How did folks rid their homes of bed bugs in the old days befor DDT?

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How did folks rid their homes of bed bugs in the old days befor DDT?

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Itchybutdealing

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Posted 2 weeks ago
Thu Nov 5 2009 12:35:46
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Can we pick up tips from them? Anyone know this obscure bit of history?
Louise

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Posted 2 weeks ago
Thu Nov 5 2009 13:08:37
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According to my mother-in-law, they just lived with them and tried to keep them under control. It was not an uncommon thing to have bedbugs. People would go visiting in the winter, the coats of the visitors would be laid on the bed, and when they returned home...well, let's just say that if they hadn't had bedbugs before the visit, they had a good chance of coming down with a case of them now!

She can remember helping her mom every Saturday with the beds and bedding. This was in the days before vacuums (and washing machines!), so her mother would pick them off with her fingers. I'm not actually sure what she did with them after picking them off...squished 'em , I guess.

No dryers, either. I can't imagine.

My dmil says that once they starting using plasterboard on the walls inside the house, they disappeared. I suspect some DDT and the flystrips hanging over the table may have had something more to do with their disappearance than the plasterboard...

I *really* don't want to go back to the "good old days"...at least not insofar as bedbugs are concerned...

Louise
cilecto

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Posted 2 weeks ago
Thu Nov 5 2009 13:28:34
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Sulfur, arsenic, cyanide, pyrethrum, DE.
earthangel

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Posted 2 weeks ago
Thu Nov 5 2009 18:14:51
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Also up to some point weren't mattresses stuffed with straw, and re-filled annually?

Anyhow I would guess that mattress re-filling would also be a measure taken.
DeathToBBs

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Posted 2 weeks ago
Thu Nov 5 2009 20:28:35
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Louise - 7 hours ago »
According to my mother-in-law, they just lived with them and tried to keep them under control.
She can remember helping her mom every Saturday with the beds and bedding. This was in the days before vacuums (and washing machines!), so her mother would pick them off with her fingers. I'm not actually sure what she did with them after picking them off...squished 'em , I guess.
Louise

My question to Louise is what did your MIL and her mom do about couches and toys and tables and chairs, etc. to help control bbs since bbs can also live in other things besides beds.

As far as what she did with the bbs after picking them off. Well I have an idea, she should've boiled water in a bucket and just threw them in there and watch their fate into burning hell.
DeathToBBs

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Posted 2 weeks ago
Thu Nov 5 2009 20:50:01
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earthangel - 2 hours ago »
Also up to some point weren't mattresses stuffed with straw, and re-filled annually?
Anyhow I would guess that mattress re-filling would also be a measure taken.

Yes, this is true. Hence the saying "making your bed". People really did used to make their beds in the old days, literally. They made them from straw. Now, by the term "make your bed" in modern times means just putting sheets on the mattress and/or make sure the sheets do not look messy. Also called "fixing your bed". Why should we fix our beds, are they broken? LOL! Just thought I share that little tidbit.
hathead

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Posted 2 weeks ago
Thu Nov 5 2009 20:50:51
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i wonder about the other furniture too, in the old days
but my plumber told me that when she was young, they got bedbugs
her mother (with 11 children!) washed all the bedding every day!!!
and turned over every mattress every day and picked off the bugs and the eggs

and it took years to get rid of them
amazing story

my plumber is about my age (50 or maybe a bit older)
Vell23

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Posted 2 weeks ago
Thu Nov 5 2009 22:59:14
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Well in the Caribbean my grandmother said they used kerosene oil, she said they don't like oil, someone else told me that to, but I don't advice y'all to do that cuz it is flammable, but yea she said kerosene worked
parakeets

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Posted 1 week ago
Fri Nov 6 2009 19:39:58
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I heard that in some Algonquin tribes (the tribe my grandmother was from belonged to the Algonquin Nation) they would follow a "scorched earth" policy where every several years they would burn everything down to the ground, move, and start the vilage over again. Scientists now know that it is very wise to rotate the crops and move the plantings to different fields every couple of years, so what the Natives did made a lot of sense. I realize how the same policy could also address clutter, and bedbugs too. I went to a bed bug conference where they referred to people who threw everything out when they moved to make sure they didn't take bedbugs with them as following a "scorched earth" policy.

(Note: I'm not sure how much of this is true or just lore. I don't even know if there were already bedbugs on our continent or if the Europeans brought them when they arrived here.)
Louise

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Posted 1 week ago
Sun Nov 8 2009 0:38:30
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DeathToBBs - 2 days ago »

My question to Louise is what did your MIL and her mom do about couches and toys and tables and chairs, etc. to help control bbs since bbs can also live in other things besides beds.
As far as what she did with the bbs after picking them off. Well I have an idea, she should've boiled water in a bucket and just threw them in there and watch their fate into burning hell.

Okay, I asked my MIL about this today. She just chuckled. She said didn't really have a whole lot of "stuff" (toys, books, clothes, etc.), and they weren't really a problem in other pieces of furniture (at least not that she can remember). They were mainly in the mattresses and the walls. The walls were made of wood boards - major cracks! Her mother would pour boiling water down the walls, making sure to get every crack, in order to kill the bedbugs hiding there. Eventually they papered their walls and painted it with something called "calcimine" (I think that's what she said) which had lime in it, and apparently the bedbugs didn't like lime very much.

She and her brother slept on a straw mattress, and the straw would be replaced and the cover would be washed in hot water.

Her parents had a "real" mattress, although it apparently had a zillion pleats. She can remember her father jumping up out of bed every once every couple of weeks and exclaiming that he just couldn't sleep!!! (Both her father and her brother reacted quite badly to the bites; she and her mother "weren't ever bitten"...) Her parents would then go and sleep on the floor of the dining room. The next morning her mother would work on their mattress, picking off the bugs (and I assume the eggs) from each pleat, and washing the sheets (by hand, in hot water, with lye soap and no gloves). She can't recall what her mother did with the bugs she found; she thought she may have squished them or put them into a pot of water or kerosene.

She insists that bedbugs were very common and that most people had them. (Shudder!) I'd like to know how anyone DIDN'T have them in those days!

Louise
BBcoukHome

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Posted 1 week ago
Sun Nov 8 2009 8:02:15
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When you research for long enough you do find a lot of things that people did to control the problem in terms of physical processes because control with chemical products was still an emerging subject. There is a lot of talk about the "bug powder men" who would stand on the street corners and sell their wares. Most appear to have been sulphur based and using products that we now know are not safe to consider.

We even see gases like cyanide being used into the 1940's and there is one case of a scorched earth policy in a large part of London in the 1950's. The whole neighbourhood of railway workers cottages was demolished and burned, a top the pire was an effigy of a bed bug.

I just spotted an interesting reference from a war time diary of a POW in Japan in 1943:

http://www.far-eastern-heroes.org.uk/James_OToole/html/dairy_1943.htm

23-5-43

The bed boards are infested with bugs chaps up all night killing em & shaking blankets, can't keep the bastards down; doesn't effect us so much as we have iron beds & by de-bugging once a week they can be kept down.

I have interviewed people who used such processes up until the 1960's but they lived in areas of the world more adapted to such practices. In such environments I can only assume that the infestations were at such levels that exposure was due to more than just staying away from home.

As for if the Europeans introduced bed bugs to the USA I think you will find that the cave dwellers beat us to that one. A many have found moving without taking bed bugs is difficult, they hide well and not many are prepared to walk away from everything which frankly is not needed with modern treatment options. Strongly believe that bed bugs have been a constant issue for society for millennia and that rather than eradicating them we simple pushed they back into the dark corners where we stopped looking.

Now they have got brave and have pushed back out again and are on the move able to recapitalise on the evolutionary niche that they fill so well and this is due in part because society has changed. No longer do people strip and clean their beds in the same way that they did up until the 1950's. If nothing else it showed the early signs of an infestation and deeper cleaning and treatment could be started early.

We are also a more mobile species that our predecessors' and thus more prone to get exposed that generations before us.

I dare say if you throw in a loss of bite response through unexposed generations and you will increase the numbers that do not respond when initially exposed and thus more people spread unknowingly.

Will modern control be achieved by looking back at what people used to do and encouraging that as well as utilising modern tools and procedures I certainly hope so.

I can feel a wave of nostalgia wafting through me again and I may have to spend the afternoon reading the fine works of Tiffin and Son bed bug exterminators 1705 - 1940's. Enlightening text for anyone interested enough in bed bugs to wade through old English text.

David Cain
Bed Bugs Limited
BugBoy911

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Posted 1 week ago
Sun Nov 8 2009 15:28:16
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Pyrethrum and DE Dust really are two perfect weapons against the bedbug, one providing fast knockdown and the other for long term control and prevention. Whats needed to apply correctly and safely are the correct tools and the knowledge of "how to apply correctly." With all the fancy "Thermal, Freezing," I find its just not necessary and thew working with clients and staying in contact find that defeating bedbugs takes a few weeks and a really good careful first application of contact kill insecticides with no residual to using long term residual prevenatative insecticides to prevent ANY future inhabitants within ANY crack and crevice within a room. If you hit a possible harborage point with the correct pesticide you will make it very difficult for a future infestation to break out. DDT is not necessary in the war against bedbugs, whats needed is fair priced treatments, PCO's that specialize specifically in bedbug elimination and prevention, and enough time in your day to complete such a task. I find the new fancy thermal or the use of DDT have more of a chance for things to go bad than conventional crack/crevice/general/preventative treatments done by one who understands the bedbug.