Why Did The Victorians Need So Many Poison Bottles?

[sandyRoe]

On the Antiques Roadshow tonight there was a valuable collection of poison bottles on display. It was stated that they were shaped as they were because in a dimly lit house someone rummaging for their jollop bottle might have accidentally poisoned themselves if all the bottles were alike.
Prompts the question, why all the poison bottles?

[Sharingan]

I imagine because lots of things needed killing I suppose. Maybe the thing that killed cockroaches didn't work on rats, plus some poisons can be used as medicines too I think.

[DJHawkes]

no they weren't 'poison' bottles, they contained various potions and medicines that were commonly available but were poisonous when swallowed. remember everything was in stomeware or glass back then which could not be identified in the dark or poor light. no plastic and so everything was in a similar bottle.

[ChillDoubt]

Don't know how true it is but I remember being told by a teacher that it was because there were so many more blind people in Victorian days, hence they needed bottles with different shapes and markings in order to distinguish between a tonic, linctus etc.

[Jemisa]

Look around your house Sandy how many bottles of 'stuff' have you got. We are more educated than they were, we know whats what in those days they had to rely on feel & touch & colour. If it was blue or green "POISON"
How many bottles have you got? under the sink? in the bathroom? today we have plastic they only had glass.

jem

[sandyRoe]

True enough. They didn't have bottles of cyanide, arsenic, and strychnine, just the household materials that could be dangerous. If a lot couldn't read then colour coding and strangely shaped bottles were good safety devices.

[Blymey]

Lots of illiterate people compared to nowadays, shaped bottles of a skull shouts 'Do not drink me!'.
There were more ingredients needed 100 years ago to make what we can now buy off the supermarket shelf pre-mixed. Check your food flavourings for example, some contain Monosodium glutamate which is a toxin in large amounts.

[Svejk]

So Wilkie Collins had something to write about.