ADULTERATION OF FOOD-THE "LANCET" COMMISSION. Southwood Smith had successfully investigated the condition of the poorer neighbourhoods, had already achieved much good work by the erection of dwellings with a good water supply and efficient drainage, and by promoting the enforcement of the Common Lodginghouses Act, which forbade overcrowding in lodging-houses, and directed the police to enforce the law; but nothing seemed effectual against the constant letting and sub-letting of dilapidated tenements, the owners of which kept in the background. The gin-shops in such neighbourhoods flourish, for they drive a roaring trade amidst a people who are glad to escape from the horrors of the places in which they live, that they may seek temporary forgetfulness amidst the brilliant lights and showy attractions of the tavern or the "palace" bar, where their scanty and ill-prepared food may be supplemented by ardent spirits or heavy beer. But at that time the food and drink consumed by them and their neighbours was found to be often grossly adulterated. This was generally understood, but people were not quite prepared for the revelations made by the Lancet, the leading medical and surgical paper, of which the well known Thomas Wakley, surgeon, member of parliament for Finsbury, and coroner for Middlesex, was editor. Both as member and as coroner Mr. Wakley had became famous for his bluntly outspoken opinions, and though he was a good deal disliked in some quarters, and often ridiculed in others, he was strong and determined enough to hold his own, and to make his voice heard on the subject of several abuses which he set himself to correct. The institution of an "Analytic Sanitary Commission" by the Lancet was one of the methods by which he attacked the system of adulteration, and the results of the investigation of this commission, which was under the superintendence of Dr. Arthur Hill Hassall, were rather startling. Week by week the public learned that almost every article of food and drink consumed at ordinary meals was probably subjected to adulteration before it reached them; and that the substances used were frequently in large proportions, and of a kind exceedingly injurious to health. 229 Not since 1820, when the famous book entitled There's Death in the Pot, by Frederick Accum, gave a shock to the public, had such disclosures been made, and the Lancet commission took a ready way to call the attention both of the sufferers and of the culprits themselves to the results of its inquiries. Dr. Hassall not only went out and about, purchasing samples of all kinds of produce in different neighbourhoods, and afterwards subjecting them to analyses and to searching investigation by the microscope, but the details of his discoveries were published week by week along with the names and addresses of the dealers from whom the articles had been obtained. There can be little doubt that many of the requisites of our daily consumption are still frequently adulterated, although we are now protected by the operation of an act of parliament specially directed to the detection and punishment of dealers who fraudulently mix foreign ingredients with substances sold under the name of pure commodities, but the extent and unscrupulousness of the system of adulteration laid bare by this commission were alarming. The mere admixture of inferior with superior qualities of the same commodity, or the substitution of substances with similar properties for the genuine article, were comparatively unimportant frauds, in face of the fact that actively poisonous ingredients were introduced in large quantities into food and drink for daily consumption, for the purpose either of increasing weight, improving appearance, or enhancing profits by the substitution of a cheaper material. Coffee was mixed with mahogany sawdust, mustard with flour and turmeric, vinegar with sulphuric acid, pepper with dust, ground rice, or linseed-meal; cayenne pepper and curry powder with white mustard seed, ground rice, deal sawdust, salt, and brick dust, while red lead (often in poisonous quantities) gave it colour. Bread bought in cheap neighbourhoods contained alum and salt for the purpose of correcting the sourness and dark colour of the dough made from inferior or damaged wheat. The largely adulterated bread was found in the low-priced loaves of poor neigh bourhoods, but other articles were adulterated without relation to the localities in which they were purchased, and the spurious substitutes were amply present in a very large majority of cases. The presence of alum in bread was almost universal, and it is still often asserted that its use is necessary while people demand a white loaf; but out of twentyeight loaves bought in every quarter of London Dr. Hassall found alum, and in many instances it was present in considerable quantities in high-priced loaves, a fact afterwards explained (in consequence of the indignant remonstrances of the "Pure Bread Company") to proceed from the adulteration of the flour itself with alum before it was purchased by the baker. Tea was proved to be frequently a deadly poison prepared in China, where the desired colour was given to it by the use of gypsum and Prussian blue, while adulteration was effected by a compound of sand, dirt, tea-dust, and broken leaves worked up with gum into small nodules, and containing 45 per cent of earthy matter. These nodules were "faced" with black-lead, Prussian blue, or