Deadly Aduleration and Slow Poisoning Unmasked

The catalogue of frauds and enormities exhibited in the following pages will, no doubt, excite the abhorrence and indignation of every honest heart. Its author is, however, convinced that he will find that he has undertaken a very unthankful office—that his book will be the dread and abhorrence of wicked and unprincipled dealers and impostors of all kinds; and himself exposed to their utmost rancour and bitterest maledictions. But the die is cast: he has discharged a public duty, and sincerely hopes that the Public may be benefited by his disclosures.

It has been justly said, that all attempts to meliorate the condition of mankind have, in general, been coldly received, while the artful flatterers of their passions and appetites have met their eager embraces. And it is no less true, that it has always been the fate of those who have attempted any great public good, to be obnoxious to such as have profited by the errors of mankind. The divine Socrates, whose life was a continued exertion to reprove and correct the overweening and the vicious, died a victim to the Heathen Mythology, on account of his maintaining the unity and perfections of the Deity, and exposing the doctrines and pretensions of the heathen priesthood and the Sophists, and their mercenary views; and, in later times, Galileo would have met a similar fate, had he not bowed to error, and renounced a sublime truth, clear as the glorious orb that was the object of it, and which, soon after, was universally acknowledged. Even the Divine Founder of our Faith and Religion was stigmatized as the broacher of false opinions, and one who misled the people, by his ignorant and malicious accusers, whose frauds and delusions it was the object of his mission to confound and overthrow, as well as to free mankind from the bondage of their errors. But without having the presumption or impiety to compare himself with those benefactors of mankind, or to put his humble endeavours in competition with their godlike attempts, or to expect a similar result from them, it will be a great consolation to the Author of this book, when life is departing the frail tenement of his body, to reflect that he has brought “deeds of darkness to light,”—that he has been the humble means of unmasking to public view the frauds and villanies that are daily and hourly practised on the Public Health and Welfare; and in that “trying hour” his most grateful feeling and homage to English Law will be, that it secures to every man the liberty of expressing his honest indignation and abhorrence of palpable and disgusting fraud and imposture.

Mem.—I have stated at p. 11, on the authority of the author of “The Oracle of Health and Long Life,” that the many sudden deaths that are daily happening in and about the metropolis, are no doubt assignable to the unprincipled and diabolical adulterations of food, spirits, malt liquors, and the other necessaries of life. Since that extract was printed in the pages of “Deadly Adulteration and Slow Poisoning Unmasked,” I am sorry to say, that I have observed numerous instances of the sudden deaths of persons in apparently perfect health, detailed in the London and country newspapers, and even at the very moment that I am penning this remark, I observe, in the columns of the Herald newspaper, accounts of two persons in the prime of life and in good health, whose deaths happened in a similar way.

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DEADLY ADULTERATION AND SLOW POISONING UNMASKED; with Tests for Ascertaining and Detecting the Fraudulent and Deleterious Adulterations, and the good and bad qualities of Wines, Spirits, Beer, Bread, Flour, Tea, Sugar, Spices, Cheesemongery, Pastry, Confectionary, Medicines, &c. &c.
Price 5s. bound in cloth.

Critical Opinions of the Work.

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Deadly Adulteration,
AND
SLOW POISONING;
OR,
DISEASE AND DEATH
IN
THE POT AND THE BOTTLE.

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The able and patriotic Editor of the Literary Gazette, No. 156, in the course of his review of Mr. Accum’s meritorious work on Culinary Poisons, makes the following just and striking remarks:

One has laughed at the whimsical description of the cheats in Humphrey Clinker, but it is too serious for a joke to see that, in almost every thing which we eat or drink, we are condemned to swallow swindling, if not poison—that all the items of metropolitan, and many of country, consumption are deteriorated, deprived of nutritious properties, or rendered obnoxious to humanity, by the vile arts and merciless sophistications of their sellers. So general seems the corruption, and so fatal the tendency, of most of the corrupting materials, that we can no longer wonder at the prevalence of painful disorders and the briefness of existence (on an average) in spite of the great increase of medical knowledge, and the amazing improvement in the healing science, which distinguish our era. No skill can prevent the effects of daily poisoning; and no man can prolong his life beyond a short standard, where every meal ought to have its counteracting medicine.

Devoted to disease by baker, brewer, grocer, wine-merchant, spirit-dealer, cheesemonger, pastry-cook, confectioner, &c. the physician is called to our assistance; but here again the pernicious system of fraud, as it has given the blow, steps in to defeat the remedy: even the physician’s prescription is adulterated!

Mr. Accum’s account of water (i. e. the Companies’ water—the filthy and unwholesome water supplied from the Thames, of which the delicate citizens of Westminster fill their tanks and stomachs, at the very spot where one hundred thousand cloacinæ, containing every species of filth, and all unutterable things, and strongly impregnated with gas, the refuse and drainings of hospitals, slaughter houses, colour, lead, and soap works, drug-mills, manufactories, and dung-hills, daily disgorge their abominable contents) is so fearful, that we see there is no wisdom in the well: and if we then fly to wine, we find, from his analysis, that there is no truth in that liquid; bread turns out to be a crutch to help us onward to the grave, instead of being the staff of life; in porter there is no support, in cordials no consolation; in almost every thing poison, and in scarcely any medicine, cure!

That this denunciation of fraud and villany is not mere assertion, the terrific disclosures that I am about to make (some of which are to be found in Mr. Accum’s book, and in greater detail than the space I have prescribed myself allows) will fully prove to the contrary, and show that it is the duty of the government to protect the public by some legislative provisions, and to prohibit and render penal the nefarious practices in daily use for the diabolical and deleterious adulteration of the necessaries of life, practices which are destructively inimical to the public health and welfare. As Mr. Accum has pointedly said in the preface to his work, “as the eager and insatiable thirst for gain is proof against prohibitions and penalties, and the possible sacrifice of a fellow creature’s life is a secondary consideration among unprincipled dealers,” nothing short of subjecting the offence to the operation of the criminal law seems likely to suppress the wicked and diabolical practices, and secure the public from the silent and unobserved effects of being slowly poisoned: transportation ought to be the mildest punishment of the iniquitous offender. Is it not, as the same gentleman justly observes, a reflection on English law, that “a man who robs a fellow subject of a few shillings on the highway should be sentenced to death, while he who distributes a slow poison to a whole community should escape unpunished,” at most with only the infliction of a trifling fine, which proves to him the inefficiency of the law to restrain him from a continuance in his iniquitous practices? The inefficacy of fines, however large, in deterring offenders from a commission or repetition of the crime is evident, from the inadequacy of the large penalties to which the adultering brewer, grocer, coffee-manufacturer, &c. are subject when detected. For, besides the difficulty of detecting this species of fraud and iniquity, the large profits, which are often several hundreds per cent. enable the culprits to meet the trivial loss which attends a detection, and speedily reimburses them the penalty of a conviction.

“Plures crapula quam gladius,” says the old adage, which, in a free translation, may be paraphrased “Cookery depopulates like a pestilence.” To those versed in the business of disease it is well known that this is no exaggeration. But, dismal as is the destruction of human life from this source, it is by no means equal to that occasioned by the effects of the nefarious traffic in the adulteration of the necessaries of life; the pernicious and destructive mixtures and combinations to which they are subject have produced greater ravages on health, and given a greater empire to death than the united scourges of famine and the sword in combination with the refinements of cookery and the increase of gastrophilism:—they occasion the loss of tens of thousands of human lives every year in the metropolis alone. It has with truth been said that to so alarming an extent have the illicit practices of poisonous adulteration arrived, “that it would be difficult to mention a single article of food which is not to be met with in an adulterated state; and there are some substances which are scarcely ever to be procured genuine.”

These spurious mixtures and counterfeit articles are combined and manufactured with so much skill and ingenuity, as to elude and baffle the discrimination of the most experienced judges. And, for the purpose of ensuring the secrecy of the nefarious traffic, “the processes are distributed and subdivided among distinct operators, and the manufactures are carried on in separate establishments.” The tasks of proportioning the ingredients and that of their composition and preparation are assigned to distinct persons. In fact, “the traffic in adulterated commodities finds its way through so many circuitous channels as to defy the most scrutinizing endeavour of individual exertion to trace it to its source.” And the frequency of the act has rendered the conscience of the offenders callous and indifferent to the consequences. The man who would shudder at the idea of giving a dose of arsenic to a single individual sleeps soundly in his bed, though he knows that he administers as fatal, though a slower, poison to thousands every day. And such a man is the baker, the miller, the wine-merchant, the brewer, the publican, the druggist, the tea-dealer, and every dealer who adulterates an article of food. And yet, those thoughtlessly wicked men suffer their consciences to be seared and bribed to silence through their self-interest and craving appetite for unreasonable and unrighteous gain!

With respect to those “filthy nuisances” the gin-shops and workshops of the wine and spirit dealers, which have not inaptly been termed “the elaboratories of disease and of premature death,” the following remarks, which appeared in the New Monthly Magazine for February, 1828, are dictated in the justest spirit of criticism and of public duty. It is to be wished that all journalists were disposed, in like manner, to denounce fraud and imposture.

“While there is so much prating and preaching about the morals of the people; while the increase of crime is grossly exaggerated, and the necessity of instruction is loudly talked about! when even the lotteries, which of late years did no harm at all, have been given up to the prevailing fashion of affected sanctity, it is quite preposterous that such filthy nuisances as the numerous gin-shops of London should not merely be tolerated, but sanctioned and encouraged by the legislature. We do not speak of regular public-houses, but of those places which are devoted only to the sale of spirits by retail. They cannot be necessary for the purpose of refreshments, and can only, as they do in fact, serve to produce evils of the most lamentable nature.” Who, that has a spark of feeling and integrity in his nature, does not coincide in opinion with the ingenious and accomplished editor of the distinguished periodical, from which this spirited and sensible passage is extracted?

