us?

0:25:390:25:43

Well, I think what it tells us

0:25:430:25:45

is that people get used to a very regular stair pattern

0:25:450:25:48

very quickly, so after a few steps. And if, all of a sudden,

0:25:480:25:51

there's a step that's very different, it poses a difficulty to people.

0:25:510:25:55

This is why it's more likely for someone to have an accident

0:25:550:26:00

or slip on that irregular step.

0:26:000:26:01

If you had given me two that were the bigger ones

0:26:020:26:05

and then a smaller one, I almost certainly would have fallen down.

0:26:050:26:08

-Exactly.

-Thank you for not doing that!

0:26:080:26:11

By disregarding Nicholson's formula, the Victorians' new staircases,

0:26:110:26:15

installed in many of these narrower houses, had unwittingly

0:26:150:26:18

combined high rises, narrow goings

0:26:180:26:21

and uneven steps to create a grave hazard for the servants.

0:26:210:26:25

With the extra weight of carrying trays and food,

0:26:290:26:33

there's no way they could get up and down those stairs in one piece.

0:26:330:26:38

Total death traps.

0:26:400:26:42

Absolute death traps.

0:26:420:26:43

Stairs remain one of the most common sources of accident

0:26:460:26:50

and death in the home.

0:26:500:26:51

To understand our next set of dangers,

0:26:570:26:59

we need to appreciate one of the major preoccupations

0:26:590:27:02

of our Victorian forbears.

0:27:020:27:05

It was at this time that cleanliness was becoming powerfully linked

0:27:050:27:09

to ideas of morality and respectability

0:27:090:27:12

and this was reflected in the literature of the period.

0:27:120:27:15

Charles Kingsley's novel The Water Babies epitomises it

0:27:150:27:18

because it suggests you can take a dirty boy off the street

0:27:180:27:21

and transform him into a model gentleman,

0:27:210:27:24

through the cleansing power of water.

0:27:240:27:26

It sums it up in the last lines.

0:27:260:27:28

They say,

0:27:280:27:29

"Meanwhile do you learn your lessons and thank God that you have plenty

0:27:290:27:33

"of cold water to wash in - and wash in it too, like a true Englishman?"

0:27:330:27:37

The Victorians were totally and utterly obsessed with being clean.

0:27:440:27:48

For them, the idea of cleanliness was truly next to godliness.

0:27:480:27:51

They were setting themselves against the 18th century,

0:27:510:27:54

which was a time of dirt, a time when the upper classes,

0:27:540:27:57

that perfume was used to disguise dirt.

0:27:570:28:00

The Victorians believed that a clean heart, a clean body,

0:28:000:28:04

meant a clean soul.

0:28:040:28:05

It was this desire for cleanliness that would lead the Victorians

0:28:070:28:12

to embrace a whole new range

0:28:120:28:14

of potentially deadly innovations and products.

0:28:140:28:18

One of the rooms that the Victorians can claim

0:28:200:28:23

to have invented is the bathroom.

0:28:230:28:25

And what surer sign of progress than a private room

0:28:250:28:28

in which to carry out one's ablutions?

0:28:280:28:30

The bathroom really appears primarily

0:28:360:28:39

because running water comes into the home for the first time.

0:28:390:28:42

So if you can actually bring water into the home,

0:28:420:28:46

it becomes more practical to have a room dedicated to its use.

0:28:460:28:50

Until the mid-Victorian period, hot tubs for bathing had stood

0:28:500:28:55

next to the fire in the front room or kitchen,

0:28:550:28:58

where water had to be warmed and poured into them.

0:28:580:29:01

This means that servants no longer have to be sort of traipsing

0:29:010:29:05

up and down the back stairs carrying large amounts of water.

0:29:050:29:08

I think this is when the bathroom, as we know it,

0:29:080:29:11

as a sort of separate, private, lockable space,

0:29:110:29:14

away from the rest of the house, really starts to take shape.

0:29:140:29:18

What the Victorians hated most of all was the idea of bodily fluids,

0:29:180:29:22

the kind of smells they made, the kind of traces they left.

0:29:220:29:25

They wanted to expunge them entirely from the body,

0:29:250:29:28

so that no-one can smell the traces of these fluids

0:29:280:29:32

that link you to the working classes.

0:29:320:29:34

INDISTINCT SPEECH

0:29:370:29:40

And what happened in this private, lockable space could be

0:29:400:29:43

incredibly dangerous.

