I always find particularly affecting the oral histories where the interviewer asks, and sometimes gently repeats, the lice and bed bugs question. The stigma of bed bugs is evident in Selma Leydesdorff’s We Lived with Dignity: The Jewish Proletariat of Amsterdam, 1900-1940:
“We lived there for four or five years. A rag merchant came to live below us, for there was such a housing shortage. And he stored his rags there, and at one point it seemed that vermin had gotten in, you know, bedbugs…. We didn’t have them at first, but one year at Passover my mother was busy cleaning. The picture frames came off just once a year, and she took them off, and there they were, crawling around. She nearly died of fright. You can imagine—she was such a clean person. I saw my mother cry for the first time then. [...]”
Bed bugs are intricately linked in history and in our imagination with poverty and filth.(1) These links form the basis of the enduring stigma of bed bugs, but it is very hard to unravel these two intertwined threads. I don’t pretend to have the skills or resources. But I want us to take a closer look all the same.
The authors of the bed bug chapter of the new WHO urban pests book cautiously put it this way:
Apparently, because these infestations can become an endless, cyclical problem for those living in poverty, some authors have claimed that bedbugs may help cause poor living conditions – not just being typical of them.
As best I can tell, this leads to a throw away line in Snetsinger, in Mallis’ Handbook of Pest Control (1997):
As late as 1939, before World War II came along and opened up new opportunities for this species, it was reliably estimated that no fewer than four million people, in greater London alone, were to some extent troubled by bed bugs (Sailer 1952). When I was taking my first course in entomology, teaching specimens of bed hugs were plentiful, and in the same year Busvine (1951) reported, “… the bed hug may actually be a cause of slums as well as a characteristic feature of them.” Today, specimens are unavailable for classes and few young entomologists have seen an actual infestation of these blood suckers.
What Snetsinger leaves out, however, in that interesting history capsule is J. R. Busvine’s frightening point (Insects and Hygiene, 1951):
Objection to the bug is partly on account of the unpleasant irritation (and consequent loss of sleep) caused in some people by the bites; but to a large extent it is an aesthetic abhorrence of what is regarded as a loathsome creature. This is augmented by the fact that bug infestation is usually associated with low hygienic standards. This is important; the spread of bugs into new housing estates drives away the more squeamish householders and depresses the standards of hygiene. To this extent, the bed bug may actually be a cause of slums as well as a characteristic feature of them.
And lest we should mistake his meaning:
It is generally agreed that bug infestations do not develop to any serious extent in houses where a high standard of domestic hygiene prevails. Therefore, every effort should be made to encourage and inculcate these ordinary cleansing measures.
There is a great deal more of interest in Busvine, but let’s go back to Snetsinger for a moment. Published in 1997, at a time when “specimens are unavailable for classes,” at the very cusp of disaster (Dr. Snetsinger didn’t know it yet but bed bugs in 1997 were already a puzzling new problem in London hotels, and great fodder for newspaper wit), the eighth edition of the Mallis Handbook is a strangely discomfiting read. This is Dr. Snetsinger’s review of the improvements in the standard of living which contributed, after the advent of DDT, to making American homes and hotels inhospitable to bed bugs:
The seedy, downtown commercial hotels, located near railroad stations, and frequented by prewar travelling salesmen, were replaced by first-class modern hotels and motels which used comfort and cleanliness as inducements for an affluent business clientele and the traveling public. Bed sheets and blankets are regularly laundered, rooms are kept cleaner than in the past, pest control has become routine, and all of these practices are generally required and supervised by nationwide hotel chains. The convenience of washers, dryers, and vacuum cleaners has lessened the burden and increased the frequency of laundering and cleaning in American homes. The exodus of much of the population to the suburbs to new dwellings that, in general, have fewer nooks, crannies, cracks, and crevices has created a less hospitable environment for bed bugs. The sale of used bedding and mattresses, to a considerable measure, has become regulated, and sanitization and fumigation before resale is a requirement in some places. Designs and tastes in furniture changed for the worst from the bed bug’s perspective; massive wooden bedsteads, which provided daytime hiding places for bugs, were replaced by bed frames of simple design, of metal, or other materials. Similarly, other furniture and features of homes, motels, and hotels became hostile to bed hugs. For the most part, these changes came about because they made houseskeeping easier, and although bed bug control was not a consideration, it occurred as an ancillary benefit. In general, the environmental conditions of human habitation after the 1950s became much less favorable for bed bugs than prior to World War II.
