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11
he were to sell it as it comes from the cow. With this excuse I have
nothing to do. If the public choose to be parties to the arrangement by
which an indefinite amount of dilution, according as may be convenient
to the seller or necessary for his trade interests, shall be permitted,
provided that the price of the article sold be not varied, no one
can interfere with the tacit contract. But it is my place to proclaim the risk
which the public run in thus submitting to the habitual adulteration of so
common an article of food as milk, and especially to raise my voioe against
a practice the danger of which the poorer classes of the community cannot
guard against, even if they should be aware of its extent. We take a great
deal of trouble to secure the purity of the water in dwelling houses, and
to guard against its contamination from house-drain emanations, and
from the emanations from cesspools; but with all our care a wholesale
poisoning may take place because the article received into houses and used
as milk is diluted with water mixed with the contagium of typhoid fever.
That Islington is no better than other parts of London with regard to
the purity of the milk sold in it, has been shown by a series of analyses
made by Professor Wanklyn, some of which I proceed now to extract from
the account given of them in the "Milk Journal." I shall abstain from
mentioning on this occasion the names of the delinquents : they
may be discovered in the periodical from which I quote. But, should the
fraud be perpetuated, I shall keep at my office a record of the names and of
the results On the analyses which any of our parishioners may inspect.
Presuming that good milk of average richness and neither skimmed nor
watered, contains approximately, according to Professor Wanklyn's analysis,
12.0 per cent. of solid matters (dry at 212°) and gives about 10 per cent. of
cream, and that milk which has been skimmed, but not watered, contains
about 10 per cent, of solids, the figures which follow will tell their own tale
of adulteration practised upon the milk. I only give instances where the
milk has been found deteriorated on more occasions than one and recently; and
I may add that the list includes the names of dairymen not supplying the
poor exclusively, some of them being persons carrying on a large trade
among well-to-do families.
Date Cream Solids
1871. percent. percent
A March 3 6.0 9.56
„ 3 10.0 10.76
June 6 11.24
„ 9 9.0 10.94
„ 17 6.0 9.62