But the truth is, as has been well observed by the author of “The Manual for Invalids,” that it would be difficult to discover any thing in social life that is more virtually neglected than Public Health, which ought to be an object of the greatest concern to all wise and paternal governments, as well as to every influential and well-disposed individual in the nation. “The Public Health and the Public Morals,” as the same excellent writer sagaciously observes, “should be the object of the greatest solicitude on the part of every government, instead of extracting a profit from deception and villany, ignorance and vice. Were the various descriptions of liquors in which alcohol bears so predominant a part taxed to prohibition, there would be less of felony, less of moral degradation, less employment for police magistrates and judges, and less occasion for the executioner. There would be a counterpoise in the reduction of the parochial burthens, and a greater value given to the moral character of the people; but, unfortunately, the produce to the revenue is such as—while it does not prevent the injurious use of spirituous liquors, it enriches the coffers of the nation; and the sacra auri fames has, as well in government matters as in those of the quack, the adulterator, and the impostor, the power of making that appear relatively right which is absolutely wrong.”

Nor is the general and immoderate use of ardent spirits only destructive to the body, but it acts eminently as powerful incentives to vice of every kind. Does the robber pause in his vocation? Does the murderer hesitate to deprive his fellow-creatures of life? They are presently wound up to a reckless sense of their crimes at the gin-shop.—Has the seducer tried all his arts in vain to despoil his unsuspecting victim of peace and innocence? The seductive liquor offers him an easy prey, and leaves his immolated victim polluted, disgraced, and lost to society. The brothel is more indebted to this source than to all the lures of seduction. In fact, the seductive productions of the distillery and the winepress impair the physical strength of the country, and induce incorrigible habits of vice and intemperance.

A reflecting writer has expressed an opinion that the life of man would generally be extended to a hundred years were it not for his excesses and the adulteration of his food; and when we consider how many attain even a greater age, under every disadvantage, we must allow that there is probability in this opinion. When we observe the early disfigurement of the human form, the swollen or shrunk body, the bloated and self-caricatured face, with the signs of imbecility and decrepitude which we continually see, at an age when life should be in its fullest vigour;—when, at every turn we meet the doctor’s carriage; in every street, behold a rivalry of medical attraction; it is impossible not to feel a conviction that something must be essentially wrong in our way of living. This is principally assignable to our improper and unwholesome diet, but more especially to the vile adulterations to which every article of diet is now impudently and wickedly subjected. As the author of the “Oracle of Health and Long Life” observes, in a note to page 31, “it is no doubt to the unprincipled adulterations of food, spirits, malt liquors, &c. that a great number of the sudden deaths, which are constantly happening in and about the metropolis, is assignable. The adulteration, it is true, is not sufficient to cause instant death, but it operates slowly, and silently, and imperceptibly; so as not to excite sufficient suspicion and inquiry respecting the cause. This is not an idle or a random remark, but one founded on much observation and on very probable grounds. It is hoped that it will awaken public attention and inquiry respecting these nefarious transactions.” Following this valuable advice, I will exert myself to the utmost to promote and call into action this necessary duty, and with this intent the following pages were composed, for the collection of the materials of which I have had singular opportunities afforded me.

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I shall divide this interesting portion of my work into two sections; first, the Adulteration of Wines and Spirits, and the Tricks of Wine and Spirit Dealers; and, secondly, the Tests or Methods of ascertaining the Good and Bad Qualities of Wines and Spirits.

The frauds and malpractices in use among the wine and spirit brewers and compounders of the metropolis, and the noxious and deleterious ingredients with which those unprincipled men “make up” the poisonous compounds, that they are daily vending to the public, under the names of wines and spirits, exceed the devices, and are, if possible, of a more deadly operation than the sophistications and vitiated manufactures palmed upon the public by the wicked and avaricious cozeners of all other adulterating trades.

The art or mystery of manufacturing spurious and counterfeit wines and liquors forms a regular trade of great extent in this metropolis, and is carried on with so much skill and ingenuity, and has attained so great perfection, as to render the irony of the witty author of the Tatler no longer figurative; namely, that “the transmutation of liquors under the streets of London was so perfect, that the operators by the power of magical drugs could convert a plantation of northern hedges into a vineyard; could raise the choicest products of the hills and valleys of France under the streets of London; could squeeze Bourdeaux out of the sloe, and Champagne from the apple.”

Nor has the reprobation of the contaminations of wines and spirits with substances deleterious to health been confined to former times; they have been stigmatised on account of their alarming and deadly increase in numerous recent publications. I quote the following artless lines, in which an honest country lad is represented as expressing his abhorrence of his relative, a London wine-merchant’s sophistications, not for the elegance of the poetry, but as conveying an important truth in a plain garb; perhaps its unaffected satire is not ill adapted to awaken attention:

But the particular histories of the corruptions of wines and spirits will be more acceptable to those who are desirous of preserving their health and enjoying their existence comfortably, than quotation; for, were wine and spirit bibbers aware of the abominable and fraudulent processes of adulteration in use among wine and spirit dealers and gin-shop keepers, they would not only heartily join in the exclamation of the “poet of Nature,” “Oh! that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!” but they would be convinced that it is not only high time that the fraud and villany of their selfish and secret poisoners should be unmasked, but also punished and suppressed. For this purpose I shall detail some of the noxious compositions of the wine and spirit dealers of newspaper notoriety, and of the placarding gin-shop keepers, whose gaudy premises, as well as those of other puffers at cheap prices, are designed to catch the eye and arrest the attention of the heedless and unwary. And thus I am inclined to believe that my readers will heartily agree with one who has materially and honourably contributed to expose the villany of adulterators of all kinds, that, in the deterioration and pernicious sophistication of the necessaries and comforts of existence, it may with truth be said, in a civil as well as in a religious sense, that “in the midst of life we are in death.”

Factitious wines are generally, in the slang phraseology of the adulteration trade, “doctored” or “cooked,” in order to give them particular flavours, and render them similar to the wines they are intended to represent. Thus bitter almonds (or the leaves of cherry laurel, which are cheaper) are added to give a nutty flavour; sweet briar, orris-root, clary, cherry-laurel-water, and elder-flowers to form the bouquet of high-flavoured wines; alum to render young and meagre red wines bright; cake of pressed elderberries and bilberries to render pale faint coloured port [or red sumach, &c. to tinge spoiled white wines red] of a deep rich purple colour;[A] oak saw-dust, [sloes,] and the husks of filberts, to give additional astringency to unripe red wines; and a tincture of the seeds of raisins to flavour factitious port wine; [with a variety of other ingredients, such as spice, &c. to render wine pungent]. (The Vintners and Licensed Victuallers’ Guide, p. 259.) And in the same work, p. 225, among other deleterious ingredients, “sugar of lead”[B] is directed to be used for fining or clearing cloudy white wines. That book and works of a similar kind are the accredited repositories of the arcana of sophistication for the publican and small wine and spirit dealer, and gin-shop keeper; but, as Mr. Accum (Culinary Poisons, p. 87) says, the more wholesale adulterators and “large capitalists,” whether wine and spirit brewer or ale and beer brewer, obtain, on payment of a considerable fee, a manuscript from the brewers’ and spirit-dealers’ druggist, containing the whole mystery of managing and drugging wines, spirits, beer, or ale; or they may be initiated in the respective crafts and mysteries, by oral instruction, and practical demonstration, on payment of a handsome douceur.

The above is the general method of doctoring or “cooking” wine and spirits. The following are the particular and more ingenious methods of sophistication in use among the advertising and placarding venders of “genuine old Port” and “amber-coloured” or “fine pale Amontillado Sherry.” Both sorts are generally compounded of a small quantity of the real article either in a good or a deteriorated state, according to the taste or conscience of the compounder, with the necessary proportions of Cape wine, cider, sal tartar, colouring matter, brandy or rum cowe, or other adulterating slops, which are calculated to form a tolerable basis, and to bear a resemblance in colour and flavour to the wine desired to be imitated. As the communication of the particular ingredients of which these factitious wines are composed cannot but be acceptable to my readers, I shall give a particular account of each of the processes.

Factitious, or fabricated port wine is usually made by mingling or blending together in large vats Benecarlo, or black strap, which is a strong coarse Spanish wine of inferior quality; Red Cape; a sufficient quantity of Mountain to soften the mixture and give it the appearance of richness; a portion of sal tartar and gum dragon (the object of the first ingredient is to cause the wine to crust soon when bottled; of the second, to impart a fullness and roundness of flavour and consistence of body); colouring matter, or berry-dye, which is an extract of German bilberries; brandy or rum cowe, which is the rinsings of casks containing those liquors, obtained by throwing in a few gallons of water into them after the liquor is drawn off, and leaving it closely bunged up till the cask has imparted the flavour of the liquor to the water; and a quantity of spoiled cider, of which many thousand pipes are annually brought to the metropolis for this purpose. Sometimes a small quantity of port is made use of, with rectified spirits and coarse brandy, and, instead of the colouring articles above mentioned, red saunders wood, or the juice of elderberries or of sloes is employed. According to the Mechanics’ Magazine, the chemical analysis of a bottle of cheap port wine was as follows: spirits of wine, three ounces; cider, fourteen ounces; sugar, one and half ounce; alum, two scruples; tartaric acid, one scruple; strong decoction of logwood, four ounces. And this is the “genuine old port,” of unrivalled flavour and quality, of the London fabricators and compounders. “Amber-coloured Sherry,” or “the fine pale Amontillado Sherry,” of the advertising wine-factor and placarding gin-shop keepers is manufactured of coarse highly-brandied brown Sherry, Cape wine, and brandy cowe; to which are added extract of almond-cake or gum benzoin, to impart a nutty flavour; cherry-laurel-water, to give a roundness of flavour; lamb’s blood, to fine the mixture and clear or decompose its colour; and oyster-shells and chalk, for the purpose of binding and concentrating the whole; and this delectable composition the knavish adept in the art of deleterious combination palms on the credulity of the public under the inviting title of “fine pale Sherry, of peculiar delicacy and flavour.” Had the late Dr. Kitchiner been aware of these sophistications he would not have said “that, of the white wines, Sherry is the most easy to obtain genuine, and is the least adulterated.”

