Poisonous Victorian wallpaper

 

Many years ago I went on a guided tour of the Isle of Man’s finest theatre The Gaiety Theatre.  Of all the things that I remembered about the tour  was  the wall paper issue. I always wondered if this was a bit of an urban legend as we were told that the theatre wished to re-create the original wallpaper, and it needed  arsenic to get the right green.  Health and Safety turned the request down in case the theatre goers inadvertently licked the wallpaper !

The Telegraph published this article this weekend, it certainly was not an urban legend !

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/could-this-wallpaper-kill-you-victorian-britains-lethal-obsessio