The (Victorian) science of Ripper Street | Vanessa Heggie

The BBC's new Victorian detective series, best described as CSI:Whitechapel, has delivered complicated storylines, archaic dialogue, and lots of Victorian science and medicinePoisoning by antimony-contaminated flourFood poisoning was a daily hazard for Victorians, and a concern for doctors and scientists. In the 1840s and '50s chemists and doctors led campaigns against adulterated food. Investigators even found reports of horse meat being passed off as beef (imagine!). By 1889 – when Ripper Street is set – a series of laws had been passed regulating food and drug safety, but serious mass poisonings still took place.One of the worst was the outbreak of arsenic poisoning in Manchester in 1900 caused by contaminated beer. Mirroring the Ripper Street storyline, it took a while for the crime to be identified, as the symptoms of arsenic poisoning were mistaken at first for alcoholic neuritis.Poisoning was normally a result of accidental contamination or the deliberate use of cheap fillers and ingredients, rather than the schemes of a psychopath. Some reports of contaminated food do seem suspicious though: in 1879 Dr David Page (Medical Officer of Health for Westmoreland) reported a case where several children were poisoned by sweet lozenges bought at a fair. The contaminant was – as with Ripper Street – antimony, and although the doctor concluded "I cannot conceive in what way, doubtless accidental, the antimony may have got into the lozenges" it does make me wonder...VERDI...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Blogposts Television & radio guardian.co.uk Science Source Type: news