0:29:430:29:45

I've come to Blaise Castle in Bristol

0:29:470:29:50

to meet curator Catherine Littlejohns.

0:29:500:29:52

I want to get some idea of the inventions available

0:29:520:29:56

to the Victorians who sought to meet

0:29:560:29:58

these new high standards of cleanliness.

0:29:580:30:00

Oh, wow.

0:30:030:30:05

We're just going to look at some of the baths in the collection.

0:30:050:30:08

I'm going to show you one of my favourite things.

0:30:080:30:11

It's actually a gas-powered bath.

0:30:110:30:13

So if we have a look at the underneath here,

0:30:130:30:16

you can see where the gas went in the front here.

0:30:160:30:19

And then just around by you,

0:30:190:30:21

there's a little door, which is where you would light the gas.

0:30:210:30:24

OK, so here you would put in your lighted match or whatever.

0:30:240:30:27

-Yes.

-Gosh, so that's actually ridiculously dangerous, isn't it?

0:30:270:30:30

Doesn't it mean that you can boil yourself in your bath?

0:30:300:30:32

You very probably could do.

0:30:320:30:34

The instructions, the guidance always says.. They're very careful

0:30:340:30:37

to point out you don't want to actually start turning the gas on

0:30:370:30:40

until you've got some water in the bath

0:30:400:30:42

so you don't boil it dry.

0:30:420:30:43

They don't really make a mention of making sure you don't

0:30:430:30:47

get into the bath while the gas is on.

0:30:470:30:49

The desire to be clean meant that the bath's popularity

0:30:490:30:53

outpaced any concern about the dangers, which were significant.

0:30:530:30:57

The papers regularly reported cases of scalding

0:30:580:31:02

so serious they resulted in death.

0:31:020:31:04

It wasn't until the invention of the thermostat,

0:31:080:31:11

safer gas and its installation that these risks would be addressed.

0:31:110:31:16

This new room, with its cutting edge innovations,

0:31:180:31:22

would bring even more killers into the home.

0:31:220:31:24

I think they were trying to understand the dangers

0:31:280:31:30

of electricity and water and gas, and all of these new services

0:31:300:31:34

coming into fairly small, confined areas,

0:31:340:31:37

without really understanding the dangers of how they actually

0:31:370:31:40

interact with each other.

0:31:400:31:41

What could be better or more desirable

0:31:430:31:45

than having a loo that flushed?

0:31:450:31:48

But its introduction was not without problem.

0:31:480:31:51

The first danger lay in the plumbing.

0:31:510:31:54

Early plumbing in Victorian houses, the sewer systems

0:31:540:31:58

didn't efficiently drain away the waste.

0:31:580:32:02

Gases such as methane and hydrogen sulphide

0:32:020:32:06

emanating from human waste

0:32:060:32:08

would not be able to escape and would build up in the sewer.

0:32:080:32:12

Both of these gases are not only flammable,

0:32:120:32:15

but they're also explosive.

0:32:150:32:17

What always used to happen was

0:32:210:32:23

the sewerage outlet would get blocked

0:32:230:32:26

and somebody would have to go and figure out how to clear it,

0:32:260:32:29

to get it to actually run away free.

0:32:290:32:31

At the time, there wasn't electric batteries,

0:32:310:32:33

torches and stuff like that, so the only way you could actually go

0:32:330:32:36

and investigate it was unfortunately with a...a naked flame.

0:32:360:32:39

Not only could gas collect in the sewer,

0:32:470:32:50

methane could actually leak back into the house itself.

0:32:500:32:53

It was a quite common occurrence for outlets of toilets

0:32:550:32:59

to spontaneously combust.

0:32:590:33:01

And that was really where the drive towards improvements in draining

0:33:010:33:06

actually came from -

0:33:060:33:08

they needed to stop methane getting back into the houses.

0:33:080:33:13

And it was one of Britain's most famous inventors that helped

0:33:160:33:21

put a stop to this potential killer

0:33:210:33:23

with one small but crucial component.

0:33:230:33:26

Thomas Crapper, even though he gets a lot of good press

0:33:260:33:30

about inventing the toilet, he actually invented the siphon valve,

0:33:300:33:34

which is actually a water trap and a valve flap which actually

0:33:340:33:37

stops methane coming back into the property, so it couldn't ignite.

0:33:370:33:41

It didn't stop the problems down in the main sewers

0:33:500:33:53

but it stopped it actually affecting the people who lived in the house.

0:33:530:33:56

Not only were Victorian bodies subject to a new regime

0:34:020:34:06

of washing and scrubbing, but what they put on them was too.