The “fine old East-India Madeira, at unprecedented cheap prices, for ready money only,” of these worthies is a commixture of a portion of East-India Madeira with Teneriffe, Vidonia, or Direct Madeira,[C] and East-India Cape.[D] The “fine old soft-flavoured West-India Madeira, of capital quality,” and, of course, at exceedingly low prices, is manufactured from a portion of genuine West-India Madeira and a sufficient modicum of old thin Direct Madeira; and should the precious commixture be approaching to acidity the kindness of the sophisticating compounder obliges the palate of his poor gulled customer with the insertion of a few ounces of carbonate of soda. The genuine colour of pure Madeira (one of the best off-hand methods of forming an opinion of the goodness of Madeira is, as the author of The Private Gentleman and Importing Merchants’ Wine and Spirit Cellar-Directory judiciously says, by its colour) is much paler than that of Sherry. When it has a pinkish hue it is a sign of its having been adulterated with Teneriffe.

“The Old London Particular,” or any other imposing and dainty appellation extracted from the adulterating vocabulary of the artful sophisticator, is generally composed of a combination of cheap Vidonia, common dry Port, Mountain, and Cape wine, properly fined and reduced to the requisite colour by means of lamb’s blood.

The Cape wine generally sold to the public is composed of the drippings of the cocks from the various casks, the filterings of the lees of the different wines in the adulterators’ cellars, or from any description of bad or spoiled white wines, with the addition of brandy or rum cowe and spoiled cider. “The delicately pale Cape Sherry, or Cape Madeira, at astonishingly low prices,” and, of course, for ready money, is composed of the same delicious ingredients, with the addition of extract of almond cake, and a little of that delectable liquor, lamb’s blood, to decompose its colour, or, in the cant phraseology, to give it “complexion.”

In fact, the impositions practised in regard to this species of wine fully justifies the reprobation of the writer in the 43d number of the Quarterly Review. “The manufactured trash,” says the judicious critic, “which is selling in London under the names of Cape Champagne, Burgundy, Barsac, Sauterne, &c. are so many specious poisons, which the cheapness of the common and inferior wines of the Cape allows the venders of them to use as the bases of the several compositions, at the expense of the stomach and bowels of their customers.” By mixing these wines with the lees of other kinds, and fining and compounding them with various drugs, they endeavour to counterfeit the more costly vintages of Spain and Portugal, and even France.

It is unnecessary to state that the “Old Vidonia Wines,” the “Fine old delicately-pale Bucellas,” and the “Unequalled and beneficial Tent,” for the sick and infirm, and the offices of our holy religion, “sold remarkably cheap, for ready money,” by those honest and tender-conscienced gentry, are base substitutes for the genuine articles. To say nothing worse, Tent, Mountain, Calcavella, &c. is Port wine, transmuted by the addition of capillaire, &c. And, from the report of a late case which came on before the Court of King’s Bench, it appears that the scarce and costly Tokay, the Lachryma Christi, and La Crême Divine, are seldom any other than identical Sicilian wines of an inferior description; the current price of which in the market is about twelve pounds sterling per hhd. Oh! friend Bull, how the sophisticating rogues trifle with thy dainty palate! Hadst thou not better rest contented with thy soul-stirring, heart-cheering, vinum Britannicum,—thy home-brewed ale, and Sir John Barleycorn, instead of filling thy dear stomach with a medley of foreign slops. Oh, John, when wilt thou learn wisdom and find a loyal pleasure in paying thy quota of tax on articles of home manufacture! Alas! Johnny, thou art a sadly wayward fellow! there is more hope of “the wild ass’s colt” than of thee, when thy longings after foreign luxuries seduce thy palate and blind thy understanding!

Nor are the costly French wines less exempt from the devices and sophistications of the imps of the “Father of Deceit.” The “super-excellent” or “genuine Claret of exceedingly fine description and of the choicest quality” of the advertising and placarding dealers, is a composition of inferior claret and a quantum sufficit of Spanish red wine and rough cider, with the colouring berry-dye. The colouring process is sometimes performed by the agency of “black sloes,” “a dozen new pippins,” or a “handful of the oak of Jerusalem,” are often kindly introduced to improve its quality; and to tickle the taste of the consumer of this wine, or of Port, “an ounce of cochineal” is considerately thrown into a hogshead of liquor “to make it taste rough.”

When one views this goodly enumeration of items, it must be admitted that the burthen of the old song does not appear overcharged:

And it gives us cause to be satisfied of the truth of Milton’s remark:—

O ye gulled Jacky Bulls, who revel in bibbing “costly French wines,” how angry you will be with me when I tell you that while you think you are sipping “Genuine Sparkling Champagne,” you are titillating your exquisite gullets with merely plain home-made English gooseberry wine; or, what may be more alarming to you, with worthless Champagne wine of very dangerous and deleterious quality and tendency; whose effervescence or sparkling is produced by disengaging the carbonic acid of the wine by the agency of sugar. To gain this end, the solid sugar is corked up in the bottle, so that the disengaged gas is retained under the pressure of the cork, ready to fly out whenever it is removed. The agency of litharge of lead, in its worst form, is often invoked in the manufacture of Champagne, as well as of other white wines, in order to correct and render bright such wines as have turned vapid, foul, or ropy, or to prevent the progress of any ascescent quality that they may have acquired. The least pernicious mode of manufacture of this wine is by adding to the spoiled Champagnes, a portion of the low, or “third quality” wines from the indifferent vineyards, and occasioning the admixture to undergo a fresh fermentation, by the action of strong chemical agents; and then it is vended as “prime still Champagne.”

Some estimate may be formed of the extent of the adulteration of this costly wine by the following notice in Dr. Reece’s Monthly Gazette of Health for 1829.—“A company of Frenchmen,” says that honest abominator of roguery and quackery of all kinds, “have contracted with some farmers in Herefordshire for a considerable quantity of the fresh juice of certain pears, which is to be sent to them in London, immediately after it has been expressed, or before fermentation has commenced. With the recently expressed juice they made last year an excellent brisk wine resembling the finest sparkling Champagne; and we are told that the speculation was so productive, that they have resolved to extend their manufactory.” To this account I can, from a knowledge of the concern, perfectly assent, except that the Anglo-French manufacture does not exactly represent the first quality of Champagne wine, as it is quite impossible for any imitative preparation to represent that quality of wine.

Many thousand dozens of wines are sold in the course of the year in London as old wines, under names which have scarcely any other title to the appellation of wine than similarity of colour. “A particular friend of mine,” says a correspondent to the Monthly Gazette of Health, “purchased at a public sale by the hammer, a quantity of ‘super-excellent’ claret, at the rate of 50s. per dozen, which, on delivery, his butler discovered to be the same wine he had exchanged with a wine merchant at the rate of 20s. per dozen, being what is termed pricked. The worthy Baronet complained of the imposition, but the auctioneer would not listen to him. He had tasted it previously to bidding for it, and that was enough for him.”

Another source of great profit to the cheap dealers, the gin-shop keepers, and the advertizing wine-men, arises from the size of the bottles in which they vend their compounds and mixtures, ycleped “wine.”

In the bottle-trade six various sizes are sold, namely:

The full quart, of which twelve contain three gallons of liquid, old measure.

The thirteens, of which there must be thirteen to contain three gallons of liquid, old measure.

The fourteens, of which there must be fourteen to contain three gallons of liquid, old measure.

The small fourteens, of which there must be fourteen and a half, to contain three gallons of liquid, old measure.

The fifteens, of which there must be fifteen, to contain three gallons of liquid, old measure.

The sixteens, of which there must be sixteen, to contain three gallons of liquid, old measure.

The two last sizes are those sold to the gin-shops and cheap wine venders.

The above are the frauds practised by wine-dealers, by vending bottles of inferior dimensions to the legal wine quart, which contains thirty-two ounces; but many of the bottles imposed on unwary purchasers do not contain more than twenty-four ounces, and few more than twenty-six ounces.

The readiest way of detecting the fraud is by measuring the suspected wine-bottle by Lyne’s graduated glass measure, which holds half a pint, and is divided into ounces, &c. Or, if you have not a measure of the kind by you, weigh the contents of the suspected bottle and compare the weight ascertained with the following corresponding weights:

1 legal wine quart = 32 ounces; or, 256 drachms.

By subtracting the weight of the contents of the suspected bottle from this weight, you may precisely ascertain the deficiency.

In the adulteration of spirituous liquors, the advertising and placarding compounder exerts equal ingenuity and fraud, and obtains an equally lucrative traffic as from wines. The “Curious old soft flavoured Cogniac, ten years old,” of those nefarious dealers, is compounded of Spanish or Bourdeaux brandy, neutral flavoured rum, rectified spirits, British brandy, British brandy bitters, cherry-laurel-water, extract of almond cake, extract of capsicums, or of grains of paradise, burnt sugar or colouring matter. But more generally that “medicinal” compound British brandy is palmed on the public, for real Cogniac brandy. This diabolical farrago of mischievous ingredients, which was held forth to the public by interested individuals concerned in the undertaking, as calculated “entirely to supersede the use of Cogniac brandy,” and “likely to prove of great benefit to the health and comfort of the poorer and middling classes of society,” is compounded of oil of vitriol, vinegar, nitrum dulce, tincture of raisin stones, tinctura japonica, cherry-laurel-water, extracts of capsicums or of grains of paradise, orris-root, cassia-buds, bitter almond meal, colouring matter, &c. from which enumeration of “neat” articles it appears that this “almost superior brandy to Cogniac,” as its modest manufacturers term it, is a slow poison, and equally deleterious in its effects, if not more so, than that vile composition—“cheap gin.” That this is not an unfounded insinuation against “the pure and unadulterated” article, sold, no doubt, “at astonishingly low prices, and for ready money,” will appear from the clear statement of the process of each manufacture given by the author of The Wine and Spirit Adulterators Unmasked, pages 179 and 198. “British brandy,” says the honest Unmasker, “is composed of drugs, gin only flavoured by them. In the manufacture of gin, the ingredients are put into the still, with a spirit which has been previously rectified, and the condensed evaporation which is derived from the whole constitutes the article gin. In the preparation, however, of British brandy, the mixture is made without any process through a still, being compounded more like a quack doctor’s nostrum. The only part of the manufacture wherein distillation is concerned, consists merely in rectifying either rum or malt whiskey, to deprive them of their essential oils, so that they may be reduced to a state as tasteless as possible, and thereby more readily receive the spurious flavours intended to be imparted to them.

