If you thought the worst thing about bathing was getting shampoo in your eyes, then you've clearly never been turned into human soup in your own tub. After learning how deadly Victorian bathrooms were, you'll never complain about crappy water pressure again.
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00:00If you thought the worst thing about bathing was getting shampoo in your eyes, then you've
00:04clearly never been turned into human soup in your own tub.
00:08After learning how deadly Victorian bathrooms were, you'll never complain about crappy water
00:13pressure again.
00:14The Victorian era was an age of great technological innovation, coupled with terrible health and
00:19safety standards.
00:20It should come as no surprise that the people who allowed their children to get mangled
00:24by machinery in factories didn't have very safe homes either.
00:29People drank water from lead pipes, put asbestos in their buildings, and transformed their
00:33bathrooms into terrifying death traps.
00:42Like before, hot water must have been pretty grim, and you can hardly blame the Victorians
00:47for wanting an easy solution to icy bathrooms that didn't involve using a stove.
00:52However, one of the solutions they came up with proved to be fatal on occasion.
00:56Rather than heating the water separately and piping it into the bath, the bathtub itself
01:00was heated, in much the same way you'd heat a saucepan.
01:04In 1868, the geyser heating system was invented in the UK by Benjamin Waddy Mahan.
01:10This gas burner would be fitted directly under the bath so that people were able to heat
01:14up the water.
01:15Those of us with some common sense may immediately foresee the problems with this system, which
01:20could potentially reach scalding temperatures or even boil somebody alive.
01:24One story from the Edinburgh Evening News in 1888, for example, recounts the story of
01:29a man who appeared to have suffocated on gas fumes in his bathroom and fallen unconscious
01:34into the bath.
01:36While passed out, he was boiled alive like a lobster.
01:39When he was discovered, not only was the bath water boiling, the pipes in the bathroom had
01:43melted.
01:44That's hot.
01:45Aside from the dangerous plumbing and heating, bathrooms in Victorian England were often
01:50stocked with products laced with arsenic.
01:52For various reasons, 19th-century people in general just loved putting arsenic in everything,
01:58including soap.
01:59Arsenic produced a pleasing shade of green that was very fashionable at the time, and
02:04arsenic-based beauty products were used to whiten the skin.
02:07Although people had realized something was up with the dangerous powder by the 1860s,
02:12arsenic wasn't regulated in food in Britain until 1903.
02:16Some products even came with doctor-approved safety guarantees.
02:20According to The Welcome Collection, Dr. McKenzie's arsenic soap was advertised as containing
02:24an absolutely harmless dose of arsenic to foster healthy skin.
02:28A claim that is particularly amusing and terrifying given that arsenic poisoning can cause grotesque
02:34skin lesions, as well as death.
02:37Unfortunately, the dangers of Victorian bathrooms didn't end there.
02:40But wait, there's more!
02:43Although the 19th century was actually a time of great improvements in terms of sanitation,
02:48early Victorian plumbing and sewage systems left much to be desired.
02:53Sewage filled the River Thames in London, and people relied on cesspools to dispose
02:57of their waste.
02:58Unfortunately, waste disposal wasn't just disgusting, it could also be quite dangerous
03:03due to the build-up of explosive gases.
03:06In London, it wasn't unusual for the city's cesspits to sometimes catch fire.
03:11Soft and pliable, lead has been a go-to material for making pipes throughout history, including
03:19during Roman times and the Victorian era.
03:22As reported by the New Statesman, the useful metal was once so ubiquitous that the word
03:26plumbing actually derives from plumbum, the Latin word for lead.
03:31It was used for everything from paint to pipes, to soldering things like toilet cisterns to
03:36walls.
03:37It's good if you want to make your bathroom bomb-proof, but not so good if you'd like
03:40to stay healthy.
03:42Unfortunately, exposure to lead can be crippling.
03:45Ingesting it or inhaling its fumes can damage your nervous system, and it will eventually
03:50kill you in large enough doses.
03:52In the late Victorian period, people began to catch on to this fact, when lead-contaminated
03:57environments and especially lead-saturated water made people very ill.
04:02In Sheffield in 1889, for example, lead pipes and lead-contaminated drinking water were
04:07found to have caused a case of mass poisoning.
04:10Similarly, in the U.S., lead hot water pipes were identified as the cause of serious illness
04:15in Philadelphia.
04:16While the effects of lead on humans were well-documented during the 19th century, it was just too darn
04:21convenient for the Victorians, and lead pipes were not phased out in the U.S. until the
04:2520th century.
04:27Lead was used on such a massive scale in the U.S. and U.K. that pipes are still being
04:32removed today.