Ob. 1741. Rebecca Freeland, She drank good ale, good punch and wine, And lived to the age of 99.
Macklin, the comedian, who died in 1797, for upwards of thirty years was a daily visitor at the Antelope, in White Hart Yard, Covent Garden. His usual beverage was a pint of hot stout; he said it balmed his stomach and kept him from having any inward pains. Whether from the effects of this inward “balming” or not, Macklin undoubtedly lived to the age of 97 years.
In Daniell’s British Sports there is an account of Joe Mann, gamekeeper to Lord Torrington. “He was in constant morning exercise, he went to bed always betimes, but never till his skin was filled with ale. This he said, ‘would do no harm to an early riser, and to a man who pursued field sports.’ At seventy-eight years of age he began to decline, and then lingered for three years. His gun was ever upon his arm, and he still crept about, not destitute of the hope of fresh diversion.”
The next instance, to be found in Hone’s Year Book, illustrates, not so much the tendency of beer and ale, when taken in large quantities, to make men healthy, wealthy, and wise, as to make them fat. On November 30, 1793, died at Beaumaris, William Lewis, Esq., of Llandismaw, in the act of drinking a cup of Welsh ale, containing about a wine quart, called a “tumbler maur.” He made it a rule, every morning of his life, to read so many chapters in the Bible, and in the evening to drink eight gallons of ale. It is calculated that in his lifetime he must have drunk a sufficient quantity to float a seventy-four gun ship. His size was astonishing, and he weighed forty stone. Although he died in his parlour, it was found necessary to construct a machine in form of a crane, to lift his body in a carriage, and afterwards to have the machine to let him down into the grave. He went by the name of the King of Spain, and his family by the different titles of prince, infantas, &c. {423}
One of the great teetotal arguments against the use of malt liquors, one which the advocates of total abstinence generally fall back upon when beaten on every other point, is that beer is adulterated. This assertion, if it could be substantiated, would undoubtedly cut away the very foundation of our argument as to the wholesomeness of ale and beer. We must, then, shortly consider the point. Time out of mind the brewers have been accused of adulterating their ale and beer, with what truth, at any rate at the present day, we shall see anon. Opium, henbane, cocculus indicus, and we know not what noxious drugs besides, it has commonly, and we think somewhat recklessly, been asserted, find their way into the brewing vessels. Some time ago M. Payen, a French chemist of distinction, created quite a panic amongst the drinkers of pale ale by asserting, in a lecture at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, that strychnine was prepared in large quantities in Paris for exportation to England, where it was employed to give, or to aid in giving, the esteemed bitter flavour to pale ale. This statement appearing in Le Constitutional, and other French papers, soon found its way into the English journals, to the consternation of the drinkers and purveyors of this beverage.
The leading firms of Burton ale brewers at once threw open their breweries and stores in the most unreserved manner, and “The Lancet’s Analytical Sanitary Commission” undertook an inquiry on the subject. Forty samples of beer, all brewed before the promulgation of the statement, were analyzed by the commission, as well as samples taken by other analysts at the request of Messrs. Allsopp and Sons. Needless to say, not a particle of strychnine was discovered. Half a grain of strychnine will destroy life, and a grain would be required to impart to one gallon of beer its ordinary degree of bitterness. The flavour of hops and strychnine differs. To bitter the amount then brewed at Burton 16,448 ounces of strychnine would be required. Not so much as 1,000 ounces of strychnine were manufactured in the whole world yearly.
In a quaint pamphlet entitled Old London Rogueries, the following statement is made seriously:—“There ought also to be compiled a delectable and pleasant treatise by such as sell bottle-ale, who, to make it fly up to the top of the house at the first opening, do put gunpowder into the bottles while the ale is new, then by stopping it close make people believe it is the strength of the ale, when, being truly sifted, it is nothing indeed but the strength of the gunpowder that worketh the effect, to the great heart-burning of the parties who drink the same. This is a truly strange and marvellous artifice, and must be reckoned {424} among the lost inventions.” We wonder if these cunning retailers of the olden time ever used shot as well as powder with their bottled ale, which doubtless would have greatly increased the effect.
In October, 1883, a statement was loudly trumpeted forth from teetotal platforms that 245,000 cwt. of chemicals were used every year in England in brewing. After a good deal of discussion on the subject, it leaked out that the figures had been arrived at by a firm of hop dealers, anxious to run up the price of hops. By a blunder in their calculations they had come to the conclusion that there was a deficit of 245,000 cwt. of hops in this country. From this it was argued that 245,000 cwt. of chemicals were used. This house of cards fell when it was conclusively proved that there were at the time actually more hops in England than were required by the brewers.
With regard to the question of adulteration at the present day, it could be wished that those who are induced by a fanatical hatred of alcohol in any shape or form to make this alleged adulteration a reason for further restrictive legislation on the brewing trade, would take the trouble to look at the reports annually published by the Inland Revenue Commissioners in which this point is dealt with. Here are a few extracts from their report for the year 1881, soon after the repeal of the Malt-tax. “Brewers have no doubt been experimenting with other descriptions of grain, as might have been expected, but we believe that barley, from its peculiar fitness for malting, will in the end maintain its superiority; and we are informed that a new method of preparing inferior barley for brewing purposes promises to be highly successful.” “So far as we are aware, no attempts have been made to use materials in brewing at all detrimental to the public health; and the presence of the Revenue officers in breweries affords fresh security to the public—if indeed any such were needed—against all such practices.”
In the same report Professor Bell, the Principal of the Inland Revenue Laboratory, goes into detail and gives very valuable statistics, showing the way in which the opinion given by the Commissioners was arrived at. In 1881, 8,626 samples of beer were tested, of which 4,666 were analyzed to see if any foreign body had been added, as well as to check the original gravity. Of this large number the whole were nearly correct, but actually 17 per cent, were found not alone to be up to the standard test, but above it; and out of nearly 20,000 brewers, which, in round numbers, was then the extent of the trade in the United Kingdom, only some 300 were even suspected of having used illegal materials. Of the ninety samples of beer submitted for analysis as being suspected {425} to have been tampered with, sixty-three were found to have been “sugared,” but in every instance this occurred at the public-house or beerhouse, a matter which was beyond the control of the brewer, and was as much a fraud on him as on the Revenue and the public. Mr. Bell goes on to state that whatever adulteration prevails is wholly confined to the publican and the beer retailer, and even where it does prevail, at the most the practice means nothing worse than diluting the beer with water and afterwards adding sugar; still, as Mr. Bell remarks, “Reprehensible as the practice is, as being a fraud on the public as well as the Revenue, yet it is satisfactory to know that no adulterant of a poisonous or hurtful character has been detected.”