Alan Crosby shares his views on family history
Horror In The Home
Alan Crosby considers the domestic tragedies that lay in wait for our Victorian ancestors
One morning, when I was quite small, I woke up to the smell of burning. My father had lit the gas under the kettle, and put the match in the little pot on the windowsill for spent matches. He then went out of the kitchen. Unfortunately, he had not blown the match out properly – it flared up and set light to the curtains. Dad came back just in time, hurled some water about, the blaze was extinguished, and (apart from the curtain, by then a charred remnant) no serious damage was done. This long-forgotten episode came back to me when I was reading about domestic accidents and calamities in the Victorian period. Any regular user of 19th-century newspapers soon becomes accustomed to reading the terrifyingly vivid reports of tragedies in the home, often with recitations of the evidence given at coroners’ inquests. Such accounts highlight the many hazards in and around the house, some of them potentially catastrophic. Coroners tended to blame carelessness on the part of family members, but dangers were everywhere. The types of people most likely to be involved in domestic tragedies are sadly predictable. Young children were particularly at risk, especially when they were left unattended by harassed, overworked and distracted mothers. Elderly people, who were frail and unsteady on their feet, were also frequently recorded as casualties. This was in sharp contrast with the statistics of industrial and employment accidents, where able-bodied young and middleaged men overwhelmingly predominated.
Trailing skirts, petticoats and smocks could easily catch fire
Around the house the dangers were obvious – open fires and unguarded hearths; greasy flagged floors; pans and cauldrons of boiling liquids and hot fat; unwatched and unstable candles and lamps; unlatched and insecure windows; and steep stairs without handrails or banisters. Outside the house there might be uncovered wells and cesspools; untethered animals; carts and wagons without rails or sides; and farm buildings or workshops with sharp tools. The risk was exacerbated by long clothing – the trailing skirts, petticoats and smocks that so many people wore could easily catch fire, snag on something, or trip the wearer.
Time and again the newspapers tell us of children who fell into the hearth or whose garments caught a candle flame, of elderly people whose skirts took fire when they stumbled from their chair, or who tumbled on rickety stairs.
The 20th century saw a gradual improvement in safety around the house. Changes such as better building standards in new properties (stairs less steep and with proper handrails; windows that fitted properly and could be securely latched) made a difference. Much more important was the end of cooking on open fires, higher safety standards in the kitchen, and eventually the advent of central heating. Of major significance, but perhaps not something that we really think about, is that our clothing nowadays is so much safer.
The original records of coroners’ inquests are often lost, but we should thank the reporters who sat through the distressing testimony and wrote it up. Some researchers have analysed the causes and circumstances of domestic accidents, especially those involving a fatality, and have demonstrated the steady improvement as safety standards were introduced. The criticism “It’s health and safety gone mad” that we hear so much these days is unjust in my view. Reading accounts of the ghastly tragedies resulting from a lack of regulation, and involving people who might be on our own family tree, I am heartily glad that “health and safety” has become a feature of the modern age.
Alan Crosby lives in Lancashire and is the editor of The Local Historian