Today’s Practical Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
A major difficulty in tracking down arsenic killers in the early 20th century was that almost anyone could acquire arsenic with little effort. Every day people walked into drugstores, grocery stores, garden supply stores and bought some version of the poison for the most practical reasons.
Arsenic was mixed into tonics like the popular Fowler’s Solution, used for skin treatments, prescribed by doctors, dispensed at drugstores. It was available as a weed killer, a bug killer, and a rat killer. Hardware stores, groceries, and farm and garden supply shops offered up white arsenic in remarkable variety There was Rough on Rats, a grayish powder made of 10% soot and 90% arsenic trioxide; Rat Dynamite, 9% bran and 91% arsenic; Lyons Poisoned Cheese, a soft pale block containing some 93.5% white arsenic. William’s Fly Paper, Dutcher’s Fly Paper, and Daisy Fly Killerwere all laced with arsenic, easily leached out simply by soaking them in water.
Arsenic was the primary ingredient in a number of dyes that were especially popular in the nineteenth century and sold under such names as Scheele’s Green, Paris Green, Emerald Green, Parrot Green, and Vienna Green. Mixing arsenic with copper and hydrogen yielded shades that ranged from the brilliant color of a new-leafed tree to the softer tones of a shaded moss. Over the years arsenic-based dyes were used to color fabric, the artificial leaves on hats and wreaths, cardboard boxes, greeting cards, labels, candles, India rubber balls, oil paint, artificial plants made of tin, Venetian blinds, carpets, soap, and faux malachite for jewelry. Even untainted wallpaper could be made poisonous by paperhangers who liked to mix a little arsenic into their horse-hoof paste, thinking it would help keep rats out of the walls.
Culled from: The Poisoner’s Handbook