Jacob Foss House

In the dirt part of the basement, someone had built a closet storage area. There were boards put up for a ceiling in the closet. But that created a secret hiding space between the ceiling of the closet and the rafters for the first floor. We found many things up there. By estimating the range of dates of each item, it is estimated that the items we found up there dated back to about 1890. It looks like these items have been forgotten there since 1890.

One of the items we found was Paris Green. Paris Green was used as a paint and produced a bright, bright garish green. Since the container said "poison" right on it, in an age when consumer protections were lax, I put the container on this shelf to look up how bad this stuff is. It's arsenic based. It is a deadly poison. An 1/8th teaspoon can kill an adult. In fact, it was so good a poison that it was often used as a rat poison.

After washing my hands to my elbows, I carefully packed the Paris Green up in double plastic bags, and then boxed it. If you look at the picture, you can see that some of the green powder has sifted onto the shelf.

Even though I loved the container, it was too dangerous to keep. And yet I couldn't throw it away either. If this ever got into the water supply . . .

I contacted the city of Dover sanitation department and explained what I had. They accepted it from us at no charge as household hazardous waste. Although I understand it cost the town hundreds of dollars to dispose of this average size container. Most hazardous waste will break down when burned in an incinerator, but arsenic is an element and does not break down. So something like this is stored in an underground storage depository in an arid area like Wyoming.

When we first moved in, we had a few original shutters in the carriage house. You could see the original color was this bright Paris Green. Then painted over that was a nicer dark green, probably in a much "safer" lead based paint. (Joke).

It's amazing how people used to keep things this toxic in their homes back then.

Lee Pelletier