Hidden Killers Of The Victorian Home Page #5

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a constant battle against

her greatest enemy, which was dirt.

The Victorian house could not escape

the pollution of the time.

In London, for instance,

the manure of

the 100,000 working horses,

the pervasive smog

and the smoky gas lamps in the home,

all took their toll.

Victorian wash day was

quite a mammoth task -

you washed the clothes

on the Monday, you dry them

on the Tuesday and you would be

ironing them on Wednesday.

So a large part of your week

would be taken up by the wash.

Doing the laundry was

an expensive business

and a major part

of the household budget.

For those who could afford it,

a laundress could be hired in

by the day.

It was a military-style operation.

Every Victorian middle-class woman

came to her marriage

with great trunks full of

white clothing, linen,

and her big job throughout

her marriage was keeping those

just as brilliantly white.

And what she used in this endeavour

was soaps, disinfectants,

and, most of all,

she used the mangle.

So I've just fed this in

from the back here.

And you have to get it

so that it's between the rollers.

'Wringing out heavy fabrics

sodden in boiling water

'became easier

with the arrival of the mangle.'

It's not too heavy

because of the gear system

and of course this is dry...

So if you were doing it

with wet clothes...

But of course

this brought its own perils.

But why is it so dangerous?

It seems really quite solid.

I think it's probably like

a lot of Victorian contraptions

where, yes, it is very solid,

but you've got exposed gear wheels

and things. And obviously

you have to feed the clothing in.

And what you have to remember is

that the lady of the house

would have been doing this

with young children around,

her daughters would have been

watching her because they needed

to learn how to work these things

and often,

probably, in quite a confined space.

Ooh, the dangers of little fingers.

Possibly.

The injuries incurred by washday

mangle accidents were horrific

and sometimes fatal.

Oh, a mangle could do

an awful lot of damage,

particularly to a child.

It was typically children

who would put their hand,

out of curiosity, into the mangle.

Obviously the hand, the arm,

and it typically was the upper limb

that was caught, would be compressed

and everything in it

would be squashed.

And a significant proportion

would have fractures of the bones

as well as damage

to the soft tissue.

There was sheering force,

where you're pulling the skin

in opposite directions

and that could completely remove

the skin from the hand and the arm,

and tear it all away to reveal

the muscles and tendons underneath.

The dangers of the mangle

might seem obvious to us now,

but our next hidden killer

was impossible to see,

both then and now.

Things couldn't just look clean,

the new science of germs

and microbes was changing

ideas of cleanliness -

from tackling the visible

to the invisible.

Dangerous germs, they feared,

could lurk hidden from sight

and needed to be eradicated.

Until the late Victorian period,

many believed that diseases were

caused and carried by bad air.

But with improvements in technology

and the emergence of high-powered

microscopes,

bacteria began to be identified

as the cause of disease.

But this science was brand new

and not easily understood

by the general public.

There are various theories

around the origins of disease

at this point,

they're quite confused about it.

They've started

to be aware of germ theory,

but this isn't fully understood yet.

What they did understand was that

there were microbes all around -

invisible to the eye but everywhere.

And this made the Victorians

disproportionately fearful

and easily spooked.

Some mothers didn't want

to kiss their children

because they thought

it would spread germs.

This is very real and comes up

again and again in diaries,

the fact that people were afraid

of each other because of germs,

which is a horrific thing

when you think about it.

As this climate of fear escalated,

so people became

increasingly alarmed about

all manner of little things.

One of the most important things,

apart from germs, were flies.

The great fly scare of the 1890s.

The great fly scare

was caused by the public awareness

of the speed with which

flies could spread germs.

Flies were everywhere,

living off the horse manure,

and trampled into the home.

Once scientists identified flies

as carriers of disease,

the public reacted.

They realised that one of the main

communicators of germs were

probably flies, with their little

sticky feet walking over everything.

And once you started

to look at flies like that,

they became objects of horror.

The terrors of insects and moths

and caterpillars that need to be

sternly exterminated

because they just show the natural

world coming into your perfect home.

Also skirts. Not strictly speaking

anything to do with flies,

except if you noticed as you

walked around with a long skirt on

that you'd be brushing up

against the faeces,

horse manure and everything else.

And that was likely to bring

fly eggs in, or anything,

so skirt lengths went up to ankles.

Once skirts went up, the shutters

came down on flies in the home -

with a variety of products

invented to stop them.

You'd have fly screens.

You have little lace doilies

over your milk jugs.

You have little lace doilies

everywhere really.

You cover your curtains with lace

to stop flies coming in,

not really

so that you cannot see out.

All of these things were partly

to do with the fly scare.

But the fight against germs would

require more than beaded doilies.

The Victorians needed to believe

that these germs were being

eradicated by newly invented

products that would kill

all known germs...dead.

Many claims were made

in the name of science

before all these items

could be vigorously tested,

making the late Victorian home

a very scary place to be.

And the Victorians

worshipped science,

they worshipped invention,

so they would do anything

to make things cleaner, even if

that meant using dangerous chemicals.

But as the incredible

cleaning powers of these new items

became more potent, so

the dangers in the home increased.

The problem was that many

cleaning products are toxic

and they have to be, that's how

they have their cleaning effects.

But they were stored and sold

in very similar packages.

So you would go to the shop

and get a box that contained

something like baking soda,

which we would use to bake bread

or cakes and is perfectly harmless.

But it may look very similar to the

box of caustic soda, which of course

is very corrosive and would do

a huge amount of damage to the body.

Dangerous chemicals such as caustic

soda and carbolic acid were now

in the cupboard next to the flour,

and sugar - and were easily muddled.

The opportunity for mistakes and

mix-up between products was huge.

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