The smothering of the fire is even worse. Try smothering a closed fireplace and watch the glass of the doors turn black in a few hours. That's all stuff that would have gone into the room, and into the lungs of those in there, had there not been a door in the fireplace; and even with a door, there is still hazardous material that makes it into the room.
The fire was also a 'dustbin' of sorts, you could incinerate anything if you wanted. But plastics would give off dioxins etc. but there would be no smell from chucking a plastic bag on the fire unless the fire was dying out.
Thinking of others though...
We made our towns and cities 'smokeless zones' many aeons ago due to the soot making buildings black and 'pea-soupers'. Ironically the first smokeless zone in the UK was in the street next to the factory that made 'smokeless coal'. Needless to say the 'smokeless coal' factory was a massive polluter.
Closed fireplaces are a bit better but still dangerous, although (as you note) more outside the house than inside. Wood or coal smoke is as dangerous as car exhaust fumes, or worse, in terms of particulate matter, although of course in most urban areas there is more particulate matter from cars than there is from burning wood or coal. But measured levels of particulate matters in rooms with fireplaces are as high as right next to highways, and often people spend more time in those rooms than they do next to highways.
Anyway, lots of people grew up in houses that were heated with coal or wood fires and only a small part of them got cancer from it, and as I mentioned I had one installed last year because as they say 'it's easy to live to 100: just give up everything that makes it worth to live to 100'. It's just that this is one of my pet peeves to bring up to people (not saying you are one of those) who think they're doing the environment a favor by not burning gas but by burning wood - because hey, wood is 'renewable', right? It's quite strange that so few people know about the health impacts of fireplaces, the scientific literature is crystal clear on it yet I know of very few places where residential burning of wood is subject to regulation, let alone prohibited.
Anyway, I am willing to think differently about open fires, but again, there is an art to having a fire. Building the thing and having it reliably start with just the one match was a skill. I think that the size of the fireplace was also important, to create a draught we could use a broadsheet newspaper opened out and held over the fireplace surround. This would get it going burning with ridiculously huge flames and a rocket-style roar.
Some people just don't get physics and plenty of friend's houses had those horrible wood burning stoves that were a complete waste of time. Alternatively there would be those huge fireplaces with no potential to do the 'newspaper trick' for getting it going. These fires just lacked the airflow that a proper fireplace/grate/fire combo should provide.
It is a pity that I don't have the PAH monitor, the fire and the other variables needed to checkout what you are saying for myself. That said, the PAH monitor only worked on things like benzene, I imagine that there is everything up to and including uranium, asbestos and sulphur to check too.
But then again, a good chimney draws a lot of heat straight up and out of the property. If you're lucky there's a hot-water tank that gets some of the heat.
http://www.ecofan.co.uk/woodstove-ecofans.html
It's a heatsink with a peltier sandwiched in the middle that drives a fan. Works pretty well for wood burners. Also it's just fun to get electrical energy from your stove :)
Typically such houses were built centuries ago for 'cottage industries' such as making cloth. Back then family sizes were much larger so herds of children would also warm the place up. There might also be an actual herd of animals too - pets as well as livestock, e.g. goats.
Also changed is global warming - the pipes would freeze in the 1970's. Nowadays, nada.
There was an art to keeping warm. Most important - the fire. This would be open and powered by coal or wood. It would not be 'turned on' until the evening or early afternoon if it was the weekend (in winter). Once started the fire would suck air from wherever possible so that was the primary source of a draft. To mitigate the draft thick curtains would be the thing. The front door would have a curtain as would internal doors to the living room.
If you wanted to keep the fire 'in' for the next day you could smother the fire in coal and keep the ashes in underneath. Air would by restricted that way so the fire would slowly burn through the available fuel. Rake it through in the morning, top up with more coal and perhaps some kindling (a word I haven't used in a while) and the fire would live another day. The default would be 'off' though.
As for clothing, one word - layers. Wool rather than cotton or anything else. The layers approach also worked for the bed. If you were lucky you might have a hot water bottle, otherwise no heat in the bedrooms.
Due to the thick stone walls heat would be retained in winter and cold during summer. Consequently, regardless of the time of year, there would never be 'T-Shirt' weather indoors. You would be acclimatised to the cold and expect to see your breath in most of the house mid winter. There would also be that thing where the side of you facing the fire would be red hot whilst your back would be freezing. To solve this problem you would need the air to circulate, so no standing right in front of the fire, blocking the heat, even if that was very pleasurable to do.
A cast iron fire grate would be red hot and in your living room. Today's central heating does not do 'red hot' in the living room - radiators don't glow bright red like that although electric 'bar' fires get close.
As for showers, a bath, once a week was it. We actually had a copper bath in front of the fire and that was filled with a hose connected to a twin-tub washing machine. Emptying the bath involved making an actual siphon, there was none of this 'plug' and 'plumbing' convenience. Needless to say it was very easy to dry off in front of the fire and towels would be toasty.
Personally I prefer watching a fire to watching TV.