0:34:060:34:09

Wealthy Victorians - both men and women -

0:34:140:34:17

could change their clothes up to five times a day.

0:34:170:34:20

By the late Victorian period, laundry had become a huge operation

0:34:200:34:25

because clothing was not simple.

0:34:250:34:27

There was an extensive amount of clothing, even for a child,

0:34:270:34:30

and certainly for a woman.

0:34:300:34:31

She wore a lot of underclothing, a lot of linen

0:34:310:34:33

and these had to be changed regularly.

0:34:330:34:36

The Victorian mistress had a constant battle against

0:34:360:34:39

her greatest enemy, which was dirt.

0:34:390:34:42

The Victorian house could not escape the pollution of the time.

0:34:420:34:46

In London, for instance,

0:34:460:34:48

the manure of the 100,000 working horses,

0:34:480:34:51

the pervasive smog and the smoky gas lamps in the home,

0:34:510:34:55

all took their toll.

0:34:550:34:57

Victorian wash day was quite a mammoth task -

0:34:570:35:00

you washed the clothes on the Monday, you dry them

0:35:000:35:04

on the Tuesday and you would be ironing them on Wednesday.

0:35:040:35:07

So a large part of your week would be taken up by the wash.

0:35:070:35:11

Doing the laundry was an expensive business

0:35:110:35:15

and a major part of the household budget.

0:35:150:35:18

For those who could afford it,

0:35:180:35:19

a laundress could be hired in by the day.

0:35:190:35:22

It was a military-style operation.

0:35:230:35:25

Every Victorian middle-class woman came to her marriage

0:35:270:35:30

with great trunks full of white clothing, linen,

0:35:300:35:33

and her big job throughout her marriage was keeping those

0:35:330:35:37

just as brilliantly white.

0:35:370:35:38

And what she used in this endeavour was soaps, disinfectants,

0:35:380:35:42

and, most of all, she used the mangle.

0:35:420:35:44

CREAKING

0:35:440:35:47

So I've just fed this in from the back here.

0:35:500:35:53

And you have to get it so that it's between the rollers.

0:35:530:35:55

'Wringing out heavy fabrics sodden in boiling water

0:35:550:35:59

'became easier with the arrival of the mangle.'

0:35:590:36:02

It's not too heavy because of the gear system

0:36:020:36:05

and of course this is dry...

0:36:050:36:07

So if you were doing it with wet clothes...

0:36:070:36:09

But of course this brought its own perils.

0:36:090:36:12

But why is it so dangerous? It seems really quite solid.

0:36:120:36:17

I think it's probably like a lot of Victorian contraptions

0:36:170:36:20

where, yes, it is very solid, but you've got exposed gear wheels

0:36:200:36:24

and things. And obviously you have to feed the clothing in.

0:36:240:36:29

And what you have to remember is that the lady of the house

0:36:290:36:32

would have been doing this with young children around,

0:36:320:36:35

her daughters would have been watching her because they needed

0:36:350:36:38

to learn how to work these things and often,

0:36:380:36:41

-probably, in quite a confined space.

-Ooh, the dangers of little fingers.

0:36:410:36:45

Possibly.

0:36:450:36:46

The injuries incurred by washday mangle accidents were horrific

0:36:500:36:55

and sometimes fatal.

0:36:550:36:57

Oh, a mangle could do an awful lot of damage,

0:36:570:36:59

particularly to a child.

0:36:590:37:00

It was typically children who would put their hand,

0:37:000:37:02

out of curiosity, into the mangle.

0:37:020:37:04

Obviously the hand, the arm, and it typically was the upper limb

0:37:050:37:09

that was caught, would be compressed

0:37:090:37:11

and everything in it would be squashed.

0:37:110:37:13

And a significant proportion would have fractures of the bones

0:37:130:37:16

as well as damage to the soft tissue.

0:37:160:37:20

There was sheering force,

0:37:200:37:21

where you're pulling the skin in opposite directions

0:37:210:37:24

and that could completely remove the skin from the hand and the arm,

0:37:240:37:27

and tear it all away to reveal the muscles and tendons underneath.

0:37:270:37:31

The dangers of the mangle might seem obvious to us now,

0:37:550:37:58

but our next hidden killer was impossible to see,

0:37:580:38:01

both then and now.

0:38:010:38:02

Things couldn't just look clean, the new science of germs

0:38:090:38:13

and microbes was changing ideas of cleanliness -

0:38:130:38:15

from tackling the visible to the invisible.

