Podcast Host (11:48)

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Ruth Goodman (12:03)

In September 1666, the Great Fire of London raged across the city for five days, leaving a trail of devastation and despair in its wake. More than 13,000 buildings were laid waste, with over 70,000 people left homeless. Astonishingly, it is said that only six people died in the fire, although we will never know how many more succumbed to injuries in the following days and weeks. But what does all this have to do with wallpaper, I hear you ask. Well, in the aftermath of the fire, the ravaged city had to be rebuilt. New building and planning regulations were introduced, including wider streets. From now on, houses were to be made of stone or brick, with timber banned from the exterior of buildings. Although the fire was undoubtedly a disaster for many, it was also an opportunity for some. An army of architects, masons, builders and construction workers descended on London and changed the face of the city. A different kind of architecture arose out of the ashes, one that was supposedly rational, scientific, orderly. It represented a new aesthetic for the modern age. And wallpaper played a part in the regeneration of the city because behind every imposing new facade that sprang up, there was an interior waiting to be decorated. By now, the Puritanical ban on wallpapers, or paper hangings as they were called at the time, was no longer in force. Wallpaper was legal again and shopping for it became a whole new experience for the upper classes. Let's take a walk along Aldersgate Street, London in the late 17th century. Look to your right and you'll see the large shop windows of James Wheelie's paper hanging warehouse. An eye catching display of the latest products is artfully arranged to draw in the most discerning and wealthiest customers. These days, the word warehouse conjures up images of drab, nondescript buildings on industrial estates. But in 17th century London, a warehouse was more what we might call a store, somewhere for the public to go and buy the wares of the proprietor. A center of elegance and fashion. Let's step inside Mr. Wheelie's warehouse. The interior is exactly as depicted on one of his trading cards. The store is airy and spacious. The walls are decorated, as you might expect, with attractive wallpaper. A fashionable couple, bored young daughter in tow, are being served by a gentleman in a frock coat and periwig, presumably Wheelie himself. A couple of assistants roll out samples of wallpaper over a long table, showing off the latest colours and designs. Particularly eye catching are the so called chinoiserie paper hangings. These feature Chinese motifs, including birds and flowers and depictions of everyday life in the countryside. You've heard that the very best are hand painted and are imported all the way from China itself. Delivery can take up to 18 months. But imagine the stress of actually putting it on the walls. One small slip or rip and the whole effect would be ruined. One of Mr. Wheelie's minions approaches and offers you a seat and refreshments while you peruse the samples. Take your time, make yourself comfortable. Choosing wallpaper is a serious business and supplying it is suddenly big business. A whole new industry has sprung up with London at. James Whalley was just one of several businessmen making and selling fashionable wallpaper to wealthy patrons in this period. And as printed wisteria bloomed on walls across Britain, the government couldn't help but notice that the wallpaper industry was raking it in. Naturally, they wanted a share of the profits. So in 1712, during the reign of Queen Anne, the first wallpaper tax was introduced in England. This led to a hike in prices as manufacturers passed costs onto consumers. Even so, demand remained high, at least among the wealthy. Of course, there were some who tried to get around the tax. One legal way was to buy untaxed plain paper and decorate it by hand. With stencils. But generally the results were disappointing, with crude patterns and smudgy execution. Some manufacturers flouted the law by forging the official stamp that certified that the tax had been paid. But this was a risky policy. If you were caught, you could find yourself facing the death penalty. It seems a high price to pay for a feature wall. While the wallpaper tax was bad news for the British wallpaper industry, it was a great opportunity for French producers. They continued to improve their production methods, expand their ranges and introduce ever more sumptuous designs, while their English competitors saw their market share dwindle. Then, as it so often does, history intervened again, this time in Paris. It's 10am on Tuesday 28 April 1789, in the Saint Antoine district of Paris. Thousands of working class people, both men and women, are gathering in the streets, their eyes gleaming with a desperate rage. Many of them carry clubs and other makeshift weapons. The threat of violence is palpable. The crowd's anger is directed at one man in particular, a wallpaper manufacturer named Jean Baptiste Reveillon. A few days earlier, Reveillon has made a speech to his local electoral committee complaining about rising production costs. He spoke fondly of the days when a labourer could live quite well on their 15 sous a day. His word did not go down well with those struggling to make ends meet, especially as the price of a loaf of bread had recently been fixed at 14 and a half sous, eating up almost all of those meagre daily earnings. Reveillon's remarks were widely interpreted as those of a typical capitalist calling for lower wages at a time when most working class people could barely afford to eat. The fact that his factory produced luxury wallpapers for the wealthy didn't help his cause. The angry crowd gathering outside his house is the culmination of a series of protests sparked by his comments. At first, the crowd had marched on Reveillon's factory, but a contingent of troops saw them off earlier this morning. Reveillon's effigy had been hung outside the Bastille as word reached him about the angry mob heading towards his mansion. He leads his family out and over the garden wall to take refuge with a neighbour. Now there's a standoff between the protesters and the police positioned to guard his property. The crowd begins to pelt the officers with stones and other projectiles. Suddenly, there's a surge forward. The protesters overpower the hugely outnumbered police. They scale the garden walls to Reveillon's property and converge on his house. Reveillon's precious Possessions are looted or destroyed, mirrors smashed, books scattered, statues thrown through windows. A selection of wallpaper samples is set on fire. Eventually, the French guard arrives to disperse the crowd. The soldiers open. In the words of the Marquis de Ferrieres, who recorded the event in his diary, Blood was flowing in the Faubourg St. Antoine. According to official reports, 25 people died. The de Ferrier placed the number of dead at 7 or 800. The reveillon riots, as they became known, were among the earliest acts of violence in the French Revolution. So why was a wallpaper manufacturer the focus of so much hatred? Well, when most working people were struggling to put food on the table, the luxurious papers made by Reveillon were a potent reminder of what they saw as upper class greed. These upmarket items came to symbolize the huge inequalities in French society that sparked the Revolution. Obviously, the French Revolution was about more than wallpaper. But it's no coincidence that Reveillon and his luxury products became a focal point for people's anger. Throughout history, ordinary people's lives, from the food that they can put on the table to the way they decorate their homes, have played a pivotal role in societal shifts. So maybe it's no surprise that when the poor were struggling just to survive, revolution was sparked by a symbol of luxury living. Over the 19th century. The story of wallpaper is not one of revolution, but industrialisation. Ironically, given the Reveillon riots, the cost of wallpaper actually came down and consumption shot up. This was largely due to technological advances, such as the introduction of the first industrial scale wallpaper printing machine, patented in 1839. And it wasn't just wallpaper production that was changing. Wallpaper design was undergoing a revolution too, led by a radical designer named William Morris. You probably know what a William Morris print looks like, because his designs are still popular today. Morris produced his first wallpaper in 1862 and went on to become one of the most influential wallpaper designers in the country. Though it's interesting to note that when he started out, his designs weren't at all popular. In fact, many critics thought them peculiar. Morris aesthetic theories laid the intellectual foundations of the Arts and Crafts movement, an attempt to reform design and decorative tastes in Victorian Britain. He famously said, have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. For Morris, the domestic was definitely political. In an era before glossy magazines and TV home makeover shows, he inspired a generation of middle class householders to transform their interiors with art and beauty. But while designers like William Morris were embracing the creative opportunities offered by the rising popularity of wallpaper. A killer was discovered hiding in plain sight on nursery walls across the country.

