- Flammable Fashion – Crinoline Mania
Between the 1850’s and the 1880s, the crinoline was a popular item of fashion for women of every social class. Consisting of a series of wide hoops, and often accompanied by a horsehair petticoat, the crinoline was worn underneath the skirts to give a wide silhouette.
However, the article was not without its risks. Thousands of women died as a result of their skirts catching fire, in part due to the width of the petticoats, and also the flammable nature of the materials used in their construction.
Gender Divide
Part of the reason that crinolines were so popular with women was that they were actually a fairly liberating garment. The wide skirts allowed women to create space around themselves, and in hot weather the dresses could even be fanned to create a cooling breeze. On the other hand, many men viewed the fashion trend with scorn, and satirical cartoons depicted ridiculously oversized crinolines, mocking those who wore them. While many male complaints with the fashion were exaggerated or even invented, the crinoline did come with some very real dangers.
Pretty but Deadly
One of the most well-publicised deaths was that of 14 year old Margaret Davey, a kitchen maid whose crinoline caught fire as she was reaching for some spoons on the mantelpiece. Deaths like this one were, however, not uncommon. In 1861, at least six ballet dancers died when they tried to help one dancer whose costume caught fire backstage. Sometimes entire theaters would burn down. It was estimated by the Lancet, a British medical journal, that 3000 women had suffered a similar fate to Margaret in the space of a single year.
Though there were ways of making fabrics less flammable, they often rendered the garment stiff, and the treatment gave the fabric an unattractive yellow colour. This meant that many women eschewed safety in favour of the pretty, floaty fabrics that were often little more than a tinderbox.
Fire at the Philadelphia Ballet Industrial Hazards
However, fire was not the only hazard that confronted crinoline wearers. Many other women were also killed when their skirts became entangled in machinery. In 1864, Ann Rollinson was killed when her crinoline was dragged into an industrial mangle, breaking her spine (though she apparently lived for a further two hours after the accident). Sometimes, hoops could become entangled in carriage wheels, and on windy days women often risked being blown off their feet, which at best would result in embarrassment, even if they managed to avoid serious injury.
Repeating Fashion
The crinoline began to fall out of fashion around 1866, though it enjoyed some revivals in a modified form throughout various periods that followed, including the First World War and during the late 20th century, when designers like Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen and John Galliano used crinolines in their popular designs. Fortunately, these modern interpretations are much safer than their historic counterparts.
Sources and Further Reading
https://www.racked.com/2017/12/19/16710276/burning-dresses-history
- Death by Rail – The London Necropolis
In 1851 all of the graveyards in London closed their doors for further burial due to overcrowding. As a result, several companies established themselves as alternatives, providing burial services located outside of London in the surrounding suburbs. The largest corporation offering burial services was the London Necropolis Company. Established in 1852 by an Act of Parliament as a direct response to the closure of London’s graveyards, the company intended to establish a single cemetery large enough to accommodate all of London’s burials.
Brookwood Cemetery
The cemetery opened in 1854, and at the time was the largest cemetery in the world. The LNC offered three tiers of funerals. A first class funeral cost £2 10s, and allowed the family to select the burial plot and included the right to erect a permanent memorial. Second class burials cost £1, and allowed some control over the plot location. The right to erect a memorial cost an extra 10s. Third class funerals were reserved for those buried at the expense of the parish. While these burials had none of the frills of the higher tier options, Brookwood still afforded more dignity for poorer burials, as unlike all other graveyards at the time, the LNC did not use mass graves for the poor.
The London Necropolis Railway
The development of Britain’s railways system meant that bodies could now be transported over longer distances. The LNC built the London Necropolis Railway station next to Waterloo station in central London, and ran a dedicated railway line solely for funeral services.
There were two stations at the other end of the line. The North station was for non-conformists (those who didn’t want an Anglican burial) and the South station was for Anglicans. Both the station waiting rooms and the train themselves were segregated by both religion and class to prevent both mourners and cadavers from different social backgrounds from mixing.
A train ticket for the deceased In 1941 the railway terminus in London was all but destroyed during an air-raid. It was decided that it was not financially viable to rebuild the station, and the London Necropolis Railway was abandoned. After the end of the war the remaining parts of the London station were sold. The stations at Brookwood remained open as refreshment kiosks for a few years afterwards but were subsequently demolished.
The First Cremations
In 1878 the Cremation Society of Great Britain bought an isolated piece of the LNC’s Brookwood land and built Woking Crematorium on the site. However, it was not until 1884 that cremation of human remains was formally declared legal in Great Britain. Cremation was still not a common practice in Britain, as most people preferred a traditional burial. Until 1945 the practice remained unusual and relatively expensive. Woking crematorium was the only operational crematorium in the country, and the business from wealthy patrons provided an important line of income that helped to make up for the lack of burials.
End of the Line
The company was never as successful as had been hoped. Even though the LNC had been granted a monopoly on London burials, they still fell woefully short of their estimates. The site had been planned to accommodate 5 million burials – even by 1994, 150 years after its establishment, Brookwood had only conducted 231,730.
While it was never as successful as planned, the London Necropolis Company had a significant impact on the funeral industry, and the principles established by the LNC influenced the design of many other cemeteries worldwide. Brookwood cemetery today is a Grade I listed site, and is home to a number of notable graves and memorials.
- Animals in Autopsies
Autopsies, or post-mortems as they are known in Scotland, are generally carried out to establish the cause of death if someone has died in unexplained or suspicious circumstances. Sometimes it is fairly obvious, owing to evidence of injuries or signs of disease. However, sometimes a little extra help is needed, and animals can provide clues as to the nature of a person’s death in some rather unexpected ways.
Medieval Chickens
Due to religious ideas about the body and resurrection, autopsies were very rarely carried out during the medieval period. However, in 1286, an unknown disease swept across Italy, and the authorities granted rare permission to carry out an autopsy on one of the unfortunate victims.
Noticing that local chickens seemed to be suffering from similar symptoms, a doctor dissected the birds and noticed strange abscesses on their hearts. Comparing them to the heart taken from the autopsy, a link was successfully established between infected chickens and the unknown disease. It was quickly advised that neither the chickens nor their eggs should be consumed.
Flies and Maggots
Maggots are also used frequently during autopsy examinations, especially in cases where the death is suspicious. Usually, larvae from various species of flies such as blow flies and bluebottles are used to give an indication of time of death. The oldest maggots can indicate when a body was first populated with the larvae, giving an idea of how long they have been dead. The first successful use of this technique, known as forensic entomology, was used in the UK in 1935 during the famous Buck Ruxton case, where the technique was used to give an accurate time of death for two female murder victims.
The Blow Fly, a common species found on cadavers Tampering with Evidence
Other animals, however, are not so helpful. If a corpse is left exposed, it can often be mutilated by scavenging animals. Even in a domestic setting, cats, dogs and other pets can cause wounds or more serious damage to a cadaver if they have no other food source. In some cases, a corpse has been entirely consumed by hungry pets, destroying vital evidence that may have been on the body. Rats can cause particular problems. During one case in 2002, lesions on two victims’ hands which had initially been interpreted as defensive wounds were actually found to have been caused by rats. Birds can also be a nuisance; their tendency to remove the eyes from cadavers can make identification exponentially more difficult.
Future Forensics
With the advent of new technologies, invasive autopsies are becoming less and less common. Technologies such as MRI scanning can highlight internal injuries and diseases without ever having to open the cadaver. Since 1999, virtual autopsies have been the standard practice in Switzerland, where 3D models are used to investigate wounds and decomposition. Thankfully chickens don’t tend to play much of a role in modern autopsies. As of yet, however, no replacement has been found for the maggots.
Sources and Further Reading
Hartnell, J., Medieval Bodies: Life, Death, and Art in the Middle Ages, (London, 2019)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Ruxton#Autopsies
https://medicalfuturist.com/tracing-the-future-of-forensic-medicine/
- Laudanum: Opiates for All
Derived from the seeds of the poppy plant, opiates can take many forms. They are still used today for pain relief, and can be found in forms like morphine and codeine. In high concentrations, the substance becomes drugs like heroin, and, most obviously, opium. Though the widespread opium consumption during the nineteenth century has often been glamorized, the drug had devastating effects on almost everyone who came into contact with it, as its highly addictive nature did not become fully understood until the early twentieth century. Until then, opium could be purchased as a medicine in a variety of forms, and the most common of these was the patent medicine known as laudanum.
Medicinal Benefits
Opiates are still used in modern medicine because they do in fact provide a number of benefits. They are highly effective painkillers which are usually prescribed to treat severe pain following injury or surgery. It is also useful in suppressing the cough reflex and controlling diarrhea where other remedies have proved ineffective. It can also be used as a sedative, as it slows the heart rate and breathing. It is this latter effect that makes opium overdoses so dangerous, as this suppression of the respiratory system ultimately leads to coma and death.
Easy Access
Laudanum was easily available for people of all classes. 25 drops only cost a penny, and could be purchased by anyone, even children as young as 8 years old. The medicine was stocked at druggists, apothecaries and even pubs. Considering the frequency with which epidemics of cholera and dysentery cropped up during the 1800s, laudanum’s effectiveness against diarrhea helped to boost its popularity. Alongside its medicinal effects, laudanum was often favoured for its euphoric effects, and was actually cheaper than alcohols like gin, as it wasn’t taxed at the same rate. Given it’s ready supply, its plethora of uses, and its minimal cost, it is little wonder that it became the medicine of choice in treating almost any ailment imaginable.
