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| The young woman standing in this photograph may not have known it, but she was probably wearing poison. |
Through much of human history the only substances available to dye cloth or paper were natural materials. One such natural material was arsenic. Do not be shocked good reader, for they had no idea at the time.
Why did they use arsenic at all? Weren't there other materials that could be used? There were, but they were more expensive and came from other sources. The largest reason arsenic was used, beyond ascetics, was the cost. Arsenic or rather a version called arsenious acid, was a common byproduct of the mining and smelting industries of copper, cobalt and tin. This ready availability made it cheap to use. The cost combined with the brilliance of the color literally made a deadly combination.
In the 1860s arsenic was considered an "irritant," harmful to the skin but not much more. On the skin it would cause ulcers and lesions. Most did not realize the internal damage that it caused. Indeed, the makers of the gowns, headdresses and virtually anything else green were the most affected. Illness and death were quite common amongst the often poor people producing these items. Before it took their lives, the arsenic would be spread amongst their families as they brought it home on their cloths.
Often applied as a powder to headdresses, arsenic could easily dust off all around. Gloves and cloth would often not have the dye well fixed so it was not uncommon for arsenic dust to either fall off or be rubbed off during the course of wear. How much arsenic was there in a gown? Estimates vary, but to achieve the brightest hues one ball gown containing twenty yards of material could have nine hundred (900) grains of arsenic! During one ball as much as sixty grains of arsenic could fall off.
What is a grain? A grain is a unit of measure for both weight and volume. By weight a grain is 1/7000th of a pound. For comparison, a soldier's musket cartridge of the era contained approximately sixty grains of black powder. The difference is potential lethality. A dose of only five grains of arsenic could be lethal. Obviously not all the arsenic will get onto other people or the lady herself at a given ball, but it was possible for her to be lethal to twelve people at one ball! Multiply that by the number of women wearing some degree of green at the ball and the potential casualty rate jumps dramatically. Meanwhile, using that sixty grain charge, the soldier has the potential to injure or kill only one person. Quite the difference. Just three women at one ball could be about as lethal as one soldier with his forty standard issue rounds.
By the 1860s the dangers of arsenic were becoming known. Still, into the 1870s it was possible to find it in many consumer products. It was available for sale to the consumer without restriction. Even after the sale was regulated or outlawed, use in industry and for consumer products was still permitted for decades to come. Even into the 1880s and 1890s arsenic green was quite common on consumer goods. Arsenic could be found in food items, even beer! So beware when handling green antique items from the 19th century. Who knows how much arsenic is left in it?
As a side note, beware of yellow as well. The yellows in the hand-tinted photograph above could have contained arsenic as well. A common mixture of the time was arsenic and picric acid. This made a brilliant yellow. The combination could be even more deadly to the workers than arsenic alone.
You wonder how people survived fashion?
-Corporal
Two Unidentified Young Women Wearing Printed Dresses and Necklaces in Front of Painted Backdrop Showing Plantation. United States, None. [Between 1860 and 1870] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2010650233/. (Accessed April 12, 2018.)
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