- The work of New York vs Bed Bugs has ended -- this site remains as an archive. We're making things simple and easier to maintain but we'll bring back the photographs our friends allowed us to use (perhaps you liked them too).
- Check out the innovative work of the Central Ohio Bed Bug Task Force
- HPD has streamlined the registration page for its online bed bug course and is now offering community classes for non-profits and tenant groups. More details here.
- Featured interview: Steven W. Smollens on landlord / tenant litigation history in Bedbug City
Category Archives: History
An interview with Steven W. Smollens: law and history in NYC
Steven W. Smollens has practiced landlord and tenant law in New York City for 34 years. I have (in my History of the Misery of Bed Bugs collection) a set of notes, passed along like contraband, of his New York … Continue reading
Posted in Featured, History, Interviews, Issues and Challenges
Tagged bedbugs, case law, landlord tenant litigation, NYC
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WWII army barracks disinfestation photos
Well, maybe one more history post. The papers say the city is ready to do battle, more on what that might mean later. Of course bed bugs have always been a big deal. Eradicating them, a big production. We had … Continue reading
Johnson’s hut, now online
There are so many things I’ve wanted to write about in the time I’ve been away (and not just about historical research, heh). But I will make do with telling you that C.G. Johnson’s Ecology of the bed-bug (1941) is … Continue reading
Girault, cont’d
So there was that hotel stay in 1907—the attack, to use his word. But two years earlier Girault had published a major article about bed bugs followed by an extensive critical bibliography, likely the entire literature of bed bugs until … Continue reading
Girault and the bed bugs
Alexandre Arsène Girault checked into an elegantly furnished room in one of the best hotels in Cincinnati on October 29, 1907. It was close to midnight. Later he would have occasion to ask the hotel manager if anyone had slept … Continue reading
“so convenient, so safe because the DDT is fixed to the paper”
Boing Boing has a picture of a “Disney-logoed DDT-impregnated wallpaper for the kids’ room” c. 1947. No. words. Enjoy.
Old timey bed bug news
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 … Continue reading
“The kind of thing your eye slides over, registering nothing”
The Road to Wigan Pier: House in Peel Street. Back to back, two up, two down and large cellar. [...] Distance to lavatory 70 yards. Four beds in house for eight people—two old parents, two adult girls (the eldest aged … Continue reading
Of considerable tact and other incongruities
1982 A.G. Wheeler, Jr. (1982) Somebody’s Been Sleeping in My Bed! A Comprehensive Look at the Infamous Bed Bug, a Pest that has Plagued Man Since the Beginning of Civilization. Pest Control Technology 10(2): 38-44 [article is a revised excerpt … Continue reading
The vermin in the walls is wicked
One of the landmarks of British documentary film, the short film Housing Problems (1935) depicts the plight of people living in overcrowded and dilapidated housing. It is a slum clearance propaganda film and one worth thinking about. (It was funded … Continue reading