“The other articles are added in their raw state.—Should it be inquired why the same process as is adopted in the manufacture of gin, should not succeed in making British brandy, the answer is, because, in distilling the necessary drugs with the rectified spirit, the flavour would neither retain the sufficient predominancy, nor be sufficiently fixed to enable the article to sustain the desired likeness to brandy, besides that the effect of several of the ingredients, such as the oil of vitriol, and nitrum dulce, which are used to impart a resemblance of the vinosity possessed by genuine French brandy, would be completely destroyed.”

“Fine old Jamaica rums of peculiar softness and flavour” are manufactured of low-priced Leeward-island rum, ale, porter, or shrub, extract of orris-root, cherry-laurel-water, and extract of grains of paradise, or of capsicums. Sometimes the composition consists of low-priced Jamaica rums, rectified spirits of wine, and the Leeward-island rums, with the necessary acid vegetable substances, to give them false strength and pungency and the requisite flavour; and thus the purchaser is accommodated by the “caterers of comfort,” with a rum which “cannot” be adulterated, of exceedingly fine and superior flavour, remarkably cheap and for ready money only. The ripe taste which rum or brandy that has been long kept in oaken casks obtains, is imparted to new brandy and rum, by means of a spirituous tincture of raisin-stones and oak saw-dust. And the water distilled from cherry-laurel-leaves is frequently mixed with brandy and other spirituous liquors to impart to them the flavour of the cordial called Noyeau. Sugar of lead not unfrequently forms part of the flavouring ingredients of the retailers’ rums.

But the perfection of adulteration is in gin,—cheap gin—“the real comfort,”—patronized by the poor for its supposed genuineness! This infernal compound of combustibles is distinguished from the other slow poisons to which a large portion of the population of “the queen of cities,”—our “modern Carthage,” make themselves the willing victims, by the poisonous nature of the ingredients of which it is composed.[E] These are the oils of vitriol, turpentine, juniper, cassia, carraways, and almonds, sulphuric ether or phosphorus, extracts of orris-root, angelica-root, capsicums or grains of paradise, sugar, and heading. The aid of lime-water and of spirits of wine is also invoked in the course of the operation. The purposes of these mischievous ingredients are as follow: The oil of vitriol is to impart pungency and the appearance of strength, when the liquor is applied to the nose, while the extract of capsicums or of grains of paradise is designed to perform the same office for the taste. The extracts of orris and angelica roots give a fulness of body and the coveted flavour called cordial to the large proportion of the compound, which consists only of water. The remaining oils are to give strength, the sugar to sweeten the composition, and the lime to unite the oils with the spirit; while the sulphuric ether, phosphorus, and heading are intended to give the semblance of being highly spirituous from the fiery taste, and the appearance of the light bead which is caused to appear and remain for some time on the surface of the noxious compound. The introduction of the white arsenic is intended to promote an irritable and feverish thirst, so that the poor deluded consumer may be compelled to have recourse to fresh potations of the “liquid fire.” The Hollands of the gin-shop keepers and advertising dealers is a commixture of a small portion of the genuine article with rectified spirits, peppermint, cloves, &c. The cordial, called Shrub, says Mr. Accum, Culinary Poisons, p. 257, frequently exhibits vestiges of copper, which arise from the metallic vessels employed in the manufacture of the liquor. But, had that ingenious gentleman been thoroughly acquainted with the manufacture of shrub in the cellars of spirit dealers, he would not have been quite so moderate in his remarks respecting this seductive “cordial.”

Such is a list of the detestable articles palmed on the public, by the avaricious and unprincipled dealers and cozeners in the factitious wines and spirits on constant and extensive sale throughout every quarter of the metropolis. The credulity and infatuation of the public in the consumption of the deadly draughts are truly astonishing, and are a verification of the sarcasm that were the vision of death to appear to the tippler in each glass of liquor that he puts to his lips, yet he would still persevere in habits which are inevitably destructive of health and comfort, and eventually productive of disease and death. “Oh blindness to the future!—” Surely old Jeremy Taylor’s observation respecting Apicius is equally applicable to the inveterate consumer of wines and spirits—“It would have been of no use,” says that orthodox old divine, “to talk to Apicius of the secrets of the other world, and of immortality; that the saints and angels eat not! The fat glutton would have stared awhile and fallen a-sleep. But if you had discoursed well and knowingly of a lamprey, a large mullet, or a boar, animal propter convivium, and had sent him a cook from Asia to make new sauces, he would have attended carefully, and taken in your discourses greedily.” The same feeling I expect will be displayed towards this book by the inveterate dram-drinker: he or she will curse the author, as a busy-body, for his intermeddling with, and abusing their “dear comfort.” People are apt to conclude that a practice sanctioned by time and numbers must be right; but there cannot be a conclusion more fallacious. The grossest possible absurdities have been sanctioned for the same reasons. No doubt some will defend their practice of dram-drinking and immoderate potations of wines, and of malt and spirituous liquors by the unsound plea that they find no ill effect from their self immolation from drinking the deadly draughts; but reasoners so deluded should recollect that, though there are persons who are insensible to the immediate effects from strong liquors, either spirituous or malt, yet to those who seldom or ever use them, they act as quick poisons; not waiting their tedious operation in the form of fever, gout, stone and gravel, dropsy, bile, rheumatism, head-ache, scurvy, cancer, asthma, consumption, palsy, brain fever, apoplexy, mania, and a long list of other frightful and loathsome diseases. In truth, as the author of “The Oracle of Health and Long Life” forcibly observes, “they paralyze the nervous system and the heart’s action; and the tremulous hand, the palsied limbs, the bloated and inflamed countenance, and the faltering tongue, super-induced by their immoderate use, indicate that premature death lays claim to his deluded and self-destroying victim!”

Nor is this the worst consequence of the immoral and unsocial act: for the unhappy wretch who is addicted to the habitual and vicious use of ardent spirits, besides subjecting himself to the attack of “the whole army of diseases” which assault the human frame from intoxication, often exhibits a more awful demonstration of the consequences of violating the laws of morality and social decency: I allude to the extraordinary fact of the spontaneous combustion of the body, which has often terminated the existence of old and inveterate drunkards.

This combustion is occasioned in such persons from the whole fabric of the body being so changed, by the constant practice of spirit-drinking, with inflammable matter (probably hydrogen); or, chemically speaking, it acquires so powerful an attraction for oxygen, that it suddenly takes fire, (in some instances spontaneously, in others from the flame of a candle or too powerful a heat of the fire,) and the body is reduced to a cinder.

The persons in whom this dreadful visitation of apparently supernatural punishment for the violation of the laws of nature has occurred, have been chiefly women. In some cases the unhappy sufferers have been found burning, “sometimes with an open flame flickering over the body, sometimes with a smothered heat or fire, without any open flame whatever; whilst the application of water has occasionally seemed rather to quicken than impede the combustion.

“In no instance has the fire or flame thereby excited in the body been so powerful as essentially to injure the most combustible substances immediately adjoining it, as linen or woollen furniture.

“The event has usually taken place at night, when the sufferer has been alone, and has commonly been discovered by the fœtid penetrating scent of sooty films, which have spread to a considerable distance. The unhappy subject has in every instance been found dead, and more or less completely burnt up.”

The above awful account is quoted from Dr. Mason Good’s “Study of Medicine;” but relations of numerous cases of the above horrid termination of existence may be found in the Philosophical Transactions, Vols. 63 and 64, in Dr. Young’s “Medical Literature,” and in a variety of Foreign Journals, medical as well as general.

Let all those who are addicted to habitual intoxication and the consumption of the infernal compositions of nefarious dealers in spirits, read and re-read the above quotation, and may they take warning, and renounce that unhappy propensity.

It is true that wine and malt liquors, and even occasionally spirits, are far from prejudicial, when properly made, and used with discretion; but as it is almost impossible to find them in that state, except when home-made or home-brewed, there is certainly much risk in drinking them. Yet, strange to say, though the stoutest among us has no predilection for the “King of Terrors,” inclination and habit are so strong and seductive, that the greater part of mankind still persevere in habits with a perfect knowledge of their inevitable consequences,—that they are destructive of health and inductive of death. For the purpose of awakening the attention of those who are under this unhappy delusion, is the design of the present publication. The most grateful sensation to a well disposed heart is the salvation of a fellow creature from misery and perdition. I beseech heaven that I may be successful in my undertaking.

But the base and iniquitous adulterations of wines and spirits are not the whole of the “illicit doings” of the advertisers and placarders, and their worthy compeers, the commission-men, the wine-hawkers, and the dock wine-merchants. “Among the deceptions practised by this class of dealers,” says the author of Wine and Spirit Adulterators Unmasked, p. 157, and he is no indifferent authority on the subject, “may be reckoned the delivering of a less quantity of wine than is charged for in the invoice, the disposing of a wine with a false description of its being of some particularly fine and noted vintage; the sending of another wine, of an inferior quality, as the one which had been tasted and sold; together with a variety of other peculations. The gin-shop-keepers and advertising dealers in spirits not only give short measure of their adulterated ingredients, but if they sell any thing like the genuine article they dilute it much below (often one hundred per cent.) the legal strength, namely, seventeen per cent. below proof, according to Sykes’s hydrometer.”

For the following valuable information respecting the ingenious devices of the “gentlemen” wine-merchants, I am indebted to the pages of “The Private Gentleman and Importing Merchant’s Wine and Spirit Cellar Directory:”—A work replete with the most useful information on the subject, as containing the best and most practical instructions on the selection, purchase, management, medication, and preservation of foreign wines, of any work extant in any language. It has been well said by a judicious critic, “No book is more wanted than a good, practical, and complete one on this important subject: it would be worth its weight in gold, and its author would be a public benefactor to his country. More than nine-tenths of the wine imported into this country is either spoiled or impoverished by the ignorance or mismanagement of the wine-dealer or the purchaser; as at present conducted, the management of a wine-cellar is, in most cases, all random, hap-hazard, and guess-work. Ought we to be surprised at the result, the consequent loss or injury of the wine? It is, therefore, with considerable satisfaction we recommend this little work as a valuable addition to our domestic economy.”

