Swavesey and District History Society – September 2025 meeting
The first meeting of 2025/26 was well attended by about 40 people when Neil Dickinson, a former industrial chemist from Haverhill spoke on the toxic legacy of arsenic. Elemental arsenic, used commercially as arsenic trioxide, is a white powder which is very versatile with a variety of beneficial uses ranging from pesticide control in crops to producing a brilliant green dye used e.g. to colour ladies’ dresses. It is possible that the eventual cause of Napoleon Bonaparte’s death in exile was arsenic fumes from wallpaper in his rooms. The Victorians often claimed that arsenic is the answer – what is the question? It was initially collected as a waste product from hundreds of tin and copper mines in Devon and Cornwall. Devon Great Consols was a copper mine near Tavistock which also produced 70,800 tonnes of arsenic between 1865 and 1902. Mined as arsenopyrite (iron, arsenic sulphide) it was roasted at high temperature in a labyrinth from which arsenic trioxide was raked and shovelled out by men wearing only a handkerchief across their faces or cotton wool up their nostrils for protection.
In the USA it was used as an insecticide to control Colorado beetle in potatoes, boll weevil in cotton and malarial pests in swamps. In Britain it controlled a number of pests in apple orchards. Sticky flypapers had arsenic added to make the flies even deader and chromated copper arsenate was used to pressure treat timber to prolong its life. The Victorians said it improved facial skin. Fowler’s Solution, produced by Thomas Fowler in Stafford, contained 1% potassium arsenite and was first described as a treatment for malaria and syphilis in the late 1700s plus lumbago and epilepsy and was prescribed as a general tonic.
A quarter of a gramme of arsenic trioxide is sufficient to kill a person and many deaths have been attributed to its use. In 1857 Madelaine Smith, a Glasgow socialite was accused of poisoning her lover. Although the circumstantial evidence pointed towards her guilt (she made purchases of arsenic in the weeks before his death, and had a clear motive) the jury returned one verdict of not guilty on the first count and a verdict of “not proven” on the second count. Because of its high cost, it was common to replace some sugar in sweet production. In Bradford in1858 the confectioner was supposed to purchase gypsum (calcium sulphate, a white powder) but a mistake at the chemists meant arsenic trioxide was purchased instead. About two kilograms of sweets were sold to the public, leading to around 20 deaths and over 200 people suffering from arsenic poisoning. Mary Ann Cotton was Britain’s most prolific female serial killer. She was executed at the age of 40 in 1873 for the single murder of her stepson using arsenic but she is believed to have killed many others including three of her four husbands for their life insurance policies, her mother and three of her 13 children.
Next meeting-
21 October. Bedrooms, Banquets and Balls. John Vigar.
