The seven curses of London

by James Greenwood

“Now, I am prepared to show,” continued the hon. gentleman, “that the exaggeration of the noble lord—I do not say intentional exaggeration, of course—is just as great in the matter of weights and measures as in that of adulteration. Probably he is not aware that in the list of persons employing weights that are inaccurate—I do not say fraudulent; no distinction is drawn between those who are intentionally fraudulent and those who are accidentally inaccurate, and that the penalty is precisely the same and the offence is just as eagerly detected. Now the noble lord will probably be surprised to hear that many persons are fined annually, not because their weights are too small, but because they are too large.”

Probably, however, his lordship, who has evidently given much attention to the subject, is master of this as well as all other branches of it, and is not so much surprised as it may be assumed the less knowing President of the Board of Trade was when the anomaly was brought under his notice. Probably Lord Cecil is aware, that in a very large number of businesses, articles are bought as well as sold by weight by the same shopkeeper and at the same shop, in such case it is nothing very wonderful to discover a weight of seventeen ounces to the pound. Moreover, it may be unknown to Mr. Bright, but it is quite a common trick with the dishonest shopkeeper to have means at hand for adjusting his false weights at the very shortest notice. It is not a difficult process. Weights are, as a rule, “justified” or corrected by means of adding to, or taking from, a little of the lead that is for this purpose sunk in the hollow in which the weight-ring is fixed. This leaden plug being raised by the point of a knife, nothing is easier than to add or withdraw a wedge of the same material. The knife point raises the leaden lid, the knife handle forces it down at a blow, and the trick is done. At the same time, the coolest rogue with a knowledge that the “leet” is only next door, cannot always manage his conjuring deftly, and this may in not a few instances account for the weight more than just. Besides, taking the most liberal view of the matter, it would be manifestly dangerous to allow a system of “averages” to do duty for strict and rigid justice. The relations between customer and shopkeeper would speedily fall into a sad muddle if the latter were permitted to excuse himself for selling fifteen ounces instead of a full pound of butter to-day, on the ground that he has a seventeen ounce weight somewhere about, and the probability that what he is short to-day the customer had over and above in the pound of lard he bought yesterday.

Again, let us listen to Mr. Bright as an advocate of self-protection. “If the corporations and the magistrates have not sufficient interest in the matter, if the people who elect the corporation care so little about it, I think that is fair evidence that the grievance is not near so extensive and injurious and burdensome as it has been described by the noble lord. My own impression with regard to adulteration is, that it arises from the very great and, perhaps, inevitable competition in business; and that to a large extent it is prompted by the ignorance of customers. As the ignorance of customers generally is diminishing, we may hope that before long the adulteration of food may also diminish. It is quite impossible that you should have the oversight of the shops of the country by inspectors, and it is quite impossible that you should have persons going into shops to buy sugar, pickles, and cayenne pepper, to get them analysed, and then to raise complaints against shopkeepers and bring them before magistrates. If men in their private business were to be tracked by government officers and inspectors every hour in the day, life would not be worth having, and I should recommend them to remove to another country where they would not be subject to such annoyance.”