0:38:150:38:19

Dangerous germs, they feared, could lurk hidden from sight

0:38:190:38:22

and needed to be eradicated.

0:38:220:38:24

Until the late Victorian period,

0:38:330:38:36

many believed that diseases were caused and carried by bad air.

0:38:360:38:40

But with improvements in technology

0:38:400:38:42

and the emergence of high-powered microscopes,

0:38:420:38:46

bacteria began to be identified as the cause of disease.

0:38:460:38:50

But this science was brand new

0:38:510:38:53

and not easily understood by the general public.

0:38:530:38:57

There are various theories around the origins of disease

0:38:570:39:02

at this point, they're quite confused about it.

0:39:020:39:04

They've started to be aware of germ theory,

0:39:040:39:07

but this isn't fully understood yet.

0:39:070:39:09

What they did understand was that there were microbes all around -

0:39:110:39:16

invisible to the eye but everywhere.

0:39:160:39:19

And this made the Victorians disproportionately fearful

0:39:190:39:22

and easily spooked.

0:39:220:39:24

Some mothers didn't want to kiss their children

0:39:240:39:26

because they thought it would spread germs.

0:39:260:39:28

This is very real and comes up again and again in diaries,

0:39:280:39:32

the fact that people were afraid of each other because of germs,

0:39:320:39:36

which is a horrific thing when you think about it.

0:39:360:39:39

As this climate of fear escalated, so people became

0:39:390:39:42

increasingly alarmed about all manner of little things.

0:39:420:39:46

One of the most important things, apart from germs, were flies.

0:39:530:39:59

The great fly scare of the 1890s.

0:39:590:40:02

The great fly scare was caused by the public awareness

0:40:030:40:07

of the speed with which flies could spread germs.

0:40:070:40:10

Flies were everywhere, living off the horse manure,

0:40:100:40:13

and trampled into the home.

0:40:130:40:14

Once scientists identified flies as carriers of disease,

0:40:160:40:20

the public reacted.

0:40:200:40:22

They realised that one of the main communicators of germs were

0:40:220:40:27

probably flies, with their little sticky feet walking over everything.

0:40:270:40:31

And once you started to look at flies like that,

0:40:310:40:35

they became objects of horror.

0:40:350:40:37

The terrors of insects and moths

0:40:400:40:42

and caterpillars that need to be sternly exterminated

0:40:420:40:45

because they just show the natural world coming into your perfect home.

0:40:450:40:49

Also skirts. Not strictly speaking anything to do with flies,

0:40:510:40:57

except if you noticed as you walked around with a long skirt on

0:40:570:41:00

that you'd be brushing up against the faeces,

0:41:000:41:03

horse manure and everything else.

0:41:030:41:06

And that was likely to bring fly eggs in, or anything,

0:41:060:41:09

so skirt lengths went up to ankles.

0:41:090:41:11

Once skirts went up, the shutters came down on flies in the home -

0:41:130:41:17

with a variety of products invented to stop them.

0:41:170:41:20

You'd have fly screens.

0:41:200:41:23

You have little lace doilies over your milk jugs.

0:41:230:41:25

You have little lace doilies everywhere really.

0:41:250:41:28

You cover your curtains with lace to stop flies coming in,

0:41:280:41:33

not really so that you cannot see out.

0:41:330:41:36

All of these things were partly to do with the fly scare.

0:41:380:41:41

But the fight against germs would require more than beaded doilies.

0:41:420:41:46

The Victorians needed to believe that these germs were being

0:41:460:41:49

eradicated by newly invented products that would kill

0:41:490:41:53

all known germs...dead.

0:41:530:41:56

Many claims were made in the name of science

0:41:560:41:59

before all these items could be vigorously tested,

0:41:590:42:01

making the late Victorian home a very scary place to be.

0:42:010:42:05

And the Victorians worshipped science,

0:42:160:42:18

they worshipped invention, so they would do anything

0:42:180:42:21

to make things cleaner, even if that meant using dangerous chemicals.

0:42:210:42:25

But as the incredible cleaning powers of these new items

0:42:300:42:33

became more potent, so the dangers in the home increased.

0:42:330:42:37

The problem was that many cleaning products are toxic

0:42:390:42:42

and they have to be, that's how they have their cleaning effects.

0:42:420:42:45

But they were stored and sold in very similar packages.

0:42:450:42:49

So you would go to the shop

0:42:490:42:51

and get a box that contained something like baking soda,

0:42:510:42:54

which we would use to bake bread or cakes and is perfectly harmless.

