Mental health, work and history

[Maiden Stone]

A new topic "Inquisitions of Lunacy" about records in National Archives.
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=863656

[Rena]

When one learns what some medieval women put on their bodies to make themselves "beautiful", there's no wonder mental health suffered:

"For flawless-looking skin, Renaissance noblewomen wore makeup containing white lead ore, vinegar, arsenic, hydroxide, and carbonate, applied to the face over egg whites. It gave them a silvery gleaming complexion, along with paralysis, madness, and death."

"..In the Elizabethan era, most Englishwomen imitated their queen, and so red hair was the height of fashion. Court ladies used a powder made of sulfur and safflower petals to color their wigs. Unfortunately, the sulfur was highly toxic and caused headaches, nausea, and nosebleeds. .."

"...For covering gray hair, the 1561 Italian bestseller, The Secrets of Signora Isabella Cortese, written by a female alchemist, recommended, “Take four or five spoons of quicklime in powder, two pennyworth of lead oxide with gold and two with silver, and put everything in a mortar and grind it in ordinary water; set it to boil as long as you would cook a pennyworth of cabbage; remove it from the fire and let it cool until tepid. And then wash your hair with it.” ..."

https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/history/dying-to-be-beautiful-poisonous-cosmetics-in-medieval-times

[Maiden Stone]

Some mental illnesses were industrial diseases. The Mad Hatter. Searching for a death of a particular ancestor, I found a burial of a man of the same name - he died in the county asylum and his occupation was hatter.

[Rena]

Some mental illnesses were industrial diseases. The Mad Hatter. Searching for a death of a particular ancestor, I found a burial of a man of the same name - he died in the county asylum and his occupation was hatter.

Over the years I have learnt bits and bobs about old fashioned methods of manufacture but after reading this article about mental illness due to chemical dangers when making felt for hats I probably wouldn't have let my young children play with fuzzy felt !

https://www.history.com/news/where-did-the-phrase-mad-as-a-hatter-come-from

"...Researchers have suggested that Boston Corbett, a hat industry worker who killed John Wilkes Booth, President Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, might’ve suffered from poor mental health due to mercury poisoning. Corbett, who’d been employed as a hat maker since he was a young man, became a religious zealot and in 1858 castrated himself with a pair of scissors ..."

[Top-of-the-hill]

  Poor mental health may also have run in families. While researching a branch of my family, I gradually discovered that 3 of the sisters had suffered from various forms of mental illness in the early 20th century. (None of the brothers apparently, but who knows?) I had known about one of them for some time, and knew she spent time in mental hospitals, and wondered if it was triggered by post natal depression - 4 children in quick succession and the early death of the first one.
   One of her sisters died young and I recently discovered that she drowned in mysterious circumstances and had suffered from "mental depression" (1897). Finally a third sister also spent time in mental hospitals.