With a knowledge of the source from which this expression of opinion as to commercial morality emanates, one is apt to mistrust once reading it. Surely a line has been inadvertently skipped, a line that contains the key of the puzzle, and reveals the refined sarcasm that lurks beneath the surface. But no—twice reading, thrice reading, fails to shed any new lights on the mystery. Here is Mr. John Bright, the President of the Board of Trade, the working man’s champion, and the staunch upholder of the right of those who sweat in honest toil, to partake plentifully of untaxed food and drink, putting forth an extenuation for those who, under guise of honest trading, filch from the working man, and pick and steal from his loaf, from his beer jug, from his sugar basin, from his milk-pot, in short, from all that he buys to eat or drink. “My own impression is,” says the Right Hon. President, “that adulteration arises from competition in business.” Very possibly, but does that excuse it? We are constantly reminded that “competition is the soul of trade,” but we should be loth to think that such were the fact if the term “competition” is to be regarded as synonymous with adulteration, or, in plain language, robbery. “It is quite impossible that you should have persons going about endeavouring to detect the dishonest tradesman in his peculations, with a view to his punishment.” Why is it impossible? Must not the repose of this sacred “soul of business” be disturbed, on so trivial a pretext as the welfare of the bodies of a clodhopping people, who are not commercial? So far from its being “impossible” to substitute vigilant measures for the detection of the petty pilferer who robs the poor widow of a ha’porth of her three penn’orth of coals, or the fatherless child of a slice out of its meagre allowance of bread, it should be regarded by the Government as amongst its chief duties. Other nations find it not impossible. In France a commissary of police has the right to enter any shop, and seize any suspected article, bearing of course all the responsibility of wrongful seizure. In Prussia, as Lord Cecil informed the House, “whoever knowingly used false weights and measures was liable to imprisonment for three months, to be fined from fifty to a thousand thalers, and to suffer the temporary loss of his rights of citizenship. Secondly, where false weights and measures were not regularly employed, a fine of thirty thalers may be imposed, or the delinquent sent to prison for four weeks. Thirdly, the adulteration of food or drink is punishable with a fine of 150 thalers, or six weeks’ imprisonment. Fourthly, if poisonous matter or stuff be employed, the offender is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years. Fifthly, where adulteration was proved to have caused severe physical injury, a sentence of from ten to twenty years’ imprisonment might be passed. And yet in this country offences of this nature could only be punished by the imposition of a penalty of a fine of £5, with costs.” These are not laws of yesterday. They have stood the test of many years, and French and Prussians find it not “impossible” to continue their salutary enforcement. But it is curious the extraordinary view men in authority amongst us at times take of the licence that should be permitted the “trader.” I remember once being present at a County Court, and a case tried was that between a wholesale mustard dealer and a cookshop keeper. The cookshop keeper declined to pay for certain mustard delivered to him on the ground that his customers would not eat it. Indeed, it could hardly be called mustard at all, being little else than flour coloured with turmeric, and, backed by medical testimony, the defendant mainly relied on this point, i.e., that it was not mustard at all, for a verdict. But the judge would not hear of this; in his summing up he remarked that it was idle to contend that the stuff was not mustard; it was mustard in a commercial sense, whatever might be its quality, and thereon gave a verdict for the plaintiff, and for the amount claimed.

I must confess that at the time I had my doubts as to this being sound law, but after the declaration of the President of the Board of Trade, I am bound to admit the possibility of my being mistaken. “Competition is the soul of commerce;” competition is the parent of adulteration; adulteration is theft as a rule,—murder as an exception. The loaf that is composed of inferior flour, rice, potatoes, and alum, is the “wheaten bread” of “commerce.” The poisonous liquid composed of a little malt and hops, eked out with treacle and coculus indicus, is the beer of “commerce.” And, according to the same ruling, a lump of lard stuck under the butter-shop scale, or the inch snipped off the draper’s yard, or the false bottom to the publican’s pot, constitute the weights and measures of “commerce.” All these little harmless tricks of trade are, it seems, within the scope of a tradesman’s “private business,” and according to the President of the Board of Trade, if a tradesman in pursuit of his private business is to be watched and spied over for the malicious purpose of bringing him within the grasp of the law, why the sooner he quits the country, and settles amongst a more easy-going people, with elbow-room proper for his commercial enterprise, the better for him.

Undoubtedly, the better for him and the better for us. I would make this difference, however. When his iniquity was discovered, he should not go altogether unrewarded for his past services. He should be assisted in his going abroad. He should not be called on to pay one penny for his outward passage, and, what is more, he should be supplied with substantial linsey-wolsey clothing, and his head should be cropped quite close, so that the scorching sun of Bermuda or Gibraltar might not upset his brain for future commercial speculation.

