The Arsenic Century: How Victorian Britain was Poisoned at Home, Work, and Play, by James C Whorton,

The Arsenic Century: How Victorian Britain was Poisoned at Home, Work, and Play, by James C Whorton, 2011
Bitten By Witch Fever: Wallpaper & Arsenic in the Victorian Home, by Lucinda Hawksley, 2016

It is frankly astounding that any of my ancestors survived the 19th century. Even when you get past the disease, malnutrition and all the other things, there was all the actual poisoning going on. Everything from wallpaper to clothing, to children’s clothes and sweets contained arsenic; some of the exposure was accidental (arsenic often came as white powder, which could be mistaken for flour or other foods), but others were from its deliberate use as a colouring (and while green was the most common, plenty of others contained arsenic). 

The Arsenic Century takes an overview of this, covering all the main exposures, and telling the stories of particular events; it’s a slight pity that there are no colour illustrations in something which talks about pigment a lot. Bitten by Witch Fever on the other hand is gloriously illustrated (though with far less text), with the majority being pages of reproductions of the arsenical wallpapers:

The two books complement each other very well, and I’d recommend both.