0:42:540:42:57

But it may look very similar to the box of caustic soda, which of course

0:42:570:43:01

is very corrosive and would do a huge amount of damage to the body.

0:43:010:43:05

Dangerous chemicals such as caustic soda and carbolic acid were now

0:43:050:43:10

in the cupboard next to the flour, and sugar - and were easily muddled.

0:43:100:43:14

The opportunity for mistakes and mix-up between products was huge.

0:43:140:43:18

Drinking bleach or carbolic acid, for example,

0:43:220:43:26

would lead to an agonising death.

0:43:260:43:28

The first thing that would happen would be a burning sensation

0:43:280:43:31

in the oesophagus, because it is directly corrosive

0:43:310:43:33

to anything that it comes in contact with.

0:43:330:43:36

And so that would go down into the stomach and cause abdominal pain.

0:43:360:43:39

In the early stages, if the person survives

0:43:390:43:42

and they don't go into renal failure, they may develop

0:43:420:43:44

strictures because of scaring of the oesophagus, meaning that they're

0:43:440:43:48

unable to swallow any food, and of course, that could prove fatal.

0:43:480:43:51

This lack of distinction in bottles

0:43:520:43:54

and packaging of toxic cleaning materials

0:43:540:43:57

and dangerous substances didn't just confuse the Victorian at home.

0:43:570:44:01

There were cases where even professionals made mix-ups

0:44:010:44:05

with disastrous consequences.

0:44:050:44:07

On one occasion in Bradford, a chemist mistakenly mixed

0:44:110:44:15

arsenic into his lozenge recipe - killing 12 people

0:44:150:44:19

and rendering a further 78 seriously ill.

0:44:190:44:23

And so it was this problem with the packaging that really

0:44:250:44:29

forced legislation to make packages much more distinct -

0:44:290:44:33

different shaped and sized and coloured bottles and boxes, so that

0:44:330:44:37

you couldn't reach for the flour and pick up the arsenic, for example.

0:44:370:44:42

But it wasn't always an accident -

0:44:460:44:48

lethal poisons of all descriptions were

0:44:480:44:51

easily and readily available over the counter.

0:44:510:44:53

With this lay a new temptation,

0:44:530:44:56

because poisoning could go undetected.

0:44:560:45:00

The Victorian age was the age of the poisoner -

0:45:000:45:02

the rise of arsenic was to many people a great opportunity.

0:45:020:45:07

Previously, if you wanted to murder somebody, you had to

0:45:070:45:09

use your brute strength, you'd have to stab them or strangle them.

0:45:090:45:13

When arsenic became widely available,

0:45:130:45:15

there was a lot of comment in the newspaper saying,

0:45:150:45:17

well, women can just slip it into their husband's tea.

0:45:170:45:20

So why wouldn't they?

0:45:200:45:21

They were absolutely afraid that

0:45:210:45:23

all the women in Britain would turn poisoner

0:45:230:45:25

because why would you not murder your husband

0:45:250:45:27

and go off to be a merry widow? Why not?

0:45:270:45:29

People bought poisons for things like rat poisoning

0:45:320:45:35

and fly papers, so you could easily just go and buy them

0:45:350:45:37

for completely legitimate reasons.

0:45:370:45:39

The other reason was this is a time when life insurance

0:45:390:45:42

became available. So you could take out a life insurance policy

0:45:420:45:45

on one of your family members. And then, if they die,

0:45:450:45:47

you could claim the money.

0:45:470:45:49

And there's evidence of quite a lot of unscrupulous people

0:45:490:45:52

who took out large policies before people mysteriously died.

0:45:520:45:56

There were many poisons around, things like arsenic, but probably

0:45:580:46:02

the worst and the one that caused the most awful death was strychnine.

0:46:020:46:05

Strychnine could be used both as a medicine

0:46:090:46:11

and in the garden as a pesticide.

0:46:110:46:14

A white odourless powder,

0:46:140:46:15

it was like so many other items in the cupboard.

0:46:150:46:19

It has very immediate and unpleasant effects.

0:46:200:46:23

First of all, the muscles of the head and the neck would start to contract

0:46:230:46:27

and then spasms would spread to all the muscles of the body.

0:46:270:46:31

The person would start to convulse

0:46:310:46:33

and at its worst, the muscles of the body would be

0:46:330:46:35

so contracted that the person would be resting on just their heels

0:46:350:46:39

and their head with their back bowed in the middle and unable to move.

0:46:390:46:44

Death would follow rapidly, either because of paralysis

0:46:440:46:48

of their respiratory muscles, which meant they couldn't breathe,

0:46:480:46:51

or exhaustion following all these awful convulsions.

0:46:510:46:54

Demand had never been higher

0:46:560:46:58

and manufacturers had never sold so many poisonous products.

0:46:580:47:02

It would take a long time for that to change.

0:47:020:47:05

It wasn't until just after the Victorian Age, in 1902,

0:47:070:47:11

that the Pharmacy Act required that bottles of disinfectant

0:47:110:47:14

be distinguishable by touch

0:47:140:47:16

from bottles in which ordinary liquids were contained.

0:47:160:47:19

In order to find the next hazard, we must first understand

0:47:240:47:27

the temptations on offer to the middle-class Victorian.

0:47:270:47:31

Could this be a hidden killer?

0:47:310:47:33

Manufacturers began to woo a burgeoning mass market.

0:47:360:47:39

This was the first age of mass advertising.

0:47:390:47:43

Back in the 1850s and 1860s,

0:47:430:47:45

it had been thought ungentlemanly to advertise.

0:47:450:47:48

Now, for the first time, advertising became powerfully visual -

0:47:480:47:51

photography and art were used to sell goods, advertising agencies

0:47:510:47:56

were founded, and celebrities started to endorse products.

0:47:560:48:00

There's an expansion in print culture.

0:48:170:48:19

There are more newspapers, there are more magazines.

0:48:190:48:22

But there are also new technologies and ways of producing images

0:48:220:48:25

and putting them in them.

0:48:250:48:26

For example, photographs appear in magazines from the 1890s onwards.

0:48:260:48:32

And this really means advertising takes on a new visual form

0:48:320:48:35

at this point.

0:48:350:48:36

And I think it becomes more persuasive and more powerful.

0:48:360:48:40

The power of advertising put new pressure on Victorians

0:48:400:48:44

and would lead to increased risks.

0:48:440:48:46

These advertisements are particularly aimed

0:48:480:48:50

at the upper-class and the middle-class woman.

0:48:500:48:53

And what they're trying to say is,

0:48:530:48:54

if you don't buy our products, if you don't use our products,

0:48:540:48:57

you will be a failure as a housewife, as a woman.

0:48:570:49:01

So they really played on insecurities.

0:49:010:49:03

And what they did was they got everyone to buy all kinds

0:49:030:49:07

of dangerous substances under the guise of perfecting your home.

0:49:070:49:11

And the perfect Victorian home wouldn't be complete without

0:49:110:49:15

a dangerous new material, which they inadvertently

0:49:150:49:19

welcomed into their homes in an amazing array of objects.

0:49:190:49:22

The man who invented it was so famous at the time,

0:49:230:49:27

a letter bearing just name and city would get to him.

0:49:270:49:30

Mr A Parkes, inventor of Parkesine, Birmingham. And it got there!

0:49:300:49:35

Birmingham, dubbed "the city of 1,000 inventions",

0:49:400:49:43

had become a magnet for scientists

0:49:430:49:46

and it was here that Parkes developed his revolutionary idea.

0:49:460:49:50

He took cotton wool, ordinary cotton wool,

0:49:500:49:53

which he combined with acids and various things,

0:49:530:49:55

and he discovered how to convert the material into a mouldable material

0:49:550:50:00

which we today would call plastic.

0:50:000:50:02

So we reckon he is the father of plastics.

0:50:020:50:04

We've sort of forgotten about this great British inventor, haven't we?

0:50:040:50:08

I know, he was a great inventor too.

0:50:080:50:10

He had something like 90 patents to his name

0:50:100:50:12

but he wasn't a very good businessman,

0:50:120:50:14

his company folded about two years later.

0:50:140:50:16

But his idea was so good, it was picked up in the States

0:50:160:50:19

by a guy called Hyatt. And Hyatt gave it the name celluloid.

0:50:190:50:22

And from then on, we have known it as celluloid.

0:50:220:50:24

We've forgotten Parkes, but we all know celluloid as an early material.

0:50:240:50:27

It was the Americans who developed it into a business success -

0:50:270:50:31

and started something of a revolution.

0:50:310:50:33

It wasn't until 1885 that the world's first really successful

0:50:360:50:40

plastic product hit the streets.

0:50:400:50:41

And it was something quite unusual - it was a celluloid collar and cuff.

