Hidden Killers - Season 2

Dr Suzannah Lipscomb takes us back to Tudor times in search of the household killers of the era.

It was a great age of exploration and science where adventurers returned from the New World with exotic goods previously unknown in Europe. An era in which the newly emergent middle classes had, for the first time, money for luxuries and early consumer goods, many of which contained hidden dangers.

The period also saw a radical evolution in the very idea of 'home'. For the likes of Tudor merchants, their houses became multi-room structures instead of the single-room habitations that had been the norm (aristocracy excepted). This forced the homebuilders of the day to engineer radical new design solutions and technologies, some of which were lethal.

Suzannah discovers that in Tudor houses the threat of a grisly, unpleasant death was never far away in a world (and a home) still mired in the grime and filth of the medieval period - and she shows how we still live with the legacy of some of these killers today.

Dr Suzannah Lipscomb looks at the hidden dangers of the British postwar home. In the 1950s, people embraced modern design for the first time after years of austerity and self-denial. The modern home featured moulded plywood furniture, fibreglass, plastics and polyester - materials and technologies that were developed during World War II.