It needs, however, something more persuasive than the “mustard of commerce” to induce us to swallow with satisfaction the President’s assertion, that “to a large extent adulteration is promoted by the ignorance of customers,” nor are we immensely consoled by the suggestion that “as the ignorance of the customer diminishes, the adulteration of food will also diminish.” Decidedly this is a bright look out for the ignorant customer! There is to be no help for him, no relief. He must endure to be cheated in weight and measure, and slowly poisoned in the beer he drinks, and the bread he eats, until he finds time and money to provide himself with a scientific education, and becomes an accomplished scholar in chemistry, able to detect adulteration at sight or smell. Is this what the President of the Board of Trade means, or what is it? He cannot mean that the imposture is endured because the consumer will not take the trouble to avail himself of the laws made for his protection, because he is distinctly informed that although there are such laws, they are rendered inoperative because of the “impossibility” of having inspectors and detectives going about prying into the “private business” of the shopkeeper, and annoying him. If the ignorance of the honest man is to be regarded as the fair opportunity of the rogue, then there appears no reason why the immunity enjoyed by the fraudulent shopkeeper should not likewise be the indulgence allowed to the professional thief. It is the “ignorance of the customer” that enables the cheat to impose on him bad money for good, or a forged signature for one that is genuine. It is the ignorance of the green young man from the country as regards the wicked ways of London, that enables the skittle sharper to fleece him with ease and completeness. Undoubtedly, if we were all equally “wide awake,” as the vulgar saying is, if no one had the advantage of his neighbour as regards cunning, and shrewdness, and suspicion, and all the other elements that constitute “a man of the world,” then the trade of cheating would become so wretched a one that even ingrain rogues would for their life-sake cultivate the sort of honesty that was prevalent as the best policy, though very much against their natural inclination; but it might possibly be found that there are thousands and tens of thousands of simple people who would prefer to remain in “ignorance,” having no desire to become “men of the world” in the sense above indicated, and electing for their souls’-sake to be lambs with a fleece to lose, than ravening wolves, whose existence depends on the fleecing of lambs.

Apropos of the practice of cheating by means of the adulteration of foods and drinks, it may not be out of place here to mention that during the discussion a member in whom Mr. Bright expressed great confidence, announced that the use of alum in bread, so far from being injurious, was positively beneficial. Doctor Letheby, however, is of a somewhat different opinion. Recently, at the Society of Arts, he read a paper on the subject. Here are his opinions on the matter:

“By the addition of alum, inferior and even damaged flour may be made into a tolerable looking loaf. It is the property of alum to make the gluten tough, and to prevent its discoloration by heat, as well as to check the action of the yeast or ferment upon it. When, therefore, it is added to good flour, it enables it to hold more water, and so to yield a larger number of loaves; while the addition of it to bad flour prevents the softening and disintegrating effect of the yeast on the poor and inferior gluten, and so enables it to bear the action of heat in the progress of baking. According to the quality of flour, will be the proportion of alum, and hence the amount will range from 2 ozs. to 8 ozs. per sack of flour. These proportions will yield from 9 to 37 grains of alum in the quartern loaf, quantities which are easily detected by chemical means. Indeed, there is a simple test by which much smaller quantities of it may be readily discovered. You have only to dip a slice of the bread into a weak solution of logwood in water, and if alum be present, the bread will speedily acquire a red or purplish tint. Good bread should not exhibit any black specks upon its upper crust; it should not become sodden and wet at the lower part by standing; it should not become mouldy by keeping in a moderately dry place; it should be sweet and agreeable to the taste and smell; it should not give, when steeped, a ropy, acid liquor; and a slice of it taken from the centre of the loaf should not lose more than forty-five per cent. by drying.”

Again, speaking of the cruelty and dishonesty of the various “sophistications” practised by the vendors of food as regards the inefficacy of the laws made for its suppression, the good doctor says: