View report page

ANNUAL REPORT OF THE ANALYST.
Appointed under the Sale of Food and Drugs Act.
TO THE BOARD OF WORKS FOR THE ST. GILES
DISTRICT.
Gentlemen,—
During the twelve months to which this Report refers, ending on
the 31st of last March, I received from your Inspector, Mr. Hoyle,
289 samples of various articles of food, drinks, and drugs, for analysis,
consisting of bread, butter, tea, coffee, cocoa, milk, beer, gin, rum,
whisky, brandy, flour, vinegar, arrowroot, ground rice, mustard,
pepper, sago, tapioca, jam, ginger, chicory, sweets, iced cream, sugar,
preserved green peas, various potted foods, rhubarb, sulphur, opium,
iodide of potassium, sulphate of quinine, and milk of sulphur. It will
thus be seen that not only have a large number of articles been
collected and submitted to chemical investigation, but that the articles
so examined have been of various natures, many of them requiring for
their examination long and intricate processes of analysis. I have
reason to believe that pains have been taken to have attention thus
directed throughout the District to the quality of articles of food,
drink, and drugs generally, and including those that are most liable
to be adulterated. The number of cases in which adulteration has
been detected, I am happy to say, is not great, and, as usual, these
cases have been principally confined to milk, of which twenty-two samples
were adulterated to a greater or lesser extent. There has also been
one case of preserved green peas coloured with copper.
I have the honour to be,
Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant,
17, Bloomsbury Square,
23rd June, 1877.
T. REDWOOD.