Fashion Victims - Arsenic Dyes and the Victorians

[BettyO]

Those wacky Victorians would do anything for fashion!

The Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Canada has a wonderful exhibit - "Fashion Victims" which runs through June 2016 -

It was not uncommon for the Victorians to use arsenic in a lot of things! Those brightly colored dresses, yes, even fabric book covers of the period (and I have a few), were dyed with arsenic! Wash your hands good after handling! I have also read a few topics on babies of the period who died as a result of sucking on dyed bonnet ribbons - all due to arsenic dyes.

http://www.batashoemuseum.com/exhibition...ndex.shtml

Here is a wonderful article on the subject:

"Staying stylish in the Victorian period could be a dance of death. While industrialization and mass production made more beautiful fashions widely available, the green dresses were dyed with arsenic-based pigments, the mercury necessary to make shiny beaver top hats drove the hatters insane, and all that tulle and cinched corsets contorting women into airy nymphs would not infrequently cause them to tumble into gas lamps and go up in flames."

http://hyperallergic.com/133571/fatal-vi...n-garment/