---
title: "Tarlatan"
description: "Tarlatan is a sheer, heavily sized cotton fabric in open weave, used for ball gowns and costume; green tarlatan became notorious for shedding arsenic."
type: Glossary
url: https://teazle.art/glossary/tarlatan
published: 2026-10-16
updated: 2026-10-16
author: "The Teazle editors"
---

# Tarlatan

*Tarlatan is a sheer, heavily sized cotton fabric in open weave, used for ball gowns and costume; green tarlatan became notorious for shedding arsenic.*

Tarlatan is a sheer cotton fabric in open plain weave, usually heavily sized for stiffness. In the nineteenth century it was used for ball gowns, ballet costumes and decoration, and today it is still used in printmaking to wipe ink from an etching plate.

## Why does it appear in the arsenic story?

Green tarlatan was colored with an arsenical pigment that sat loosely on the cloth. A supplement to the Massachusetts State Board of Health's report for 1883 said that it had repeatedly been linked to poisoning in wearers, because the pigment came off with slight movement, and that green tarlatan dresses had by then become very rare. A report of 1878 found large amounts of aceto-arsenite of copper in all six green tarlatan samples tested, with more arsenic in the dearer cloths.

## Did it cause illness?

Physicians recorded eye, nose and throat complaints. Dr. Arthur Gamgee, quoted in Henry Carr's Our Domestic Poisons, traced conjunctivitis and tonsillitis among ballet girls at the Alhambra theater in London to their green tarlatan dresses, which were found to be loaded with arsenic. The costume color was changed and the girls recovered.


## Sources

1. [Tarlatan](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tarlatan). Merriam-Webster
2. [Fifth Annual Report of the State Board of Health, Lunacy, and Charity of Massachusetts (1883), Supplement, pp. 217-222](https://archive.org/details/fifthannualrepor00mass_2). Internet Archive
3. [Arsenic in Wall-Papers and Dresses, Buffalo Medical and Surgical Journal 17(6): 221-222 (Jan 1878)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9451252/). PubMed Central
4. [Our Domestic Poisons, 3rd ed. (1883), Henry Carr](https://archive.org/details/b21523253). Internet Archive (Wellcome Library copy)

Canonical: https://teazle.art/glossary/tarlatan