“As many people place reliance on the genuineness of wines purchased in the Docks, and think that such purchases are more exempt from fraud and imposition than if obtained from the dealer’s shop or vaults, and that they will have them ‘neat as imported,’ it is necessary to caution them to be on their guard in respect of the persons with whom they deal. Inferior articles, false descriptions, substitutions for the one selected, and various other peculations, take place there as frequently as is the case when wines are purchased at the dealer’s shop, &c. Other impositions of as flagrant a nature consist in transferring wines of a most inferior sort into pipes recently emptied, and originally filled with wine of the best vintages and flavour; and as the outside of the cask bears the marks of the foreign houses of character, from whose vintages the wines contained in the casks were furnished, this fraud is found to turn to very good account. By delusions of this kind, the most detestable trash ever vended under the name of wine is frequently foisted on purchasers. But if this statement is not sufficient to satisfy those who fondly suppose that by making their purchases in the ‘Docks’ that they will always have their expectations of obtaining unadulterated wine fulfilled, they should recollect that the owners of wines in the ‘Dock’ are at liberty to mix them in whatever manner and proportions they please, provided they come under one denomination as to colour and pay the same duty. These remarks will, I trust, satisfy my readers that ‘an extensive range of counting-houses,’ ‘numerous clerks employed’ and professions of ‘the high character of the house,’ should not supersede the necessity of making a little inquiry as to the fair dealing and integrity of the vender.”

The foregoing “exposé” of trickery and fraud, and the shameful latitude and extensive means afforded designing and iniquitous men, of practising their roguery on the credulity and folly of the public, as well as to the loss of the revenue, evidently shows that our present system of excise-laws is defective and absurd: indeed, it is disgraced by the most perfect anomalies; for, while the brewer and vender of spices, &c. are subjected to the strictest survey of the excise, and the frauds and adulterations used in those trades are punished, (when detected, though it must be acknowledged that that happy consummation of justice is rather of rare occurrence even with those sophisticators,) in the most prompt and efficient manner, the venders and compounders of “seductive poison,” in the form of drams, are allowed to manufacture and sell their deleterious inventions to an enormous extent, and with an effrontery disgraceful to civilized society. But, perhaps, the old artful plea of the “immense wealth,” and “the great value of the property,” of “the large capitalists” engaged in the nefarious trade, (the worst and most futile of all pretentions,) have entitled the “deputations” of wine and spirit dealers and compounders and distillers that have, from time to time, waited on the Chancellors of the Exchequer, to “undoubted consideration;”[F] and where the worthies have been detected (a chance which but seldom happens) in their iniquitous practices a prudent private compromise, or sum-total-fine, for the offence and the expenses of the Excise-solicitor, “have shrouded the offenders and their misdeeds in impenetrable secrecy from the public eye.”

Another lame and false doctrine that prevails in “government logic” is, that where extensive concerns, whether brewery, distillery, wine-factories, or quack-medicine-factories, yield an important contribution to the revenue, no strict scrutiny needs to be adopted in regard to the quality of the article from which such contribution is raised, provided the excise and customs do not suffer by the fraud. “But,” as that intrepid advocate of fair dealing, Mr. Accum, forcibly and justly observes, “the principles of the constitution afford no sanction to this preference, and the true interests of the country require that it should be abolished; for a tax dependent on fraud must be at best precarious, and must be, sooner or later, diminished by the irresistible diffusion of knowledge. Sound policy requires that the law should be impartially enforced in all cases; and if its penalties were extended to abuses of which it does not now take cognizance, there is no doubt that the revenue would be abundantly benefited.”

Were they all influenced by the same honest, bold, and disinterested motives as the ill-fated Accum, who has been offered a vindictive sacrifice on the altar of trading cupidity and fraud. Every honest man must allow that the expatriation of that gentleman is a disgrace to the country which he has adorned and benefited by his talents, and ought to be deplored as a loss to the real interests of science and humanity.

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Though there are many tests in use for the discovery of the presence of mineral poisons, such as litharge and other preparations of lead, or pungent vegetable nostrums, namely extract of capsicums, &c. in wines and spirits, yet it must be admitted that there are no efficient tests for detecting the presence of the foreign agents above mentioned in either wines or spirits, except by chemical analysis; because, in the fraudulent combination which takes place, those articles bear the largest proportions which possess the same chemical properties as do the wines and spirits with which they are compounded. The injurious tendency of the vegetable poisons which form a component part of the spurious compositions which are vended under the denomination of cheap wines and spirits, and their injurious and lingering effects are so imperceptible on the human constitution, that, as the author of “The Oracle of Health and Long Life” observes, they must be deadly indeed to produce immediate injury, so as to give suspicion of their presence.

The presence of sugar of lead, or any other deleterious metal in wine, may be detected by filling a glass with wine, and adding a few drops of Harrowgate-water, or melted brimstone, when the wine will with the last mentioned ingredient becomes blackish, and with the other it will immediately produce a black sediment; but if it be unadulterated it will only lose its clearness, taste, and colour. Or the adulteration may be discovered by adding one part of water saturated with sulphuretted hydrogen gas, acidulated with a small portion of muriatic acid, to two parts of wine, or any other liquid, in which the presence of lead is suspected, when a blackish coloured precipitate will settle at the bottom of the vessel, which, being dried and fused by means of the blow-pipe, will yield a globule of metallic lead. The prussiate of potash is occasionally employed for the same purpose: a drop or two being sufficient to show a white or greyish precipitate in any fluid in which lead is contained. When white wines have an unusual degree of sweetness, are of a darker colour than their age and body seem to warrant, and particularly when their use, or that of the red wines, is followed by pains in the stomach, it may be concluded that they have been adulterated with lead.

The process to detect the presence of alum in wine, is to take some fresh prepared lime-water, and to mix the suspected wine with it, in about equal proportions; if after the mixture has stood about a day, a number of crystals is found deposited at the bottom of the vessel, the wine is genuine; but, if alum is present in the wine, there will be no crystals, but a slimy and muddy precipitate. Or the presence of alum may be detected, by dropping some solution of subcarbonate of potash into the wine, when, if the alum be present, there will be a violet coloured precipitate, or at least cloudiness, which will vanish again if a few drops of caustic, potash, or of muriatic acid are added to the mixture.

Where artificial colouring matter is suspected in wine, put a quarter of a pint of the liquor into a phial, with an ounce of fresh charcoal finely pulverized. Then shake the mixture well for a few minutes, when, if the wine is impregnated only with its own natural colouring, that colour will be chemically destroyed, and the wine, when filtered, will yield a clear limpid fluid; but, if the wine is artificially coloured, such artificial colours will not be acted on by the charcoal, and the mixture will appear unchanged.

Extraneous colours in wines may also be detected by means of acetate of lead. If this test produces, in red wine, a greenish grey precipitate, it is a sign that the wine is genuine. Wine coloured with the juice of bilberries, or elderberries, or Campeachy wood, produces, with acetate of lead, a deep blue precipitate; and fernambouk wood, red saunders, and the red beet, produce a red precipitate by the agency of the acetate of lead.

According to Cadet (Dictionnaire de Chimie, art. Vin.) this species of adulteration may be detected by pouring into the suspected wine a solution of sulphate of alumine, and precipitating the alum by potash. If the wine is pure, the precipitate will have a bottle green colour, more or less dark, according to the natural hue of the wine. But if the colour has been artificial the following will be the results:—

But Dr. Henderson says, in his learned work, entitled “The History of Ancient and Modern Wines,” p. 342, that the simple test pointed out to him by his friend Dr. Prout is equally satisfactory, and may be applied either to red or white wines. “On adding ammonia to wines, which had the appearance of being genuine, he observed that the precipitate was of an olive green colour; shewing the analogy between the colouring principle and the vegetable blues, most of which are rendered red by acids, and green by alkalis. This conjecture is, in some measure, confirmed by the recent discovery of M. Breton, professor of chemistry in Paris, with respect to the cause of that disorder in wines known by the name of tournure. Wine thus affected acquires a disagreeable taste and smell, loses its red colour, and assumes a dark violet hue, which changes are found to proceed from the presence of carbonate of potash, in consequence of the decomposition of the tartar contained in the liquor. To restore the natural colour and flavour, if the disease be not of long standing, it is only necessary to add a small quantity of tartaric acid, which, combining with the potash, forms cream of tartar, as is shown by the subsequent deposition of crystals. Revue Encyclopedique, November, 1823. In genuine wines, the colouring matter seems to partake of the character of a lake, partly held in solution by the excess of acid present, and partly combined with the earthy phosphates; for, in the precipitates obtained from these wines by means of ammonia, it appears in union with the triple phosphate of magnesia. Even the white wines of Xeres, Madeira, and Teneriffe, exhibit this mixed precipitate; their colouring matter being probably derived from the red grapes which enter into their composition. In fictitious wines, on the other hand, such as those procured from the black currant, gooseberry, orange, &c. the last mentioned salt was thrown down by ammonia, but more gradually, in less quantities, and without any admixture.”

The method of ascertaining the strength, or quantity of spirit or alcohol in wines is by the following process, for the discovery of which the public is indebted to Mr. Brande.

“Add to eight parts, by measure, of the wine to be examined, one part of a concentrated solution of subacetate of lead; a dense insoluble precipitate will ensue; which is a combination of the test-liquor with the colouring, extractive and acid matter of the wine. Shake the mixture for a few minutes, pour the whole upon a filter and collect the filtered fluid. It contains the brandy, or spirit, and water of the wine, together with a portion of the subacetate of lead. Add, in small quantities at a time to this fluid, warm, dry, and pure subcarbonate of potash, (not salt of tartar, or the subcarbonate of potash of commerce); which has previously been freed from water by heat, till the last portion added remains undissolved. The brandy or spirit contained in the fluid will become separated; for the subcarbonate of potash abstracts from it the whole of the water, with which it was combined; the brandy or spirit of wine forms a distinct stratum, which floats upon the aqueous solution of the alkaline salt. If the experiment be made in a glass tube, from one half inch to two inches in diameter, and graduated into a hundred equal parts, the per centage of spirit, in a given quantity of wine, may be read off by mere inspection. In the same manner the strength of any wine may be examined.”

