“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.
Category: History
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.
“The kind of thing your eye slides over, registering nothing”
The Road to Wigan Pier:
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
Millard’s Intercepting Trench Trap for Bugs
Millard invented a trap, should I have told you about that first? He named his trap the “Leicester Intercepting Trench Trap”:
Anti-bug conscience
How did they do it? The numbers of bed bug infestations fell significantly in the inter-war years in Britain. Well before DDT. The answer, it turns out, is in the wholesale reorganization of housing for the poor.
“They are also able to withstand chilling, thawing, rechilling and again thawing”
So I have apparently lied for here I have for your amusement, whether you want to or not, Bacot’s outhouse.
You have been on a Dundee tram, I perceive
Kinnear, J. (1948) Epidemic of bullous erythema on legs due to bed-bugs The Lancet, Volume 252, Issue 6515, Page 55 doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(48)90447-4
Serious social stigma (c. 1980)
“Minerva” of the British Medical Journal, July 1980: