If bread and dripping sandwiches or the plague did not kill them first, our forebears played with lead toys.  Toys made of lead, painted in paint made of lead.  Handed to children at the most orally fixated age, where everything they are given ends up in their mouths.  It’s a wonder anyone survived.

This is a little farmer made by Britains.  She is about to strew corn to the chickens.  Corn made of lead, for chickens made of lead.

Funny thing: lead pencils do not have any lead in them, unlike the children of yesteryear.