The following is the proportion, or per centage, of alcohol or spirit in some of the most common wines and spirituous liquors. But such of my readers as may wish to gain more extensive information on the subject, I refer them to the first volume of the Journal of Science and the Arts, p. 290.

The above proportional quantities of alcohol contained in the different kinds of wine are extracted from Mr. Brande’s experiments detailed in the work before mentioned; but as it appears that that gentleman made his experiments on samples of wine into which adventitious alcohol had been introduced, he seems in some instances to have assigned a greater degree of spirituosity to some wines than the subsequent analysis of Dr. Prout will justify, in the case of experiments made on genuine wines. To those who are desirous of informing themselves accurately on the subject, a reference to the Table at pages 363 and 364 of Dr. Henderson’s work on the History of Ancient and Modern Wines, in which the results of the experiments of Mr. Brande, Dr. Prout, and Mr. Zist, an able chemist residing at Mentz, are detailed, is recommended.

The quantity of astringent matter, or tannin, contained in wine, may readily be ascertained by dropping a solution of isinglass into it, when a gelatinous precipitate takes place in proportion to the tannin, whether it be Port, Claret, or Burgundy.

The adulteration and false strength of spirituous liquors, as brandy, rum, and malt spirit, are detected by diluting the suspected liquor with water, when the acrimony of the capsicum, or the grains of paradise, or pepper, may be easily discovered by the taste. Or by taking about a quart of the suspected liquor, and pouring it into a retort, or small still, and boiling it gently, until the whole of the spirituous part is evaporated, the residuum, if capsicum, grains of paradise, &c. have been present in the liquor, will retain a hot pungent taste. A ready way of detecting aqua-fortis, or oil of vitriol, in spirits, is, by dropping into a glass of the suspected liquor, a bit of chalk about the size of a pea, when the liquid, if spurious, will become like milk, but, if genuine, the chalk will lie at the bottom.

The adulteration of brandy with British molasses or sugar spirit, is ascertained by rubbing a portion of the suspected liquor between the palms of the hands, when the spirit, as it evaporates, leaves the disagreeable flavour which is peculiar to all British spirits. Or the liquor may be deprived of its alcohol, by heating a portion of it in a spoon over a candle till the vapour ceases to catch fire on the approach of a lighted taper. The residue thus obtained, if genuine brandy, possesses a vinous odour, resembling the flavour of brandy, whilst the residue produced from sophisticated brandy, has a peculiarly disagreeable smell, resembling gin, or the breath of habitual drunkards. The purity of spirits may also be easily ascertained by setting fire to a little of the suspected article in a spoon, when, if they be unadulterated, they will all burn away, without leaving any moisture behind. The presence of lead, or any of its preparations, in spirituous liquors, may be detected by the same method as has been stated in the case of wine. Where gin has been highly sweetened with sugar, by evaporating some of the suspected liquor in a spoon over a candle, the sugar will appear in the form of a gum-like substance when the spirit is volatilized.

The presence of lead as a component part of cider or perry, whether happening accidentally from the leaden bed of the press, or inserted intentionally for the purpose of neutralizing the super-abundant acid of the liquor, may be tested by putting a solution of molybdate of potash into the suspected liquor; when a white precipitate will take place, even though the lead should exist in the smallest possible quantity. It is needless here to enumerate the various tricks of “the knowing ones” for giving a factitious crust to wine bottles,[G] by means of Brazil wood and potash; or the colouring and eating away of wine corks,[H] to represent long residence in the neck of the bottle, though perhaps only driven in yesterday. Nor is the crusting even of the wine-casks, which is accomplished by means of crystals of the super-tartrate of potash, to be trusted to.

Those who wish to know the allowable secrets of the adulteration trade will find them fully explained in “The Private Gentleman or Importing Merchants’ Wine and Spirit Cellar Directory,” with many other “Secrets Worth Knowing” by cozeners; but it may be observed that the older port wine is, the less of the tartar, or super-tartrate of potash is contained in it, and the greater the deposition on the sides of the cask or bottle. But new wine may be put into old casks or old bottles. Therefore, to ascertain the quantity of the salt, take a pint of wine, and boil it down to one-half, into which drop a solution of muriate of platina, when a precipitate will take place, greater or less, in proportion to the quantity of salt contained in the wine.

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“The nutricious and strengthening[I] beverage” of the English, “their own native old Sir John Barleycorn,” is not exempt from the sophistications and corruptions of the adulterator! Ye topers of “pure extract from malt and hops,” do you hear this? That your own sweet proper suction—your ancient and legitimate accompaniment of the sirloin and the plum-pudding, is composed of every thing else than what it ought to be,—in fact, that it is one of the slowest and most fatal poisons with which your good friends “the honest English brewers” are continually entertaining you. Aye, John, it is the truth—and the whole truth. But should you, with your usual “well-clothed stupidity, and sneering ignorant scepticism,” feel inclined to doubt my assertion, a reference to the “Minutes of the House of Commons, appointed for examining the price and quality of beer,” will furnish you with a goodly list of nearly two hundred Excise prosecutions and convictions (between the years 1812 and 1819), of wholesale and retail brewers, publicans, and brewers’ druggists, for the nefarious adulterations of your favourite beverage, or for having in their possession, or selling the poisonous ingredients for the purpose; in which there are several instances of penalties of £500, with costs having been inflicted on the offenders. Since that time, seizures of illegal and poisonous articles have also been often made by the Excise, and convictions have taken place. During the latter end of the last year, and at the commencement of the present year, seizures have been made, and convictions have taken place, nearly equal in number to those before stated: indeed, as a writer on the subject truly observes, “scarcely a week passes without witnessing the detection of some wicked greedy wretch,” who has been sporting with the lives and health of his fellow-creatures. And, when you have satisfied your incredulous understanding of your “honest” countrymen’s dealings with you, you may, perhaps, by reading the following extract from Mr. Accum’s book on Culinary Poisons, p. 189, be satisfied that you are not exactly swallowing a “cordial balsam,” or “the elixir of life,” when you are pouring into your portly stomach that delectable mixture, in the composition of whose combustible materials the brewer’s (or “gentleman”) druggist, the brewer, and the publican have kindly and humanely exerted their honest and patriotic skill.

“That a minute portion of an unwholesome ingredient, daily taken in beer,” (says the intrepid advocate of offended justice, whose civil death to science and suffering humanity is to be sincerely deplored,) “cannot fail to be productive of mischief, admits of no doubt: and there is reason to believe that a small quantity of a narcotic substance daily taken into the stomach, together with an intoxicating liquor, is highly more efficacious than it would be without the liquor. The effect may be gradual; and a strong constitution, especially if it be assisted with constant and hard labour, may counteract the destructive consequences, perhaps for many years, but it never fails to show its baneful effects at last.”

But, perhaps, friend John, you will say that this is all talk, and a mere bug-a-boo of the “radicals” to annoy you in your daily potations of your “favourite beverage,”—thy own native nutritious liquor. And you will call for something like proofs, or an enumeration of the deleterious substances or ingredients which have been found in the possession of brewers and publicans, and for the admixture of which with their “neat article,” they have been subject to the Law’s angry visitations. This is a reasonable request, and it shall be satisfied to the best of my power.

Know then, friend Bull, that the following harmless and invigorating ingredients have been found in the possession of thine honest fellow-countrymen, the brewers, according to the list of the Excise prosecutions detailed in the Minutes of the Committee of the House of Commons, appointed for examining the price and quality of beer in the year 1819.

1. Cocculus Indicus, or, as it is vulgarly called, occulus Indian berry. This is a powerfully narcotic, and most intoxicating and deleterious drug. In its mildest form, it produces excruciating head-aches and distressing sickness, when the beer is over-dosed. So great was the demand for this poisonous drug, that it rose, as Mr. Accum says, within the space of ten years, from 2s. to 7s. per lb. The extract or poisonous principle obtained from the berries is so abundant as to be easily separated from the substance, and is called by the chemist picrotoxin, a term derived from two Greek words, namely, πιχρος, bitter; and τοξιχον, poison. What thinkest thou of this, friend John? In India, the berries are thrown on the surface of the water for the purpose of intoxicating the fish, when they float on the water, and are easily taken by the hand.

2. Black Extract, or, as it is called, in the slang phrase of the Adulterating Vocabulary, Hard Multum, which is also an extract of the poisonous Indian berry, or a composition of opium and other ingredients.

3. Nux Vomica and St. Ignatius’s Bean, which are both poisonous; but the first is so extremely deleterious a drug, ten or twelve grains of it being sufficient to kill a dog, that it is now expunged from the Pharmacopeias. Yet, although no one ever hears of its application, except for poisoning rats, it is imported in large quantities, and tons of this deadly poison are ground every year in the drug-mills of the metropolis. The bitter bean, or, as it is more commonly termed by the tender-conscienced gentry, who sport with the health and lives of their fellow-creatures, St. Ignatius’s bean, in order, no doubt, to appease the qualms of conscience under a sanctified name, is no less injurious to health.

4. Opium, Tobacco, Extract of Poppies, Henbane, Bohemian Rosemary, and Coriander seed, which are all highly dangerous when improperly used. Chemical experiment has proved that less than one pound of the last-mentioned ingredient equals in strength and stupefactive quality one bushel of malt.

5. Essentia Bina, or Double Essence; that is, sugar boiled down to a black colour and an empyreumatic flavour. But, instead of the concentrated essence, the intent of which is to produce the requisite colour in porter, the colouring matter now generally used by the more respectable part of the trade is malt roasted in iron cylinders until it is black like coal. In this state it is called patent malt, and is not prohibited by the Excise.

6. Heading Stuff, that is green copperas, or, as it is vulgarly called, Salt of Steel. This poisonous ingredient is used for the purpose of giving the beer a frothing head; sometimes used alone; sometimes it is mixed with alum.—In the hands of one adulterator, 310lbs. of copperas and 560lbs. of hard multum were found and condemned. A sufficient dose for slowly poisoning half a generation!