0:50:410:50:45

And there is a sociological reason for it, of course.

0:50:450:50:48

The clerks sitting at those high desks, writing on their ledgers

0:50:480:50:51

all day long, and they wouldn't be allowed to have scrap paper

0:50:510:50:54

for calculations so they made calculations on their cuffs.

0:50:540:50:57

Now they couldn't afford a clean linen collar and cuff

0:50:570:51:00

every day, like their bosses.

0:51:000:51:02

And they couldn't afford to launder them, so by the end of the week

0:51:020:51:05

they must have been chaotic with numbers all over them.

0:51:050:51:07

Then along comes celluloid. You can do all the numbers you want

0:51:070:51:11

on your cuff during the day, take it home at night,

0:51:110:51:13

put it under the tap, rinse it, shake it dry

0:51:130:51:15

and put it on again in the morning looking pristine, just like the boss.

0:51:150:51:19

And it was an amazing sociological success all over the world, 1885.

0:51:190:51:23

For as these affordable celluloid products found their way

0:51:250:51:29

into items all over the house - a terrible discovery was made.

0:51:290:51:32

It's a wonderful material but it's not a perfect material

0:51:340:51:37

because it's inflammable, it burns.

0:51:370:51:39

Chemically it's very similar to gun cotton

0:51:390:51:41

and gun cotton we know is an explosive material.

0:51:410:51:43

So cellulose nitrate, Parkesine, celluloid, it burns very fiercely.

0:51:430:51:47

Ignoring its flammability,

0:51:500:51:52

celluloid was such a useful material that canny manufacturers saw

0:51:520:51:56

numerous opportunities to produce those must-have items.

0:51:560:52:01

When the invention of plastics allowed brooches, hair combs

0:52:010:52:05

and mirrors to be as ornate and attractive-looking

0:52:050:52:08

as the much more expensive ivory, they were eagerly swept up.

0:52:080:52:13

The middle-classes wanted to look wealthy and modern

0:52:130:52:16

and these products allowed them to look just that.

0:52:160:52:20

This Victorian evening bag, for example.

0:52:200:52:22

This looks like a piece of hand-carved ivory, but it's not,

0:52:220:52:24

it's a piece of pressed celluloid.

0:52:240:52:26

It wasn't a real ivory comb, it was made of celluloid

0:52:290:52:32

and it wasn't a real wooden bath, it was painted like wood

0:52:320:52:35

and that's because the Victorians were

0:52:350:52:37

so delighted by innovation and by science,

0:52:370:52:40

and they loved the idea of tricking themselves,

0:52:400:52:43

and also they loved the idea of a cheap bargain.

0:52:430:52:46

Maybe not such a great bargain.

0:52:460:52:49

I want to find out just how flammable celluloid really is.

0:52:490:52:53

This is a ping pong ball from China.

0:52:530:52:55

It's one of the few products in the world that you can still buy

0:52:550:52:59

that's made of celluloid.

0:52:590:53:01

Assisting me is Martin Shipp from the Building Research Establishment.

0:53:010:53:04

Martin, the flame please...

0:53:040:53:07

Wow! A surprisingly fierce flame -

0:53:110:53:13

definitely not something to try at home.

0:53:130:53:16

Martin estimates that celluloid

0:53:160:53:18

is five times more flammable than plywood.

0:53:180:53:21

Celluloid's chemical composition meant it could not only

0:53:260:53:30

go up in flames easily, but it was also unreliable in other ways.

0:53:300:53:34

Over time, it degrades.

0:53:360:53:38

Light and chemicals can cause it to gradually break down,

0:53:380:53:43

And in that breakdown process, it releases camphor

0:53:430:53:47

and it releases alcohols and other things that are flammable.

0:53:470:53:51

And those flammable gases in the atmosphere can then be ignited

0:53:510:53:56

by a spark or a flame,

0:53:560:53:58

without anybody igniting the celluloid itself.

0:53:580:54:01

That's what made celluloid so dangerous.

0:54:010:54:03

And there were other problems too.

0:54:060:54:08

Celluloid items could also spontaneously combust,

0:54:080:54:11

as this cartoon of the time illustrates.

0:54:110:54:15

And billiard balls - traditionally made of ivory -

0:54:150:54:17

were now made from the cheaper celluloid -

0:54:170:54:20

until it was discovered that they would explode on impact.

0:54:200:54:25

This is an example of one of the very first billiard balls

0:54:250:54:28

made from cellulose nitrate.

