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303
[1913
own. The result was that sixteen persons were detected and summonses were
issued against them. At the hearing of the summonses a great deal of odium
was sought to be cast on the method adopted in obtaining the informal samples
prior to the official ones being taken, which, it may be said, is on all fours
with that which has been pursued in Islington for several years past, with
this exception, that the Council's agents have never dressed themselves, or
smudged their face and hands, so as to represent workmen returning from
their work, as did those employed by the Irish Board.
One cannot see why this should be called trickery. The agents who
purchased the samples, went to the shop in the garb of working men, thus
representing the very class of persons who were habitually and systematically
defrauded by these shopkeepers. Again in no instance was a prosecution
undertaken unless the defendant had persistently sold margarine for butter
to these agents, because it might have so happened, where only one sample
was obtained, that margarine was given for butter through an oversight or a
mere accident. No such plea could be set up in these instances, nor, indeed,
in any case in which the Islington Borough Council have recently prosecuted,
because the official sample has only been taken when the defendant has been
found to be deliberately substituting margarine for butter, and on the result
of the analysis of this sample a prosecution depended.
So that this matter may be clearly understood in the case of these Irish
prosecutions, it must be stated that some of the defendants had sold margarine
for butter on several occasions, previous to the purchase of the official sample
This is seen in the following statement, which gives the number of samples
taken before an official sample was obtained and the number of times margarine
was substituted. It also shows the result of the prosecution, together with
the number of previous convictions against the defendants.