turmeric, according to the kind of tea to be sophisticated, while French chalk gave the fictitious leaf its spurious bloom. Curiously enough the lower-priced teas were found to be the more genuine; but a good deal was done in the way of redrying tea-leaves which had been used at hotels, clubs, and coffeehouses, and mixing them with bay leaves, sloe leaves, and other substitutes; gum and a solution of copperas being used to give consistency and colour. Coffee, even when sold as genuine, was mixed with chicory. This mixture in certain proportions had been permitted by a Treasury minute of 1840, and the quantity of chicory had increased till Mr. Gladstone brought in a resolution that the words "mixture of chicory and coffee" should be placed on any package containing both ingredients. But the worst of it was that chicory itself was adulterated with roasted acorns and other vegetable substances, dogs' biscuits, burnt sugar, red earth, and baked horses' and bullocks' livers. In fact it was discovered that the articles used to adulterate, were themselves adulterated, and that thus the inquiry would "horrors on horror's head accumulate." The milk of the nursery was mixed not alone with water, but with annatto, flour, starch, and treacle, if with nothing worse; butter was derived from lard and fat; fresh butter from the common salted article; orange marmalade from turnips, apples, and carrots; pickles and preserved fruits were green with verdigris; and the ornamental sweetmeats with which infancy was delighted or pacified, contained Prussian blue, Antwerp blue, gamboge, ultramarine, chromate of lead, red oxide of lead, Brunswick green, and arsenite of copper, while plaster of Paris entered largely into the composition of many of them. We so often hear now of salesmen or others being summoned and fined for attempting to dispose of meat or the carcasses of animals unfit for human consumption, that we may readily believe some forms of flesh food were pretty largely adulterated both with inferior meat and other substances. Happily Smithfield market had been abolished, and some of its evils had been abated. One of the witnesses examined before the commissioners who decreed its fall, had declared that quantities of diseased meat were bought by soup shops, sausage-makers, alamode beef and meat pie shops, &c. One soup shop (a firm which had a large foreign trade), were doing five hundred pounds a week in diseased meat. Anything in the shape of flesh could be sold at a penny a pound, or eightpence a stone. He was certain that if one hundred carcasses of cows were lying dead in the neighbourhood of London he could get them all sold in twenty-four hours. It wouldn't matter what they died of. The London market was very extensively supplied with diseased meat from the country, he said; and he also declared that an insurance office in London in which graziers could insure their beasts from disease, made it a practice to send the unsound animals dying from disease to their own slaughterhouses a hundred and sixty miles from London, to be dressed and sent to the London market. Cattle, sheep, &c., were insured by this office against all kinds of diseases, one of the conditions being that the diseased animals SECULAR EDUCATION-CHEAP NEWSPAPERS. when dead became the property of the insurance company, the party insuring receiving two-thirds of the value of the animal, and one third of the salvage; or in other words, one third of the amount the beast sold for when dead. They were, he said, consigned to a salesman in Newgate Market. This evidence was sickeningly significant, and it is not to be supposed that the sale of diseased and putrid meat had ceased immediately after the condemnation of Smithfield Market, and while the butchers' shambles about Newgate Street, and the slaughter-houses, lanes, and alleys of Cowcross and its neighbourhood were scarcely abolished, especially as we know that in London as well as in other great centres of population continual vigilance on the part of inspectors and officers of the law is still necessary to prevent large quantities of diseased or putrid meat from being quickly disposed of. At the same time it scarcely needs to be mentioned that the descriptions of food into which such meat is converted are found in largest quantities in neighbourhoods inhabited by the poorest part of the population. We may see from what has been already indicated, that the period succeeding the close of the Crimean war was one of considerable excitement, but one also of great social development. Immense efforts were made for the extension of education in the direction of some general system separable from the sectarian difficulty, and yet preserving the means of religious instruction, while, at the same time, schools were established and supported on a basis of merely secular and moral teaching. On the whole, the large balance of opinion was in favour of retaining the reading of Scripture in schools, whether they were professedly founded on an unsectarian or a “secular" basis, the word secular being often interpreted to mean much the same thing as unsectarian, as distinguished from doctrinal religious teaching; and the parents generally concurring in a desire that their children should be taught to regard the authority of the Scriptures as conveying the highest sanction for religion and morals. Several schools, not only for ordinary instruction, but for the maintenance 231 and industrial training of destitute boys and girls, were opened, and were among the most significant institutions of the time. Advances were also to be observed in much of the popular literature. Not only were more periodicals and magazines of the higher class, like the Saturday Review and others, commenced, but a larger number of cheap newspapers and other publications were issued, many of them of an educational and domestic character. The abolition of the newspaper stamp duty in June, 1855, greatly contributed to this movement. This tax had been originally imposed for the purpose of checking the issue of seditious publications. It underwent several changes as to the amount charged, and in the beginning of the present century had stood at fourpence. In 1836, as we have seen, it was reduced to a penny, and at that sum it remained as represented by a red stamp impressed upon every copy of a newspaper. In addition to this there was a heavy duty on each advertisement appearing in a paper, and all these charges combined to make such publications dear, and the knowledge of public events limited and uncertain. No important daily newspaper was published at a less price than sixpence before the abolition of the advertisement duty, but the remission of that tax enabled the proprietors to reduce the price, while many new publications came into existence. The abolition of the stamp duty gave the further relief that was needed to enable enterprising persons to start that great engine of public opinion and public information-the penny newspaper, and both in London and the provinces many influential papers were either originated or considerably enlarged or improved. At first the red stamp was either removed altogether or allowed to stand in lieu of postage, but papers started which needed no stamp, and could be sent through the post. The Morning Star was brought out under the new auspices, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily News soon followed; and eventually the Standard and other high-priced papers were issued at the popular penny, but that was not till after a further remission of charges by the reduction and ultimate abolition of the duty on paper. The period of which we are speaking was a time of transition, and a time, therefore, when many evils that needed remedying were exposed. The aggressive temper which had been exhibited for some months seemed to be strangely emphasized by crimes of violence and cruelty, while commercial laxity and financial disasters were accompanied on the criminal side by extensive and sometimes remarkable frauds and robberies. Among the most prominent of these was the appropriation of trust money by one of the oldest and most respected firms of private bankers in London-the house of Sir John Dean Paul, Strahan, & Bates. The discovery was a great shock to a large number of estimable people, for the head of the firm was associated with many religious societies, and subscribed to numerous charities. Criminal proceedings were taken against the firm, and they were tried in the Central Criminal Court on the 26th of October, 1855, for fraudulently appropriating to their own use certain Danish bonds of the value of £5000 committed to their keeping as bankers by Dr. Griffith, prebendary of Rochester. The case for the prosecution was stated by the attorneygeneral. It was proved that Sir John Dean Paul instructed the secretary of the National Insurance Company to sell Dr. Griffith's bonds; and Dr. Griffith deposed to conversations subsequent to the bankruptcy, from which it appeared that Mr. Strahan and Mr. Bates were accessory to the transaction. Sir F. Thesiger, who appeared for Mr. Strahan, defended him on the ground that the sale of the Danish bonds was effected solely by Sir John Paul; that he received the proceeds; and that there was no proof that Mr. Strahan was privy to the transaction; and further, that Mr. Strahan, having made a disclosure of the circumstances before the Court of Bankruptcy, was not (according to the Act of 7 and 8 Geo. IV.) liable to be indicted on account of such circumstances. Mr. Serjeant Byles, for Sir John Paul, admitted the facts as stated by Dr. Griffith, but said that it was his intention to replace the bonds, as was shown by his subsequently purchasing others to a similar amount. He also maintained that Sir J. Paul, having made a full disclosure in the Bankruptcy Court, was no longer liable to criminal proceedings. Mr. James, for Mr. Bates, rested his case upon his total ignorance of the transaction in question. The court then adjourned to the following morning, when Baron Alderson, having charged the jury, after an absence of half an hour they returned a verdict of guilty against all the prisoners. The judge proceeded to pass sentence. Commenting on the heinous nature of the offence, he observed that all the prisoners had been well educated, and moved in a high position of society. The punishment which was about to fall on them, therefore, would be far more heavy and more keenly felt than by persons in a lower condition of life. It would also, he regretted to say, afflict those who were connected with them. These, however, were not considerations for him at that moment: all he had to do was to say that he could not conceive any worse case of the sort that could arise under the statute upon which they had been convicted, and that being the case, he had no alternative but to pass upon them the sentence which the act of parliament