7. Capsicum, grains of paradise, carraway seeds, treacle or molasses, liquorice root, &c.

8. Wormwood, aloes, quassia, bitter oranges, &c.

9. Lime, marble dust, powdered oyster shells, hartshorn shavings, jalap, spirit of maranta, &c.

These ingredients, nocuous and innocuous, are intended to produce the following effects:

1. To give a factitious strength and intoxicating quality to the beer.

2. To increase the bitter principle, and consequently to save hops.

3. To add a stimulating aromatic flavour.

4. To produce a fine mantling head to porter, and strike a fine nut brown colour over the froth.

And, 5. To prevent acidity, or to diminish or destroy it when formed.

“It is absolutely frightful,” exclaims Mr. Donovan, (Domestic Economy, p. 201,) “ to contemplate the list of poisons and drugs with which malt liquors have been (as it is technically and descriptively called) doctored. Opium, henbane, cocculus indicus, and Bohemian rosemary, which is said to produce a quick and raving intoxication, supplied the place of alcohol. Aloes, quassia, gentian, sweet scented flag, wormwood, horehound, and bitter oranges, fulfilled the duties of hops. Liquorice, treacle, and mucilage of flax seed, stood for attenuated malt sugar. Capsicum, ginger, and cinnamon, or rather cassia-buds, afforded to the exhausted drink the pungency of a carbonic acid. Burnt flour, sugar, or treacle, communicated a peculiar taste which porter drinkers generally fancy. Preparations of fish, assisted in cases of obstinacy with oil of vitriol, procured transparency. Besides these, the brewer had to supply himself with potash, lime, salt, and a variety of other substances, which are of no other harm than in serving the office of more valuable materials, and defrauding the customer.” In this extract it is observable that that ingenious gentleman has drawn up his account in the past tense, as if there were no adulterations now!!! The author of “The Art of Brewing,” in the Library of Useful Knowledge, has adopted a juster and a more honourable course; besides giving a fuller list of poisonous articles, he has spoken boldly and truly, and tells us that poisonous adulterations are “still used extensively” by those who “sport with the lives of their fellow creatures for the sake of gain,” and that “the seizures and convictions that have been so often made, and are still making by the Excise,” are proofs of the fact. It is, however, with much satisfaction (for no other motive influences me in making the horrific disclosures detailed in this volume than a regard for the public welfare and for public justice) that the statement made in that publication respecting the introduction of gypsum into the manufacture of Burton Ale has been disproved in the recent application made to the Court of King’s Bench by the Burton Ale Brewers, who assert that the peculiarity of flavour belonging to their liquor is occasioned by the water from which it is made running over a rock of gypsum, and thus impregnated with that substance.

In the year 1807, a paragraph appeared in almost all the London daily papers, asserting that porter, brewed in London, contained deleterious drugs. The London porter brewers, indignant at the “unjust and causeless” accusation, had a meeting, and one and all agreed to prosecute the offending journalists. They of course made affidavits, and complied with all the requisites of the law to establish their “innocence.” They moved the Court of King’s Bench for criminal informations against three-fourths of the daily press, and their Counsel made long speeches on “the guilt and unfounded and malicious libels of their accusers.” All looked well for obtaining a verdict of guilty against the denouncers of fraud and villany, and establishing the purity and justice of “the brewing interests,” by the verdict “of an impartial and intelligent jury,” had not the late Lord Ellenborough declared the affidavits of the swearing-brewers insufficient, as the cunning varlets had only denied the introduction of deleterious ingredients in brewing; whereas, to ground their application and entitle them to the rule, they should have denied having used them after the beer was brewed. But as the pillory might have stared the honest gentry in the face had they made this “hard” assertion in their affidavit, the knowing folks here broke down; they could go no further. After making the town echo with the cries of “the infamous press,” they prudently dropped all proceedings against the proscribed journalists. The inference to be drawn is not difficult to surmise; but the fact is, that the publicans, who have of late been so sharply prosecuted by the Excise for adulterating their beer, can best answer the question: From whom did they learn the respectable art of beer-sophistication? Was it not from their “betters,” the “beer-mongers?”

If the foregoing statement of ingredients contained in the above infernal list is not sufficient to induce thee, friend Bull, to lay aside thy incredulity, and open thy eyes to the frauds that are daily practised on thy unsuspecting nature, I can only add that one of the “craft” (see Child, on Brewing, p. 18) tells thee that porter cannot be made of the necessary flavour and taste to suit the Londoner’s appetite, and of the proper colour to tickle his fancy by its appearance, of wholesome malt and hops, and that those simple ingredients would not furnish a profit sufficient to satisfy the modern brewer’s cupidity. Well may the old ladies exclaim (and no doubt, Mr. Bull, thou hast a penchant for displaying thy Latinity) O trickery! O mouthes!

But supposing, dear Bull, that all the above “horrid array” of poisoning and stupefying ingredients was “mere fudge,” and that you should have the fortune to deal with a brewer and publican, who have the “fear of the Lord” before their eyes, and who “wax strong in well doing,” recollect that the present manufactured “entire beer” of the most honest trading brewer alive is a very heterogeneous mixture—a composition of all the waste and spoiled beer of the publicans, the bottoms of their butts—the leavings of their pots—the drippings of their machines for drawing the beer—the remnants of beer that lay in the leaden pipes of the brewery, with a portion of brown stout, bottling beer, and mild beer. So admits that “paragon of brewers,” Mr. Barclay. (See Parliamentary Minutes, p. 94.) Surely, John, it is not courteous and loving treatment of thy “better half” and her “dutiful daughters” to expect them to sully their delicate throttles with the leavings and hawkings of some bearish beast of a coal-heaver or a night-man! This, friend John, is one of the “indicia” of the necessity of thy cultivating the clean and wholesome “home brewery” of thy forefathers; and in the promotion of this laudable and necessary undertaking I hope I shall be able to assist thee in my projected work, “The Family Brewing Oracle,” and that, by its means, thou wilt be enabled to drink a wholesome and nourishing beverage, either ale or porter, at the trifling cost of from five farthings to three halfpence per pot, after the tasting of which thou wilt never allow a drop of brewers’ or public-house porter, or intermediate beer, or any other vile or new-fangled substitution for the home-brewed liquor of thy ancestors, to enter thy chaps.

But, in your honest sincerity and “usually naive manner,” you will exclaim “but we have methods and tests for detecting the adulteration of our native liquor—our vinum Britannicum—our own Sir John Barlycorn.” Aye, have you, Old Gentleman! then I give you joy of your discovery, and hope thou wilt put it into constant practice every day of thy life before thou takest a sup of the delectable and heart-cheering composition. But, for my part, John, give me leave to say that I have always understood that the detection of the adulteration of beer with vegetable substances deleterious to health is extremely difficult, if not beyond the reach of chemical agency or analysis; and in most cases, particularly where cocculus indicus, or its extract, has been used, quite impossible. The tests for ascertaining the admixture of sulphuric acid are more determinate, and are ably detailed in Mr. Accum’s work, p. 193.

Among the minor crimes of fraudulent brewers is the art of converting new beer (that is beer that is just brewed) into old or entire beer; and this operation (which, in the cant phraseology of the trade, is called bringing the beer forward, or making it hard) is performed by an easy, expeditious, and economical method: an imitation of the age of eighteen months is produced in an instant, or, as modern statesmen, versed in the wonderful arcana of political science, would phrase it, “As soon as you could say Jack Robinson.” To put into execution this rare feat of “brewers’ art” you have nothing more to do, in order to convert any wishy-washy slop into an old entire beer, and, consequently, to render it “rich, generous, of a full-bodied taste, without being acid, and of a vinous odour,” than to throw in a quantum sufficit of sulphuric acid.[J] Stale, half spoiled, or sour beer, may as easily be converted into mild beer, by the proper quantity of alkali, or alkaline earth, oyster-shell-powder, subcarbonate of potash or soda; which substances have the effect of neutralizing the excess of acid.

Another of the less culpable adulterations by both brewer and publican is the admixture of small with strong beer. According to the evidence of the solicitor of the Excise (Mr. Carr), given before the Committee of the House of Commons, appointed for examining the price and quality of beer, in the year 1819, (see Minutes of the House of Commons, p. 32, &c.) the retailers of beer in London and its neighbourhood, purchase stale table-beer, or the bottoms of casks, from a set of men who go about and sell such beer at table-beer price to mix in the publicans’ cellars with the new beer they receive from the brewer. Among some of the trade it is the custom to mix the poor low-priced country ales with porter.

But, O John, thou lover of a “cauliflower head!” art thou aware how this object of thy admiration, and indeed natural property of good beer is produced? No doubt thou wilt be hard of belief in this respect; but I must be candid with thee, and tell thee that the “fine frothy head,” the ne plus ultra of thy admiration and test of good porter, is produced by thy honest friend and crony, the publican, by the simple admixture of the delectable and harmless article “beer heading” with the “genuine stuff” he receives from his worthy compeer, the brewer. When thy “gentle friend” observes the frothy property of the beer to be lost by his admixture of the legitimate modicum of small beer or “aqua pura,” molasses, extract of gentian-root and isinglass, (all which ingredients, no doubt, good soul, he adds for thy better health, and to save it from the injurious effects of too strong potations,) he prudently throws in his beer-heading, which is a composition of common green vitriol, or copperas, alum, and salt. The publicans are supplied with this article either by the regular and accredited manufacturer, or they are instructed in its manufacture by those vile and infamous publications in circulation, known by the name of Publicans or Vintners’ Guides, Directors, Friends, &c.—I have carefully gone through those pestiferous books, and examined their farrago of mischievous receipts and instructions for the adulteration and “making up” of wines, spirits, beer, &c. and can safely say that more infernal ingenuity, and a more reckless want of honesty and humanity have never been displayed in the basest concoctions of fraud and villany than is the case in those wretched publications. It is, however, but fair to exempt from this censure a work which has recently appeared, entitled “Clarke’s Publican and Innkeeper’s Guide, and Wine and Spirit Dealer’s Assistant;” which, though not entirely exempt from objection, is evidently the production of a skilful, and, what is of greater importance to the public, of an honest man, and possesses the great recommendation of instructing the trade in all the allowable secrets of the craft, without endangering the health and lives of the consumers; while it enables its readers to obtain better and more efficient results by its directions than can possibly be obtained by following the deadly and inefficient receipts of its predecessors.