A bottle of Laudanum, also referred to as ‘Opium Tincture’ Infant Doping
Laudanum was often used to treat childhood ailments like colic and diarrhea. It was also used as a sedative to keep babies quiet – this was particularly common among poor working mothers, who often needed to keep their infants with them as they worked. Accidental overdoses were not uncommon, and murders did occasionally occur using laudanum as the method of dispatch. However, few parents faced trial for these murders, as opium did not show up during autopsies and deaths were easily explained away in an era where childhood mortality rates were high. There were probably many more cases of infanticide by laudanum than were actually recorded; it was an easy way to get rid of an unwanted burden in a time where support for mothers and poor families was non-existant.
Recognising the Dangers
Medicines containing opium were banned from general sale in the UK under the 1920 Dangerous Drugs Act. By then, aspirin had become available, which was a much safer alternative as a painkiller. Though laudanum is technically still available in both the UK and the US, it is rarely prescribed except as a last resort, as it is still recognised as a highly addictive and dangerous substance.
Sources and Further Reading
- Poisonous Imposters: Toxic Plants and Deadly Mistakes
Most of us are warned as children not to eat things we don’t recognise. But what if you think you do recognise it? Sometimes things are not as they appear, and many plants which are either edible or otherwise harmless bear an uncanny resemblance to much more deadly specimens.
Daffodils
Although daffodils may not strike as a particularly dangerous plant, the bulbs are in fact poisonous. Though accidental ingestion is rare, it does occur. For example, in 2014 there were 27 recorded cases of poisoning caused by accidentally eating daffodil bulbs. The bulbs contain two toxic chemicals; lycorine and oxalates. When ingested, these cause vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. There can also be severe burning to the lips, tongue and throat. Though not usually fatal, many animals have died from eating daffodils. In the UK, accidental ingestion is more common among the Chinese community, as daffodil bulbs look extremely similar to chinese onions which are used in many dishes.
Hemlock
Known in Scotland as ‘dead man’s oatmeal’, hemlock can be mistaken for numerous edible herbs, most notably parsley. The white roots also look uncannily like wild carrot. Famously, Socrates was killed with a drink brewed with hemlock – the slowly paralysing effects of the plant apparently providing quite a gentle death. The sensation has been described as a heaviness in the limbs and a general feeling of fatigue. Other people have ingested the plant accidently – in 1845 a Scottish tailor died after eating a sandwich that contained hemlock, which had been mistaken for wild parsley by his children.
Deadly Nightshade
Deadly nightshade, as its name might suggest, is extremely toxic. Given the plants bright and delicious looking berries, it is unsurprising that they are mistaken for edible fruit. Nightshade contains atropine, an alkaloid which causes rapid heartbeat, hallucinations, and seizures when ingested. However, atropine also has some medicinal uses, such as in anesthetics and as an antidote to nerve gas.
It is most often children that accidentally ingest deadly nightshade berries, but sometimes adults are deceived as well. In 2013, a 49 year old woman from Turkey almost died after eating large quantities of what she believed to be ‘forest fruits’ – it was only when her family showed doctors what she had been snacking on that they realised she had in fact been eating deadly nightshade.
Aconite
In 1856 two guests at a dinner party in Dingwall were killed after consuming sauce that a servant had added aconite to after mistaking it for horseradish. Other unfortunate people have been poisoned after accidentally mistaking the root for wild carrots as, like hemlock, they look remarkably similar. The alkaloids in aconite paralyzes the nervous system and eventually stops the heart. The poison was well known to the ancient Greeks, and was even used experimentally in poisoned bullets during the Second World War.
Mistaken Identity
As most people buy their food from grocers and supermarkets today, cases of misidentification are much less common than they used to be. However, the increased popularity of foraging means that people may be more at risk of picking the wrong plant. It’s always recommended you go foraging with a qualified and experienced guide, and if there is any doubt at all, leave it well alone!
Sources and Further Reading
https://www.poison.org/articles/2015-mar/daffodils
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31176748
Stewart, A., Wicked Plants; The A-Z of Plants that Kill, Maim, Intoxicate and otherwise Offend, (2016)
Demirhan A, Tekelioğlu ÜY, Yıldız İ, et al. Anticholinergic Toxic Syndrome Caused by Atropa Belladonna Fruit (Deadly Nightshade): A Case Report. Turk J Anaesthesiol Reanim. 2013;41(6):226-228. doi:10.5152/TJAR.2013.43
