The Killer Wallpaper that Never Was
Morris's Pimpernel wallpaper design, registered 1876. During the 1860s, a press campaign began in Britain to raise awareness concerning what were then believed to be the ‘dangers’ of arsenic in wallpaper. By 1883, the well-known design firm Morris & Co. bowed to public opinion, and all their wallpapers became free from arsenic, despite the fact that Morris thought (rightly so, as it turns out) that the scare was groundless. Today, two popular accusations are still levelled at William Morris, both loosely related to the arsenic scare: that given his Socialism his directorship of the Devon Great Consols mine (a major source of arsenic) was hypocritical, and that his use of arsenical pigments in wallpapers was an act of mass poisoning owing to the supposed formation of toxic gases (TMAs) by these materials . Patrick O’Sullivan, editor of the Journal of William Morris Studies , has addressed these criticisms in a forthcoming paper in the Reports and Transactions of the Devon Asso