A blog post I have been itching to do for some time…..
Perusing back numbers of the Gentleman’s Magazine (as one does) I came across this helpful tip – I think nowadays I have to call it a “household hack” – from 1735. It is a remedy for eradicating “bed buggs” and is a reminder of the doggerel verse quoted in the title to this piece.
Now, I am not too sure how good an idea it is to paint mercury (ie quicksilver) into all the joints and cracks in your four poster bed, even if you have first made a nice mixture using the whites of half a dozen eggs, but it looks like a fairly labour-intensive spring clean, involving dismantling the entire bed frame. Mind you, if your servants were too busy to do this for you, you could always enlist the services of the wonderfully named *Benjamin Tiffin “Bug Destroyer to His Majesty”, as per his trade card, shown courtesy of the Wellcome Library in London:
Bugg hunting gave rise to this rather nice print from Isaac Cruikshank , shown on the excellent Library of Congress site, and entitled “Summer Amusements – Bugg Hunting”:
Now excuse me, but all of this makes me want to scratch…
The image appears on a somewhat esoteric site entitled The Bed Bugs Handbook, which you can find here if you are really interested!
*Post script: I had not appreciated that the Tiffin family have been pursuing the little blighters for over three centuries and are still going strong, and are based in Hemel Hempstead! Good for them – their website assures me that “The company has remained a ‘family’ firm for over 320 years, and to this day there has always been a Tiffin at the helm.” Those pesky bugs just wont go away – but fortunately, neither do the Tiffins!