State Farm Announcer (25:10)

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Ruth Goodman (25:38)

It's the 3rd of April 1862 in the east End of London. A horse drawn carriage pulls up outside a row of modest dwellings built for working class tenants. A man gets out of the carriage and knocks on one of the doors. The home of the Turner family. This is Dr. Thomas Orton, a leading London physician. Dr. Orton is admitted by the head of the household, Mr. Richard Turner, a bricklayer. Turner's eyes appear bloodshot, his face pale and drawn. The poor man looks like he hasn't slept for days, if not weeks. Turner leads the doctor upstairs to one of the bedrooms where his wife is seated beside a cot on which a small girl lies sleeping. Feverishly, the child's breath is laboured. Mrs. Turner tenderly applies a damp cloth to her daughter's forehead to bring down her fever. The girl is 3 year old Anne Amelia and her parents don't know what's wrong with her. Mr. And Mrs. Turner fill the doctor in on the details of their daughter's sickness. She has been struck down by the same mysterious illness that has already claimed the lives of the Turner's three other children. The local doctor diagnosed diphtheria, but the usual treatments failed to work. The Turners plead with Dr. Orton to save their darling baby. He examines the patient. It's true that the symptoms are consistent with diphtheria. Raging sore throat, fever, fatigue. But Orton isn't convinced that's what animalia is suffering from. For one thing, diphtheria is a highly contagious disease. In a densely populated neighbourhood like Limehouse, Orton would expect it to spread like wildfire along the terrace. But there isn't a single case among the neighbors. Orton wonders if there might be some environmental factor causing the illness. He looks around. The house is well ventilated and spotlessly clean. When he tests the water supply, he finds no evidence of contamination. Then Alton notices the bright green wallpaper on the bedroom wall. He remembers reading that certain green pigments used in wallpaper manufacture are made using a Deadly substance arsenic. Could it be the wallpaper that's killing the turned children? Dr. Orton does what he can for little Anne Amelia, but a month later she's dead. Orton arranges a post mortem. The likely cause of death is confirmed as arsenic poisoning. The theory is put forward that it was caused by the wallpaper in the Turner house. Newspapers pick up the story and a new health scare breaks out. However, some people find the idea of death by wallpaper difficult to believe. One of the biggest arsenic skeptics of the age was William Morris. Decades after Anne Amelia's death, he still refused to believe that arsenic based pigments were harmful. In an 1885 letter to a friend he as to the arsenic scare, a greater folly, it is hardly possible to imagine. Of course, Morris wasn't exactly unbiased. Many of his designs relied on arsenic based dyes to achieve their eye catching effects. Getting rid of arsenic would severely restrict his palette. No more Emerald green, Paris green or Shields green. As an artist, he naturally rebelled. Plus his family owned shares in Britain's largest arsenic mine. But in 1875, Morris bowed to public opinion. His producers Jefferies Co switched to arsenic free green pigments in line with other manufacturers. Though as we've heard in private, he continued to grumble that it was all fuss about nothing. By the 1930s, Britain's wallpaper production had increased to around 100 million rolls per year. But by the end of the millennium, wallpaper had fallen out of favour. Now at last in the 21st century, the wallpaper industry is enjoying a resurgence. These high end wallpapers are used to create spectacular and dramatic feature walls in the kinds of homes you see on selling Sunset. There are even custom made wallpapers taking us full circle back to the chinoiserie trend. At the same time, there has never been a better choice of affordable wallpapers for the mass market. The history of wallpaper, at least in Europe, takes in the most monumental events of the last few hundred years, including printing, globalization, the French Revolution and industrial advances. So if you have wallpaper in your home, or if you're browsing sample books right now, it's good to know you're part of this long tradition. One that goes way back to a WASP in ancient China.

Podcast Host (31:51)

We hope you enjoyed this Taster episode from Noyes new podcast. To hear more episodes, search the Curious History of youf Home in your podcast app of choice and hit follow or click the link in the episode description.