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experience, not only of Fulham, but also of other boroughs
in which the two methods have been tried, conclusively
demonstrates the superiority of the latter method.
With regard to milk, of which no less than 27 per cent.
of the samples were certified to be adulterated, it must not be
inferred that upwards of a fourth of the milk sold in
Fulham is tampered with, as no account can be taken in the
above figures of the actual amount of milk sold by the
various vendors; and supposing, for instance, that two
samples of milk taken from dealers selling gallons a day
each were adulterated, and two samples from dealers selling
200 gallons a day were genuine, while 50 per cent. of the
samples taken would be adulterated, only 4.8 per cent. of the
actual amount of milk sold would be so, and as we find
adulteration to be more common among the small dealers,
the figures do not represent such wholesale sophistication of
milk as at first sight they might seem to. At the same time
it must be borne in mind that the adulteration statistics of
other metropolitan boroughs are put in the same way,
and a comparison between the percentages of adulterated
samples in Fulham and London may fairly be made, by
which Fulham shows very badly, as in the County of
London in 1905 10.6 per cent. of the milk samples were certified
to be adulterated as against 18.3 per cent. in Fulham in
1005, and 27.1 per cent. in 1906.
Of the samples of butter purchased, 30 per cent. were
certified as adulterated, compared with 10 per cent. in 1905.
Of these 120 were purchased unofficially, of which 18 (or
10 per cent.) were found to be margarine, while of those
purchased under the Food and Drugs Acts only 17 per cent.
were condemned. These figures sufficiently illustrate the
prevalence in Fulham of this form of fraud and the difficulty
of bringing offenders to book, for in proportion as the
Inspectors improve their methods of sampling so do the dishonest
traders increase their precautions.
The conviction was secured of a man living in a private
house in another borough who was in the habit of hawking
from house to house what purported to be pure butter sent to