Curiosities of Civilization

by Andrew Wynter

FOOD AND ITS ADULTERATIONS.

A story is told of a European who, wishing to convince a Brahmin of the folly of his faith in interdicting, as an article of food, anything that once possessed life, showed him, by the aid of the microscope, that the very water which he drank was full of living things. The Indian, thus suddenly introduced to an unseen world, dashed the instrument to the ground, and reproached his teacher for having so wantonly destroyed the guiding principle of his life. We, too, have at home a Hindoo, in the shape of the believing British public, to whose eye Dr. Hassall nicely adjusts the focus of his microscope, and bids him behold what unseen villanies are daily perpetrated upon his purse and person.

The world at large has almost forgotten Accum’s celebrated work, “Death in the Pot;” a new generation has indeed sprung up since it was written, and fraudulent tradesmen and manufacturers have gone on in silence, and, up to this time, in security, falsifying the food and picking the pockets of the people. Startling indeed as were the revelations in that remarkable book, yet it had little effect in reforming the abuses it exposed. General denunciations of grocers did not touch individuals of the craft, and they were consequently not driven to improve the quality of their wares. The Lancet Commission went to work in a different manner. In Turkey, when of old they caught a baker giving false weight, or adulterating the staff of life, they nailed his ear to the door-post, “pour encourager les autres.” Dr. Hassall, like a modern Al Raschid, perambulated the town himself, or sent his trustworthy agents to purchase articles, upon all of which the inexorable microscope was set to work, and every fraudulent sample, after due notice given, subjected its vendor to be pinned for ever to the terrible pages of the Commissioners’ report. In this manner direct responsibility was obtained. If the falsification denounced was not the work of the retailer, he was glad enough to shift the blame upon the manufacturer; and thus the truth came out.

A gun suddenly fired into a rookery could not cause a greater commotion than this publication of the names of dishonest tradesmen; nor does the daylight, when you lift a stone, startle ugly and loathsome things more quickly than the pencil of light, streaming through a quarter-inch lens, surprised in their naked ugliness the thousand and one illegal substances which enter more or less into every description of food that it will pay to adulterate. Nay, to such a pitch of refinement has the art of falsification of alimentary substances reached, that the very articles used to adulterate are adulterated; and while one tradesman is picking the pockets of his customers, a still more cunning rogue is, unknown to himself, deep in his own!

The manner in which food is adulterated is not only one of degree, but of kind. The most simple of all sophistications, and that which is most harmless, is the mixture of inferior qualities of the same substance. Indeed, if the price charged were according to quality, it would be no fraud at all; but this adjustment rarely takes place. Secondly, the mixture of cheaper articles of another kind. Thirdly, the surreptitious introduction of materials which, taken in large quantities, are prejudicial to health; and, fourthly, the admixture of the most deadly poisons in order to improve the appearance of the article “doctored.”

The microscope alone is capable of detecting at one operation the nature and extent of the more harmless but general of these frauds. When once the investigator, by the aid of that instrument, has become familiar with the configurations of different kinds of the same chemically composed substances, he is armed with far greater detective power than chemical agents could provide him with. It is beyond the limit of the test-tube to show the mind the various forms of animal and vegetable life which exist in impure water; delicate as are its powers, it could not indicate the presence of the sugar-insect, or distinguish with unerring nicety an admixture of the common Circuma arrowroot with the finer Maranta. Chemistry is quite capable of telling the component parts of any article: what are the definite forms and natures of the various ingredients which enter into a mixture, it cannot so easily answer. This the microscope can at once effect; and in its present application consists Dr. Hassall’s advantage over all previous investigators in the same field. The precision with which he is enabled to state the result of his labours leaves no appeal: he shows his reader the intimate structures of a coffee-grain, and of oak or mahogany sawdust; and then a specimen of the two combined, sold under the title of genuine Mocha. Many manufacturers and retailers who have been detected falsifying the food of the public, have threatened actions; but they all flinched from the test of this unerring instrument.

The system of adulteration is so wide-spread, and embraces so many of the items of the daily meal, that we scarcely know where to begin—what corner of the veil first to lift. Let us hold up the cruet-frame, for example, and analyze its contents. There is mustard, pepper (black and cayenne), vinegar, anchovy and Harvey sauce—so thinks the unsuspecting reader; let us show him what else beside. To begin with mustard. “Best Durham,” or “Superfine Durham,” no doubt it was purchased for; but we will summarily dismiss this substance by stating that it is impossible to procure it pure at all: out of forty-two samples bought by Dr. Hassall at the best as well as inferior shops, all were more or less adulterated with wheaten flour for bulk, and with turmeric for colour. Vinegar also suffers a double adulteration. It is first watered, and then pungency is given to it by the addition of sulphuric acid. A small quantity of this acid is allowed by law; and this is frequently trebled by the victuallers. The pepper-castor is another stronghold of fraud—fraud so long and openly practised, that we question if the great mass of the perpetrators even think they are doing wrong. Among the milder forms of sophistication to which this article is subjected, are to be found such ingredients as wheaten flour, ground rice, ground mustard-seeds, and linseed-meal. The grocer maintains a certain reserve as to the generality of the articles he employs in vitiating his wares; but pepper he seems to think is given up to him by the public to “cook” in any manner he thinks fit. This he almost invariably does by the addition of what is known in the trade as P. D., or pepper-dust, alias the sweepings from the pepper warehouses. But there is a lower depth still: P. D. is too genuine a commodity for some markets, and it is accordingly mixed with D. P. D., or dirt of pepper-dust.

A little book, published not long since, entitled “The Successful Merchant,” which gives the minute trade history of a gentleman very much respected in Bristol, Samuel Budgett, Esq., affords us a passage bearing upon this P. D. which is worthy of notice.

“In Mr. Budgett’s early days,” says his biographer, “pepper was under a heavy tax, and in the trade universal tradition said that out of the trade everybody expected pepper to be mixed. In the shop stood a cask labelled P. D., containing something very like pepper-dust, wherewith it was usual to mix the pepper before sending it forth to serve the public. The trade tradition had obtained for the apocryphal P. D. a place amongst the standard articles of the shop, and on the strength of that tradition it was vended for pepper by men who thought they were honest. But as Samuel went on in life, his ideas on trade morality grew clearer; this P. D. began to give him much discomfort. He thought upon it till he was satisfied that, after all that could be said, the thing was wrong: arrived at this conclusion, he felt that no blessing could light upon the place while it was there. He instantly decreed that P. D. should perish. It was night; but back he went to the shop, took the hypocritical cask, carried it out to the quarry, then staved it, and scattered P. D. among the clods and slag and stones.”

Would we could say that the reduction of the tax upon pepper had stimulated the honesty of other grocers to act a similar part to that of Mr. Budgett; but P. D. flourishes as flagrantly as ever; and if every possessor of the article in London were to stave his casks in the roadway, as conscientiously as did the “Successful Merchant,” there would be hard work for the scavengers. In the days of Accum it was usual to manufacture peppercorns out of oiled linseed-cake, clay, and cayenne-pepper, formed into a mass, and then granulated: these fraudulent corns were mixed with the real to the extent of seventeen per cent. This form of imposition, like that of wooden nutmegs among our American friends, has, we are happy to say, long been abandoned. The adulterations we have mentioned are simply dirty and fraudulent; but in the cayenne-cruet we find, in addition, a deadly poison. Out of twenty-eight samples submitted to examination, no less than twenty-four were adulterated with white mustard-seed, brickdust, salt, ground rice, and deal sawdust, by way of giving bulk; but as all of these tend to lighten the colour, it is necessary to heighten it to the required pitch. And what is employed to do this? Hear and tremble, old Indians and lovers of high-seasoned food—with RED LEAD. Out of twenty-eight samples, red lead, and often in poisonous quantities, was present in thirteen! Who knows how many “yellow admirals” at Bath have fallen victims to their cayenne-cruets? Nor can it be said that the small quantity taken at a time could do no permanent mischief; for lead belongs to the class of poisons which are cumulative in their effects.