Sometimes it is postulated that people were more tolerant of bed bugs in the past. And yet if you actually look what you find is quite resonant with what has been happening to us.
What follows is mostly from the remarkable Historic American Newspapers archive of The Library of Congress: Chronicling America.
(As you value your time, leave that link be!)
The Bedbug Special, 1905
I think this is the earliest mention of steam for bed bugs that I’ve come across, though I’m not entirely sure how it worked.
WAY FOR THE “BEDBUG SPECIAL”!
Union Pacific Sends Out Train to Exterminate Vermin
[By Telegraph to The Tribune]
Cheyenne, Wyo. Sept 3.—An extra train, called the “Bedbug Special,” has just been sent out by the Union Pacific to exterminate bedbugs and other vermin in the section houses along the road. It is equipped with steam hose, poisons and disinfectants. Steam from the engine will be used.
New-York Tribune, September 4, 1905
The only other reference I can find is a note in Popular Mechanics.
THE “BEDBUG” SPECIAL
Probably the only train in the world of its kind and name is now going over the main line and branches of the Union Pacific. It is equipped with all modern appliances for exterminating bugs and insects of all kinds, and will fumigate all the section houses on the system. Steam from the engine is carried to the car where it is mixed with poisons or disinfectants according to requirements, and the building sprayed inside and out by means of hose and suitable nozzles.
Popular Mechanics, November 1905
You think they actually ran steam hoses from the train to the station houses (where foremen and crew lived)?
The Prussian railways
How about treating infested cars? Check out the innovations that surely make modern methods mere reinventions:
SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY – A Disinfecting Oven for Cars
Cars on the Prussian railways—especially those used for Russian traffic—are often infested with vermin, and a new process of the Julius Pintsch Co. has been adopted for destroying bedbugs, nits, and disease germs without removal of cushions or fittings and without injury to varnish or polish. A disinfecting cylinder of cast iron, 16 1/2 feet in inside diameter and long enough to inclose the car, is used. This is closed at the ends by cast iron heads, and is air-tight and capable of withstanding enormous pressure. The total weight is 297,000 pounds. The car is run into the cylinder, and the temperature is raised by live steam to 114 deg. to 122 deg., when the air is pumped out to a pressure of one-tenth of the normal, the heat being still maintained. Formalin vapor is then introduced. In a test of the plant, the thorough heating of the car required about five hours, rarefying the air took two hours, but disinfectin with formalin was a quick process. Bed bugs and nits were effectively destroyed. Vestibule and dining cars with ceilings, walls and floors that had become wet through were inclosed in the heated vacum for 24 hours, and were dried in a surprisingly thorough manner. Allowing 10 hours for the disinfection of a car, it is estimated that the total expense is $8.33, ot more than a tenth of the cost of the less complete cleansing by the old methods.
Amador Ledger (Jackson, Amador County, CA) April 22, 1910
A heat chamber and a very big one at that as early as 1910.
$8.33 in 1910 is about $194.73 in 2008 dollars.
Old timey bed bug lawsuits
Continuing our trains theme, why is this one not at all surprising:
BEDBUG POISON EXPLODED
Pullman Car Porter Wants Two Thousand Dollars—A Novel Suit.
Special to the Herald.
San Antonio, Texas, March 20.—Alleging that he was injured by the explosion of bedbug poison which he was applying to the mattresses of a Pullman sleeping car, Henry Caviness, a porter, filed suit yesterday in the 57th district court of San Antonio for two thousand dollars damages. He declares that he was not warned that the poison was not only deadly as a bath for the obnoxious insects, but that it was equally deadly as an explosive, so when he struck a match to light a cigarette, the stuff exploded and damaged him and the cigarette almost as much as the bedbugs.
Palestine Daily Herald (Palestine, TX) March 20, 1908
Landlord/tenant cases:
BUGS FIGURE IN DECISION
Colorado Judge Decides Bed Bugs Justify Damage Suit.
According to a dispatch to the Miami Metropolis from Denver, Colorado, Justice Carlon, of that city, has decided that money paid by a guest to a boarding house keeper for a room in which bed bugs exist must be refunded.
Sleerman Goodwin, of Denver, who paid $3.50 for a room at the boarding house of Mrs. Henry Hewett, sued her for $25. Goodwin alleged that he paid $3.50 for a room for himself and family and that during the night an army of bed bugs attacked them. Mrs. Hewett indignantly asserted that Goodwin carried the bugs into the house.
The precedent that a room frequented by bed bugs need not be paid for by an occupant is established.
The Pensacola Journal (Pensacola, FL) September 01, 1907
This 1880 case featured expert testimony:
THE LEGAL STATUS OF BED BUGS
Campbell O. Bishop appeared before Judge Thayer recently, and urged his motion for a new trial in the case of Peckham vs. Garvey. It will be remembered that the defendant, Dick Garvey, the railroad ticket agent, was sued by the landlord of a fashionable hash-house for a month’s board, and pleaded bed-bugs in bar. The room had been engaged for a month, but the lodger decamped the second day, because he went there to eat, and not to be eaten. He testified that the bed-bugs preyed upon him worse than a guilty conscience, and he could not sleep. The jury gave the landlord a verdict for half the amount claimed. Mr. Bishop argued that the instructions were erroneous and the verdict ought to be set aside. He cited a number of English authorities in support of his motion, and one or two of them seemed exactly in point. The law, as laid down on the other side of the water, is that when a man rents a furnished room the landlord guarantees that it is habitable and wholesome. If his slumbers are disturbed by bed-bugs, he has the right to abandon the premises without notice, and is not bound to pay any rent for the time he has tarried. A case was cited in which the witness gave full details of the manners and habits of English bed-bugs, which are supposed to belong to the same breed as the American insect. [...] An English expert stated that it was very difficult to exterminate a colony of these insects. [...]
I’ll say. An English expert?
Sacramento Daily Record-Union, June 12, 1880
Sad history of bed bug committees, etc.
FAIR DOCTORS RAP BEDBUGS
Wisconsin Association to Battle It and Other Insects
MILWAUKEE.—Bedbugs were solemnly denounced by the Wisconsin Medical Women’s Association in annual session here. Dr. Adeline Riddle of Oshkosh, president of the association, characterized the bedbug as one of the greatest enemies to public health. [...] The women doctors passed resolutions authorizing the appointment of a committee to confer with the state board of health with reference to a public educational campaign on flies, bedbugs and other germ carriers.
University Missourian (Columbia), September 20, 1910
An infested bedstead at auction
A joke, containing the line:
Did Alexander the Great have boils? Never, not a one! And why?
Omaha Daily Bee. (Omaha), September 09, 1880