Yes, I know, but why was this triumphant optimism misplaced? Quite obviously, here we are in 2008 and bed bugs are rampant in first-class modern hotels and motels and nice suburban dwellings. Perhaps what Snetsinger and Busvine really have in common is that both were writing about a time and a place where effective treatment against bed bugs was widely available.
Snetsinger, again:
Bed bugs tend to be homebodies and, in an apartment building, operate within the confines of a neighboring apartment or two, and only gradually spread through an entire apartment complex. To a considerable measure, it was their limited home range which led to the bed bug’s eventual downfall, once DDT became widely used. Once eradicated from a structure, reinfestation required considerable good fortune for the bed bug.
Once eradicated from a structure…
Indeed. Once eradicated from, say, most structures in a city? Perhaps via the intercession of a widely available, highly effective and cheap control method, in fact, several of them used in succession?
Put simply, if there aren’t any bed bugs about, what is to stop a feeling of accomplishment and pride in one’s vacuum cleaner?
Today, when treatment methods are so often ineffective, so prone to failure, and when bed bugs, like vacuum cleaners, are truly everywhere, pest control professionals and entomologists, for the most part, take pains to publicly reject the historical association of bed bugs with filth.
And yet it endures. It is evident in the unfiltered thoughts of regular people who comment on news articles. If only people learned to wash their sheets. Sometimes it is evident in the statements of other professionals and scientists. People lack the cleaning skills of yesterday.
I don’t really understand evolutionary psychology, so this path is not productive for me. But if this persistent association with filth, this terrible shame, is rooted in social history, we should be able to understand. I think it is important to try to understand because, I hope you’ll agree, the bed bug, with its many adaptations and habits of self-preservation, does not need yet another edge.(2)
David told us something interesting when we talked to him. He said that authorities instilled a sense of shame in Britons after the war in order to make them adopt the use of DDT. This idea is suggestive, that a massive propaganda effort for the wonder pesticide of the 20th century was the genesis of the stigma of bed bugs. Perhaps… but the stigma is much older than that. What is more likely is that marketers then, as now, played to already existing fears and emotions.
Let’s return to Busvine who gives us a history of the evolution of knowledge of insect pests. He quotes Mouffet’s Teatrum Insectorum of 1634:
(Of “Wall Lice” or bed bugs).
“… They are bred, after Aristotle’s opinion, from the moysture that sweats forth on the body of living creatures… but without doubt they arise from other humours corrupting about beds and that sweat out of wood by degrees. Also they propagate by copulation as Pennius observed at Orleans; for whilst he kept company with a Spaniard… he (? the Spaniard) strove to draw his sword to cut a bough, but when he could hardly do it for the rust, he was forced to cut the scabbard where he found abundance of wall lice with a great company of young ones and a multitude of watery eggs….”(Speaking of a suggestion that Carthusians were free of bugs because they ate no meat) “…should rather have alleged their cleanliness and frequent washing of their beds and blankets to be the cause of it, which, when the French, Dutch and Italians do less regard, they more breed this plague. But the English, that take trouble to be cleanlie and decent, are seldom troubled with them.”
Surely we can permit ourselves a smile. Those French, Dutch and Italians! The English, however, cleanlie and decent!
Sound familiar, yes?
This subject is depressingly rich; we will continue tomorrow.
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(1) If I were permitted but one iconic example, then it must be Chicago’s Bed Bug Row of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
(2) To make the policy interest explicit: when people are ashamed of having bed bugs, they hesitate to report them, to talk to their neighbors, to seek help. They try to handle things quietly. We live in apartment buildings, at each other’s mercy, and bed bugs easily spread within structures. The absolute last thing you want is for your neighbor to handle a bed bug problem privately. Stories of intractable, building-wide infestations are appearing with increasing frequency. If we hope to eradicate bed bugs from our city, if we wish to have sensible control policies, and we are dedicated to this idea, that city-wide policies can stop the spread, we need to understand all obstacles to eradication, and there are many, all complex and daunting. The stigma of bed bugs is perhaps one of the most daunting.
These pages may be of related interest:
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