0:54:280:54:29

And the inventor of this billiard ball

0:54:290:54:31

had a letter from a Colorado saloon keeper, that he didn't mind

0:54:310:54:34

when the balls crashed together and you got a mini-explosion,

0:54:340:54:37

because it's an explosive material, but what he did object to

0:54:370:54:40

was that every man in the room turned round and pulled out a gun!

0:54:400:54:43

But even worse was to come.

0:54:440:54:46

Celluloid was so versatile, it replaced materials like ivory

0:54:460:54:50

and bone, in clothing - items like corsets and lace, brooches,

0:54:500:54:55

bracelets, and all sorts of accessories were either made of,

0:54:550:54:59

or featured celluloid -

0:54:590:55:00

without concern for the accumulative effect.

0:55:000:55:03

This is a hair comb used in the 1890s.

0:55:040:55:06

And the fashion and the style was to have a hair comb

0:55:060:55:09

pushed in the back - not just one but several.

0:55:090:55:12

But when you consider this is a highly flammable material...

0:55:120:55:14

There were reports of people passing too closely to gas lamps

0:55:140:55:18

or leaning too close to the fire, and...BOOM...they burst into flames.

0:55:180:55:22

There were terrible tales of misadventure,

0:55:250:55:28

like the woman who failed to notice a cigar roll

0:55:280:55:30

under her celluloid-enhanced dress until it was too late.

0:55:300:55:34

She immediately ran outside to try and get away from the smoke.

0:55:360:55:42

Unfortunately, that change in conditions

0:55:420:55:45

from fairly restricted within a small area in a home,

0:55:450:55:50

to outside where there was a lot of oxygen and some wind,

0:55:500:55:54

the skirt started to burn with flames.

0:55:540:55:57

And she was immediately engulfed in flames.

0:55:570:56:00

In her pursuit of cut-price fashion, the Victorian woman had been

0:56:030:56:07

transformed into a walking fire hazard.

0:56:070:56:10

Although in 1922 there was an act enforcing better safety in premises

0:56:120:56:17

where raw celluloid film was stored, there was never any legislation

0:56:170:56:22

to stop the use of celluloid in fashionable items and in clothing.

0:56:220:56:27

It was only over the course of the 20th century,

0:56:270:56:29

as more improved, less flammable plastics were invented,

0:56:290:56:33

that the use of celluloid declined.

0:56:330:56:35

But while its introduction had been a dangerous one -

0:56:370:56:40

it developed into a far safer product that is still with us.

0:56:400:56:45

One that a British inventor had been responsible for.

0:56:450:56:48

I think you can look around today and virtually everything

0:56:480:56:52

you look at, touch, control, everything you do, involves plastics.

0:56:520:56:56

It controls our lives today, which you may think is a good thing

0:56:560:56:59

or a bad thing, but it does, we can't avoid that.

0:56:590:57:02

He set the wheels in motion for all that.

0:57:020:57:04

He laid the foundations for a massive industry

0:57:040:57:06

that controls and affects everybody's lives throughout the world.

0:57:060:57:10

From the food they ate, to the clothes they wore, and the gadgets

0:57:120:57:15

and products championed by the new exciting advertising campaigns,

0:57:150:57:19

Victorian homes were brimming with killers.

0:57:190:57:23

They lay dormant until scientific progress,

0:57:230:57:26

consumer concern or a brave new pioneer

0:57:260:57:29

raised their voice above the clamour

0:57:290:57:31

and forced a change for the better.

0:57:310:57:33

But the Victorian ideal of "safe as houses" was never really fulfilled.

0:57:350:57:40

Many of the domestic fatalities of late Victorian Britain can be

0:57:440:57:48

explained by middle-class desires to make their lives easier,

0:57:480:57:52

cheaper and more convenient,

0:57:520:57:54

and to conform to ideals of morality and respectability.

0:57:540:57:58

But we mustn't forget that they were pioneers,

0:57:590:58:02

and progress always comes at a cost.

0:58:020:58:04

As the century reached its close, Britain was leading the world

0:58:040:58:08

and was on the verge of a golden age in which scientific advances

0:58:080:58:12

would really start to make a difference.

0:58:120:58:14

But would the Edwardian home be any safer?

0:58:140:58:16

Next time, I'll be discovering how a new century, a new monarch

0:58:210:58:24

and extraordinary new inventions

0:58:240:58:26

would have an impact on the Edwardian Home.

0:58:260:58:29

She covered her face in poison.

0:58:290:58:31

Absolutely lethal.

0:58:310:58:34

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