Arsenic and Old Lace The hazards of 1860s apparel by Mary Deneau, 19th Michigan Social Media Officer, Costume Committee Some of you may remember the play and subsequent movies and remakes titled “Arsenic and Old Lace.” It’s a classic. In the story, Mortimer takes his new wife home to meet his family and discovers that his aunts have been murdering lonely old men with a glass of homemade wine “laced” with “arsenic, strychnine, and just a pinch of cyanide” and burying them in their cellar. While the play and movie are fictitious, there is an element of truth in the title. Poison has long been a method of murder in myths and legends as well as real life. Slipping drops of poison, or dumping powder from a secret-compartmented ring into someone’s drink comes to mind. In reality it could actually be put on clothing to be absorbed through the skin of one’s enemy. Or, it could intentionally be applied to fabric in the manufacturing process to achieve a desired effect. Prior to the invention of aniline dyes, certain colors were difficult to produce. Green was one of these colors. It is believed that green apparel became more popular as green in nature was disappearing in big cities. It was originally made by combining blue and yellow dyes, but the result was that it was not colorfast, faded easily and a deep emerald green that kept its same color in both natural and artificial light was not easily produced. The new green that met these requirements was produced by chemists. Most of the compounds contained arsenic trioxide combined with copper. This green was a pigment, not a dye, so it can be found in paintings, wallpaper (particularly toxic) and even children’s toys. And we thought lead paint was bad! But we’ll get to lead in a bit.
Arsenic was released in flakes from wallpaper, or produced arsenic gas when conditions were warm and damp. Crowded, warm places could cause a person to sweat, speeding up the absorption through the skin. Women wearing green clothing could endanger others in close proximity to them and a dance partner was at risk, especially when dancing the waltz, as that particular dance involved holding a lady closely and potentially breathing in arsenic dust from a lady’s headdress or getting it on the partner’s hands. Even with the practice of wearing gloves to dance, you would remove them to eat or drink, and you would handle the gloves to remove them and carry them, thus transferring the poison to your hands, your food and so on. Symptoms of skin exposure to arsenic included rashes and painful skin eruptions. Prolonged contact is thought to lead to skin cancer, and of course, death was always a possibility. Thus, the term “poison green” was invented. The color green became associated with poison and bad luck, and even after the invention of safer methods of obtaining the color, some people avoided it. Even today we can watch a scary movie and we just know that witch’s bubbling cauldron of green brew, or the glass bottles of green powders and liquids in the mad scientist’s laboratory indicate poison.
There are documented cases of young women who worked in the silk flower factories who used arsenical green dust to color the leaves and then died from inhaling the dust or from absorbing it through their skin. This was not restricted to factory workers. Artificial flower-making kits were sold to consumers so you could enjoy the art of poisoning yourself from the comfort of your own home. Or, you could simply wear these garments and accessories and become very sick. Heat often added to the problem.
Green dress from my personal collection
Child’s green shoes, from my collection
46 Skirmish Line Spring 2022
Sadly, it doesn’t have to be green to contain arsenic! There were other colors that could contain arsenic trioxide, also known as “white arsenic”. Aniline dyes were chemical compounds rather than dyes obtained from natural (plant) sources. These dyes enabled chemists to produce rich colors not seen in previous
