View report page

286
1913]
manufactured for adulteration of tea; also that the leaves of the beech, plane,
elrn, poplar, willow, fancy oak, hawthorn and sloe, and were coloured with
plumbago or blacklead, gum, indigo, or Prussian blue, tumeric, Chinese
yellow, Chinese clay, soapstone or French chalk, rose pink, Dutch pink,
vegetable red and yellow dyes, cream yellow, Venetian red, carbonate of
copper, arsenite of copper, chromate and bi-chromate of potash and carbonate
of lime and magnesia. Milk was mixed with water, anatto, flour, starch,
treacle, sheep's brains and chalk. And flour with alum, hydrated sulphate of
lime, rye, Indian grain, rice, pea and bean flours, the ground and dressed hulls
of wheat, barley and oats, bone earth and plaster of Paris, also with powdered
flints, probably the result of grinding. And confectionery was coloured with
dangerous or even poisonous substances; thus red sweets were dyed with
vermilion, red lead or sulphate of mercury; yellow sweets with chromate of
lead and gamboge; brown sweets with umber and sienna; blue sweets with
Prussian blue and ultramarine; purple sweets with Prussian blue and
cochineal; green sweets with Brunswick green (a mixture of chromate of lead
and Prussian blue); while others were coloured Scheeles green or arsenite of
copper and carbonate of copper; and in the sugar coatings of cakes, white
lead was discovered.
It is no wonder in view of adulterations such as these, which were
common alike to the food of the poor and of the rich, that "The Times" in
its leading article on July 25th, 1855, exclaimed, "Death is not only in the
pot, it is everywhere; not only in our food and our drink, but in the very
medicines which should cure our diseases."
Nevertheless, so far as can be ascertained it does not appear that any of
the great English boroughs sought local parliamentary powers to check the
growing evil, although in the early "fifties" the citizens of Cork obtained
authority under a local Act of Parliament to protect themselves against
adulteration, whose provisions enabled them to appoint a "Market Jury," who
had power to seize adulterated goods, and who did good work, as told by
Sir John Gordon, then Mayor of the City, and an Apothecary, to the Select
Committee. Among other things he narrated how on one occasion they
seized, on its arrival from England, a large consignment of flour which looked
like ground wood, but which was really "the hulls of wheat, barley and oats,
but so well dressed as to have all the appearance of fine flour." It was used
to adulterate flour, which was afterwards sold at 10½d. the 7 lbs., but immediately
the seizure was made the flour dealer raised his price to one
shilling.