Abstract
The Bishop’s Block site in downtown Toronto contained the foundations of four townhouses constructed between the 1830s and 1860s, which were occupied as private residences into the early twentieth century. From this site came a ceramic container of “Atkinson’s Celebrated Parisian Toothpaste,” a commercially prepared product developed in the late 1850s to appeal to people worried about having a bright smile, sweet breath, and impeccable hygiene. Cleanliness and social acceptability became ever more intertwined during the Victorian era, while epidemics remained a grim reality. In this context we see toothpaste transform from a product used by a narrow segment of the population at the beginning of the nineteenth century into a more widely adopted badge of cleanliness at the close of the nineteenth century.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Eva MacDonald for putting together the Small Finds session at the Society for Historical Archaeology conference, which inspired me to research this topic. She also gave me very helpful input and edits throughout the writing process. I would also like to thank Anatolijs Venovcevs, Alexis Dunlop, and Miranda Brunton for their feedback leading up to my conference presentation, and Anatolijs in particular for photographing the celebrated toothpaste container. Finally, I would like to thank my parents William and Susan Coleman, as well as Heidy Schopf who very kindly looked over my paper and gave me invaluable editing recommendations.
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Coleman, C. A Delightful Odor to the Breath: Toothpaste in Nineteenth-Century Toronto. Int J Histor Archaeol 20, 730–742 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-016-0377-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-016-0377-y