William Morris and arsenic and old lace

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/29/william-morris-arsenic-and-old-lace

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William Morris (Letters, 27 May) actively campaigned against many things, but banning arsenic in household furnishings and wallpapers was not one of them. What Morris did express was deep scepticism that any of his customers had been poisoned by the arsenic contained in his wallpapers, even in the damp rooms where they were supposed to release a “silent but deadly” gas, via the action of fungi. Although Morris had no scientific basis for his view, later studies have shown him to have been correct, and 10 years ago, the story of the mass-poisoning of Victorians by arsenical wallpapers was correctly described in a Royal Society of Chemistry publication as “an urban myth”.

Morris & Co removed arsenic from its wallpapers voluntarily in 1880, somewhat later than some of its competitors. Morris was indeed a director of “the world’s largest arsenic producer”, the Devon Great Consols mine near Tavistock, from 1871 to 1875, but resigned his seat long before he became a socialist (1883). However, putting Morris’s face on a bank note seems to me an equally bizarre idea. As well as abolishing money in News from Nowhere (1891), in 1892 Morris refused Gladstone’s offer of being made poet laureate, describing himself as “a sincere republican”. There therefore seems little doubt that he would have refused the current offer also.Dr Patrick O’SullivanEditor, Journal of William Morris Studies

• So, revolutionary beardy William Morris is a proposal for our new £20 note (Editorial, 25 May). How boring. We’re talking of the visual arts and have the opportunity for another outstanding woman to grace our currency. Mary Delaney fits the bill superbly. A confidante of “great men” of the 18th century, she took up her famed botanical decoupage at a mere 72 years of age, after making her name as a dazzling embroideress. Her work still stuns in museums around the world.Pauline WilsonAbingdon, Oxfordshire