Instead of tossing out stale bread, you could always use it to make what Victorians called
“toast water.” This, unfortunately, is exactly what its name suggests.
Instead of steeping tea leaves in boiling water, you steep a piece of toast.
Once the water has completely cooled, remove the soggy starch, strain the water, and serve.
Certain recipes listed ways to gussy it up, like adding cream and sugar, or an apple baked with
brown sugar. According to the 1884 edition of The Annals of Hygiene, “Some persons,
particularly old gentlemen, like toast water warm and sweetened with good molasses.”
But in her 1861 classic Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management,
author Isabella Mary Beeton specified that toast water should only ever be served cold.
As for the taste, food writer Kat Kinsman tested Mrs. Beeton’s recipe in 2016
and described it as tasting “like a pond that is haunted by the ghost of toast that drowned in it.”
But let’s find out for ourselves, shall we? When it comes to old-timey life hacks, turning
bread into a supposedly refreshing beverage is on the milder side. Other well-intentioned tips
and tricks are more disgusting, more dangerous, or both. Today, I’m covering some of the most
memorable ones, from raw beef for wrinkle prevention to cleaning paintings with potatoes.
Kids, it’s probably best not to try these at home.
In her 1867 book The Family Save-All, Hannah Mary Bouvier Peterson supplied readers with a homegrown
cure for chapped hands. Here’s what it called for: A quarter-pound of hog’s lard, rinsed first
in water and then in rosewater; the yolks of two new-laid eggs; a large spoonful of honey;
and almond paste or ground oatmeal—your choice. Spread the mixture all over your hands,
and … that’s it. Carry on about your day with greasy and possibly germy
fingers. Hey, at least they’re not dry anymore? The Family Save-All also had a DIY idea for people
who couldn’t afford nice feather beds. Go outside on a crisp fall day, find the nearest beech tree,
and gather a bunch of its driest leaves to stuff in your mattress. Why beech? They are, q uote,
“very elastic, and will not harbor vermin.” But people who could afford feather beds needed
to make sure the feathers had fully dried out before they tucked themselves in. Otherwise
they’d risk catching “chill or rheumatism,” according to Miss Leslie’s Lady’s House-Book,
published in 1850. Author Eliza Leslie recommended leaving a new bed out in
the hot sun or by the stove for a few days before moving it to the bedroom.
Leslie had a nifty way to detect dampness, too. Place a warming pan beneath the sheets,
and, as soon as you remove it, stick an upside-down drinking glass in its place. If
the inside clouds up with condensation, sorry! You are the father. I mean…your mattress is damp.
To keep hair from ending up in your food, Leslie offered a simple fix:
Don’t put a mirror in your kitchen, “as it is a temptation for the domestics to comb or
arrange their hair … In houses where there is a kitchen looking-glass, hairs are frequently
found in the dishes that come to table.” The kitchen staff, Leslie explained,
should only ever fix their hair in their own rooms. And don’t worry about shelling out
for wallpaper in their quarters. According to Hervey J. Seaman’s 1899 book q those walls were
the perfect opportunity to make DIY wallpaper out of all your old illustrated newspapers.
“[The cook] will appreciate this more than if it were done in the finest cartridge paper,” Seaman
claimed. Something tells me he didn’t ask too many cooks for their opinions before writing that.
Some of Seaman’s cooking tips stretched the bounds of food safety, to put it mildly.
To prolong the shelf life of meat that’s already begun to go bad, Seaman advises simply putting
it outside “in the cool night air.” If a raccoon steals it, well … that’s probably for the best.
If your cream or milk is starting to go sour, Seaman recommends adding “a generous
pinch of borax” per quart. Borax was a popular food preservative at the time,
but its days were numbered. In 1902, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s chief chemist,
Harvey W. Wiley, enlisted volunteers to consume foods with certain chemicals so he
could determine if they were harmful. Borax was found to cause everything from gastrointestinal
distress to vomiting, depending on the dose. Wiley’s experiments were one of the reasons the
federal government decided to better regulate the food and drug industry. In 1906, it passed the
Pure Food and Drugs Act, which established the Food and Drug Administration. Wiley became its
first commissioner, and borax is on the FDA’s list of banned food additives to this day.
So if you think your milk smells funky, skip the borax and just pour it down the drain.
Or on your kitchen floor. In the Victorian era, some people thought milk made for a great floor
cleaner. According to English Heritage, an organization that manages hundreds
of historic sites across the UK, this actually works—as long as it’s a non-porous stone floor.
While Brodsworth Hall near Doncaster was closed during the pandemic,
conservationists tried washing its stone floors with three different kinds of milk:
full-fat, semi-skimmed, and skim. Skim worked the best. Amber Xavier-Rowe, English Heritage’s head
of collections conservation, told The Guardian that they’d probably even use it again.
The team also saw success with another Victorian tactic: sponging down grimy wallpaper with bread.
According to Xavier-Rowe, “It does work, although it does need to be fresh white bread—stale
bread would be too abrasive. I tried it with some of my sourdough and it was surprisingly effective.
It’s very gentle. … You’ve just got to vacuum your crumbs up.”
To restore old oil paintings, there are a couple old-fashioned tips that English Heritage
doesn’t recommend. One, wiping them down with a wet slice of raw potato;
and two, placing them in direct sunlight in order to kill mold.
These will likely do more harm than good. In 1858, Robert Kemp Philp published a book
titled Inquire Within for Anything You Want to Know; Or, Over Three Thousand Seven Hundred Facts
Worth Knowing. Might have to borrow that title for a future Mental Floss video.
If you were “inquiring within” about a DIY laundry detergent for silks and satins,
here’s what you’d find: four ounces of soft soap, four ounces of honey,
one egg white, and one “wine-glassful of gin.” Using that concoction, the clothing should be
“scoured [thoroughly] with a rather hard brush,” rinsed, and “iron[ed] whilst quite damp.” If that
doesn’t go against everything you’ve ever learned about washing delicates, I don’t know what does.
Nineteenth-century homemakers didn’t just use egg whites to ruin—I mean, launder—their clothes. They
also mixed them with quicksilver to kill bed bugs. Quicksilver is another name for mercury;
the hazardous liquid metal that used to be common in thermometers. If mercury
is exposed to room-temperature air, it starts evaporating, turning into colorless, odorless
vapor. When inhaled, it can cause all sorts of adverse effects, from chest pain to vomiting.
In her 1838 book The American Frugal Housewife, Lydia Maria Child at least
included a warning with her quicksilver-and-egg concoction: “What is left should be thrown away:
it is dangerous to have it about the house.” Plenty of Child’s other tips have actually
now become the norm. She suggested sprinkling salt on ice-covered front steps, for example,
and said you should always clean your teeth before bed. Other ideas from the time failed to
catch on. If you ran out of coffee beans, Child discussed roasting peas, rum-soaked rye grain,
or “dry brown bread crusts.” For what it’s worth, she also said that “None of these are very good.”
But she swore by the effectiveness of ear-wax as a pain-reliever,
specifically for wounds inflicted by nails or other long, pointy items. She also recommended
slathering ear-wax all over your cracked lips. I think I’d rather just have cracked lips.
Forget fancy serums or Botox to keep wrinkles at bay. How about just sleeping with raw beef on your
face? According to Lola Montez’s 1858 book The Secrets of Beauty; Or, Secrets of a Lady’s Toilet,
that’s what “many fashionable ladies in Paris” used to do. Every night, she wrote,
they would “bind their faces … with thin slices of raw beef, which is said to keep the skin
from wrinkles, while it gives it a youthful freshness and brilliancy to the complexion.
I have no doubt of its efficacy.” I, on the other hand, have some doubts.
Montez concluded her book with a section called “Hints to Gentlemen on the Art of Fascinating,”
which features this irresistible pick-up line: “ … you may ask her if she is always particular
to shut her eyes on retiring to bed? She will ask why? And you will answer, Because if you do not,
I fear that the brightness of your eyes will burn holes in the blanket, or set the house afire!”
Wondering how to make your eyes sparkle enough to merit that compliment? Nineteenth-century women
dropped everything from perfume to citrus juice in their peepers. Belladonna was also common,
which optometrists actually still use today in drops that make patients’ pupils dilate. It’s
an extremely poisonous plant, though. Ingesting just a couple berries is enough to kill a child,
and even consuming a small amount could possibly make you hallucinate or put you in a coma.
Barkham Burroughs recommended a somewhat safer hack for sparkling eyes
in his 1889 Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information: “[Dash]
soapsuds into them.” Pretty hurts, people. Say your face got a little too sunkissed during
your last trip to the beach. Here’s a way to fade your tan fast, courtesy of the book The
Young Housekeeper as Daughter, Wife, and Mother. Soak some unripe grapes in water and add in a
little alum and salt. After that, wrap the grapes in paper and roast the whole bundle in hot ashes.
Then “ … squeeze out the juice, and wash the face with it every morning:
it will soon remove the tan.” For removing freckles, there are several recipes
in the 1901 book Beauty's Aids: Or How to Be Beautiful, written by the anonymous “Countess C—”.
One concoction contains camphor, almond oil, and half a pint of turpentine. Another calls for hog’s
lard, zinc, and crystallized lead. Yet another involves mixing milk and hydrochloric acid,
among other substances Hydrochloric acid can cause chemical burns, and lead is,
well…lead. Turpentine can be a skin irritant, too, and if it gets in your eyes, you could end
up with corneal ulcers that cause blindness. Countess C’s cure for a head cold is similarly
ill-advised. Mix menthol, cocaine, and boracic acid—a.k.a. boric acid, which is poisonous—and
snort it. To Countess C’s credit, that would probably make you less concerned with your cold.
If you bought a pack of Gallaher’s cigarettes in the early 20th century,
you might find a little card inside with a life hack printed on it. These handy how-tos covered
everything from lighting a match in the wind to drawing a duck without lifting y our pencil.
You know, for all the times in your life when you’ve wished you knew how to do that.
To find out if your butter is actually margarine hiding in plain sight, one Gallaher’s card
recommended smearing some on a piece of paper and then setting it on fire. According to Gallaher’s
copywriters, pure butter emits a “dainty and agreeable” odor, while margarine gives off
Here’s how to relieve pain from chilblains, which are itchy and/or blistered patches of
skin that occur when small blood vessels get inflamed after overexposure to cold. Just rub
the area with an apple slice covered in salt—and be sure to use “a good juicy apple.” To clear
mucus from your nose or throat, literally just snort salt and then gargle warm water. Today’s
physicians would rather you mix the salt and water before you put it up your nose, just FYI.
Here’s how Gallaher’s recommends building up your lung capacity. Every morning and night, stand on
your toes, tip your head far back, and take really deep breaths—exhaling slowly and “allowing the
chest to sink first, followed by the lungs.” Or, maybe don’t smoke cigarettes in the first place.
We’ve got an upcoming episode on the deadliest toys in history. Drop a comment down below if
you played with a killer toy and lived to tell the tale. Thanks for watching—see you next time!