PRETTY DEADLY

Ever wear something itchy or uncomfortable because you liked the color?
Same here.
But we wouldn’t wear something that could kill us. (I hope!)
That’s exactly what a lot of people did in the 19th century, though, when emerald or arsenic green was big.
“Arsenic green” wasn’t just a fun moniker. It was a green dye literally loaded with arsenic, and it was absolutely everywhere for much of the Victorian Era. Invented in 1775 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, and perfected by the 1810s, it produced an amazingly bright green at a reasonable price.
For almost everyone, it was a revelation.
We don’t really think about clothing dyes now, but for most of human history, most clothes were the muddy shades of common natural dyes. There was a lot of brown, yellow, and dull red. If you could afford woad, or especially indigo, you might get some nice blues.
Green and purple were tough, though. Purple is another post for another day, but the best way to get green was to dye something yellow and then blue. Dicey – and very expensive.
And at the end of the day, none of it was bright in the eye-watering way of arsenic green.
It’s no wonder that folks went a little nuts over it, with green dresses, candles, wallpaper and toys – and even fancy desserts.
There was just that one small problem: arsenic.
Soon enough, people started getting sick.
Ugly sick.
We don’t need to do a deep dive, but let’s just say there were skin problems, gastrointestinal distress, and other unpleasantness that sometimes proved fatal. Sometimes it was a slow, painful poisoning. Sometimes it was faster, like the holiday party full of kids who became ill from the arsenic vapors in green candles.
And if you think it was bad for the people who wore it or used it, imagine what it was like for the folks who worked with stuff. We don’t have to imagine, because one of them, Matilda Scheuer, absorbed so much of it from tinting flowers for women’s hair decorations that she died horribly in 1861, her eyeballs and fingernails literally poison green.
In a time before any kind of product regulation, all of this went on for much longer than it should have. Poor Matilda had been gone for forty years before the U.S. passed its first Pure Food and Drug Act.
Public opinion, fortunately, began to turn before that. The lurid newspaper coverage of dress and wallpaper poisoning cases, not to mention Matilda’s grisly end, eventually made people start looking differently at those green dresses and wallpaper.
By that point, though, there was so much of the stuff around that it couldn’t just disappear. That it didn’t just disappear.
To this day, there are green books, toys, and especially pieces of clothing in museum collections that require special handling. Vintage clothing collectors are warned not to wear anything green from the 19th century until they have it tested for arsenic.
What’s truly wild about this is that the things still look so good.
While most natural, and some chemical, dyes fade with time, many arsenic green pieces are still every bit as eye-poppingly bright as they were on the day somebody first risked her life by wearing them. There are good scientific reasons for that…but it’s also just a little bit eerie: a dress that will kill you, but won’t die.

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