provided for the worst class of offences arising under it, that was, that they be severally transported for the term of fourteen years. Another case which caused great excitement was that of John Sadleir, M.P. for Sligo borough, who in February, 1856, committed suicide on Hampstead Heath, by swallowing a quantity of essential oil of almonds. His body was found early in the morning on the rise of a small mound at the back of Jack Straw's Castle, the head close to a furze bush, the clothes undisturbed, and the hat at a distance. It was taken to Hampstead workhouse. In the course of the inquest the evidence showed that the deceased had been concerned in a series of gigantic embezzlements and forgeries. Two letters written by him before he left the house were laid before the jury. In one of them, addressed to Mr. Keating, M.P. for Waterford, were the words :-"No one has been privy to my crimes; they sprung from my own cursed brain alone; I have swindled and deceived without the knowledge of any one..... It was a sad day for all when I came to London; I can give but little aid to FRAUD AND VIOLENCE-THE "GAROTTE" PANIC. 233 unravel accounts and transactions." The full extent of Sadleir's embezzlements and forgeries was never exactly known. One fraudulent transaction in respect to the Royal Swedish Railway consisted of an over-issue of shares and obligations to the amount of at least £150,000. In respect of the Tipperary Bank, the manager, his brother, had permitted him to overdraw more than £200,000, and, with other fraudulent mismanagement, the deficit of the bank exceeded £400,000. The assets were stated to be little more than £30,000. The misery caused by this infamous confederacy was unspeakable. Not only were the depositors in the south of Ireland-chiefly small farmers and tradesmen-defrauded of their savings, but the shareholders were stripped, for the most part, of everything they possessed. The means taken to entrap the last-named class were unusually nefarious. On the first of February-one month before the crash-the Sadleirs published a balancesheet and report, in which the concern was represented as most flourishing. A dividend at the rate of £6 per cent with a bonus of £3 per cent was declared, and £3000 was carried to the reserve fund, raising it to £17,000. By means of this fabrication a considerable number of persons, most of them widows, spinsters, and half-pay officers, were induced to become shareholders, and lost their all. Endless suits were brought by attorneys who had purchased debts due by the company, against these unhappy people. Some declared themselves insolvent, while others fled to the United States with as much of their property as they could hastily secure. James Sadleir had absconded under circumstances which gave rise to much discussion, and many large financial businesses in London suffered considerably from his frauds. The failure of the Royal British Bank in August, 1856, was also the cause of widelyspread misery and confusion, since a large number of shares were held by persons of comparatively small means. The share capital in this country was stated to be £300,000, of which £150,000 was stated to have been paid up. The debts due to depositors amounted to £500,000, the assets were found to be dis counted bills and other securities which were mostly worthless, and above £100,000 had been advanced to a Welsh coal mine which was not worth one-third of the value. Everybody in the management had been helping himself to the money. A Mr. Gwynne, a retired director, owed £13,600; Mr. John M'Gregor, M.P., the founder of the bank, £7000; Mr. Humphrey Brown, M.P., above £70,000; and a Mr. Cameron, the manager, about £30,000. The unfortunate shareholders were called upon by the Bankruptcy Court to pay £50 on each of their shares; some of them fled to Boulogne and elsewhere, many were ruined, and public confidence was so shaken that for a long time such investments were looked at with much suspicion. The government instituted criminal proceedings against the manager and the most obviously dishonest directors, and in February, 1858, some of them were sentenced to a year's imprisonment. Crimes of violence and murderous assaults were numerous and were attended with great brutality. Street outrages and robbery were also connected with a new method of attack named after the Spanish instrument of execution, the "garotte" or "garota." The assailant, coming suddenly from behind, placed his arm round the neck of his victim, so that by a sudden constriction of his muscles great pressure was exerted on the throat and the head was forced back, while an accomplice robbed the half-strangled sufferer of watch, money, and other valuables. There was seldom time to cry out, for the attack was entirely unexpected, and the person robbed was mostly left in a half-insensible condition. Assaults of this kind became so frequent that something like a panic was the result, until fear was succeeded by indignation, and heavy sentences were demanded against some of the "garotters" who had been arrested. Many of the London shops exposed "anti-garotters" for sale, in the shape of short sharp daggers, loaded canes, life-preservers, and "knuckle-dusters" or thick leather gloves, covering part of the hand and fitted with projecting iron spikes or plates cut into facets, a modern reproduction, in fact, of the old Roman cestus. Swordsticks and revolvers were commonly carried by men who lived |