BBC - Hidden Killers Of The Tudor Home (2015)

Dr Suzannah Lipscomb ventures into the Tudor home in search of the household killers of the era.
The Tudor era was a great age – one of exploration and science, and a time when adventurers returned from the New World with exotic goods never before seen or experienced in Europe. It was a time in which the newly emergent middle-classes had money for luxuries and early consumer-goods for the very first time, but in discovering these goods they also learned of their hidden dangers. The period also saw a radical evolution in the very idea of the ‘home’, for Tudor merchant’s houses became multi-room structures instead of the single room habitations that had been the norm. This forced the homebuilders of the day to engineer radical new design solutions and technologies – some of which were lethal.

The ‘hidden killers’ in the Tudor household ranged from sugar (the substance known as ‘white gold’), to badly constructed chimneys. Whether washing their clothes at the local water supply, or picking herbs from their gardens to self-medicate, even in the bedroom, danger lurked around every corner for the Tudors.

In Hidden Killers of the Tudor Home, Suzannah explores how the threat of a grisly, unpleasant death was never far away in a world still mired in the grime and filth of the Medieval period – and how we still live with the legacy of some of these killers today.