I have now, friend Bull, brought my disclosures respecting thy favourite beverage—thy fondly but mistakenly imagined “pure extract from malt and hops,” to a close; but, shouldst thou still be hard of belief, I recommend thee to put thy tongue into the enchanting cauldron of some brewer-friend of thine; but, remember that I cannot ensure thee that thou will redraw it quite as unaffected or renovated as the tragic poet describes Æson to have sprung from the cauldron of Medea.

In the above detail of adulterations in the public brewery of this country, no personality is intended in the tone of reprehension assumed on the subject; the remarks are intended to be applied only to “the most worthless part of the trade, to such as disgrace the name of brewer, by sporting with the lives of their fellow creatures for lucre’s sake.” Those odious and detestable wretches deserve the severest castigations, and every member of the community should lend his hearty co-operation to their exposure and punishment. But while it is the duty of every man whom nature has gifted with a heart capable of feeling for his fellow creatures, to expose the monsters who secretly poison the human race, it must be admitted that the very heavy and injudicious taxation to which brewers are subject has compelled even many of the more conscientious of the trade to have recourse to measures which are not quite agreeable to the dictates of honesty, and to draw immense lengths of wort from the least possible quantity of malt, so that the liquor is neither of a nutritive nor a relishing quality. But the error in this case arises from the same cause as it does in that of wines—the incompetency of the persons (who were either the favourites, the dependants, or the retainers of the existing ministry of the day) appointed to frame the statutes regulating those trades; and, laughable to say, those precious legislators have prohibited the use of articles which are not only innoxious, but occasionally advantageous.[K] In the statute of Charles the Second, which regulates the management of foreign wines, the blunder is singular; by that act several substances are forbidden to be mixed with wine, which, in themselves, are not only innocuous, but are highly conducive to its purity and right preservation, and give it the necessary brightness and perfection!

Oh, Bull, when will thy law-makers and law-concocters learn a little of that old-fashioned and much neglected commodity,—common sense. Were the same good sense and knowledge of the subject, and of the condition of society, indicated by them as are displayed by the more unassuming but efficient department of the state machinery—the dispensers of our laws (of course I cannot be mistaken to mean the justices of the peace!) the country would not be put to the expense of making laws one day which are to be repealed the next, and there might appear some just pretension for the high-sounding titles of “English Justinians,” and “heaven-born legislators,” with which a portion of the periodical press is idly and continually bespattering certain members of the executive department of the government.

As my printer tells me that a few lines are wanting to complete this page, and being desirous to give my readers all I can afford for their money, a word or two on the legislative mania which seems to have taken hold of some honourable members “of the noblest assembly of freemen in the world,” may not be misplaced. And for the sake of brevity, I shall adduce, as an example, the memorable attempt to modify the Quarantine Laws on the advice, testimony, and experience of the renowned Dr. M’Lean. When arguments being taken as facts, and the absurdities of reasoning as the evidence of experience, the whims and reveries of that gentleman, who was described by one (a member of St. Stephen’s) of the anti-contagionists as “one of those extraordinary persons who will be pointed out by the finger of the future historian,” would have received the stamp and authority of law, and we should have had the blessing of plague being as common in our houses as measles, coughs or colds, had not “the ignorance of those who attempt to mislead the public, and the indiscretion of those who are inclined to believe them,” been exposed and refuted by the late Dr. Gooch, in his invaluable paper “Is the Plague a Contagious Disease?” which appeared at the time (anno 1825), in The Quarterly Review, and is now appended to his Account of Female Diseases.

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A Word or Two, by way of Introduction.

I have told thee, friend Bull, while discoursing of the little slips and sleights of hand in use among thy good and ancient friends, the wine and spirit dealer, the gin-shop keeper, the brewer, and the publican, that thou wouldst be satisfied that “Death was not only in the Bottle,” but that thou wouldst find that the complaint of the sons of the prophet, “There is Death in the Pot” ought not to have been confined to the narrow limits of Gilgal, but that it extends in all its operations to the illicit doings in thy own “dear native little island”—the “land of the good and the wise.” I shall now proceed to unfold to thee this part of my duty, and then I apprehend that thou wilt lay aside thy usual scepticism and incredulity, and acknowledge that I have made out to thy satisfaction the truth of my horrific title “Deadly Adulteration and Slow Poisoning; or, Disease and Death in the Pot and the Bottle.” I shall begin with the “Staff of Life.”

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Good bread is light, porous, and spongy; of a sweet nutty smell; and when pressed with the finger is tough and resists the pressure like sponge, recovering with a spring its original texture as soon as the finger is removed: if any fracture appears, it is a sign of adulteration. The more numerous and large the cells or little holes are in it, the more perfectly is the bread made, and the better adapted for digestion.

Bread to be good, should be made of wheat flour; but the adulteration trade in this prime article of human consumption display no less ingenuity in the art of fraud and deception than their rivals in iniquity do in the wine and spirit and beer sophistications: convictions are on record of bakers having used pulverised gypsum or plaster of Paris, whiting, slacked lime, chalk, finely powdered granite, pipe-clay, particularly the white Cornwall clay, the flour of garden peas and horse beans, potatoes, bone-ashes, alum, spirits of vitriol, ammonia, magnesia, &c. They allege that, as they are often supplied by the mealmen with flour made from the worst kinds of foreign damaged wheat, and which is frequently mixed with a variety of other cereal grains in the course of grinding, they cannot produce bread of a sufficient degree of whiteness, lightness, and porosity, to please the caprice of the London palate, without having recourse to the conjoint aid of alum, ammonia, and potatoes.[L] This is the allegation made by the respectable part of the trade, and those who, with sufficient disposition to wickedness, are deficient in the knowledge of the art of slow and imperceptible poisoning. What excuse the irrespectable part of the trade can make for their nefarious traffic in the remaining portion of the enumerated articles must be left to the tender and honest consciences of those gentry.

“The baker,” says Mr. Accum, in his Preliminary Remarks, p. 11, “asserts that he does not put alum into bread; but he is well aware that, in purchasing a certain quantity of half spoiled flour, he must take a sack of sharp whites, (a term given to flour contaminated with a quantity of alum,) without which it would be impossible for him to produce light, white, and porous bread, from a half spoiled material.

“The wholesale mealman frequently purchases this spurious commodity, (which forms a separate branch of business in the hands of certain individuals,) in order to enable himself to sell his decayed flour.

“Other individuals (namely, the “gentlemen” druggists) furnish the baker with alum mixed up with salt, under the obscure denomination of stuff. There are wholesale manufacturing chemists, whose sole business is to crystallize alum in such a form as will adapt this salt to the purpose of being mixed with crystals of common salt, to disguise the character of the compound.

The mixture called stuff is composed of one part of alum, in minute crystals, and three of common salt.”

I omit to object to the adulteration of flour produced by the sand, which is unavoidably occasioned by the rubbing of the mill-stones together. The author of the “History of Inventions,” vol. i. p. 98, estimates that every person swallows 6lbs. yearly, in the quantity of flour and bread which he consumes.

The foregoing statement of artist ingenuity displayed by the Messieurs “Crust,” must be allowed to be liberal treatment of poor Mr. John Bull, in comparison with the acts of their rivals in the noble art of sophistication, the gin-shop-keeper, the brewer, the publican, and the other “trading interests of the nation.” But it will be better treatment to furnish the old gentleman with a test or two to enable him to detect the frauds of his said good friends, Messieurs les Crust and their compatriots, the mealmen.

The ready tests or methods for ascertaining those adulterations are: If an undue proportion (for bakers contend that the bad quality of the flour sold to them by the miller renders the addition of potatoes advantageous to the purchaser as well as to the baker) of ground or grated potatoes has been used, the bread will be moist, have a sourish smell, and, when stale, if a pressure be made upon it with the finger, a fracture will appear in the bread, that is, it will not recover its texture as sponge will do when compressed. Also, it will not keep, but in a few days become mouldy. Where bean-flour has been used, which bakers generally prefer, on account of the great portion of gluten which it contains, (and for this reason it bears a higher price in the market than flour itself,) the bread will soon dry and crack; or the fraud may be discovered by the smell on toasting a slice of the bread before the fire. The adulteration, by means of flour of peas is more common among bakers, and more difficult of detection than that of beans: the only means for ascertaining the fraud, by inspection, that I am aware of, are those of its drying and cracking soon, and being more heavy and considerably less porous than bread made entirely of wheaten flour. The admixture of clay, gypsum, chalk, whiting, slacked lime, bone-ashes, &c. is to be ascertained by the close texture, brittle or crumbly nature, undue weight, smell, and taste of the article. But analysis in each case is the truest test; and this may be performed in the following manner.

Cut the crust of the loaf into very thin slices, and, breaking these into pieces, put them into a glass cucurbit, with a large quantity of water; set this into a sand furnace, and let it stand therein with a moderate warmth for about the space of twenty-four hours. By this time the foreign ingredients will have separated from the genuine flour; the alum will have dissolved in the water, and may be extracted from it in the usual way. The jalap, if any have been used, (for it is not all the fraternity or brotherhood that have the consideration or humanity to introduce it into their life-destroying compositions,) will swim upon the top in the form of a coarse film; and the other ingredients, being heavy, will sink quite to the bottom, while the genuine flour will remain above them in the consistence of pap, which, being drawn off, will leave the adulterated articles in the form of a white powder at the bottom.

But as cucurbits and sand-furnaces are not “a part and parcel” of every family’s household chattels, if the off-hand tests above mentioned are not satisfactory, slice the loaf as before directed, and, putting the slices, with a sufficient quantity of water, into a pipkin, over a gentle fire, you will find in the course of a little time that the bread will be reduced to a pap, and, on drawing that off, the bone-ashes and other adulterating ingredients may be found in the form of a white powder at the bottom.

The pernicious ingredients, alum and spirits of vitriol, used by bakers in the manufacture of bread, are intended, in the cant phrase of the trade, “as binders and whiteners.” Few persons will credit the fact that this last-mentioned article is made use of in the manufacture of bread; but, if any person feels himself aggrieved by the assertion, I am prepared to verify my information, and point out the culprits. By the insertion of these ingredients, tens of thousands of children, under three years of age, are annually consigned to the grave in this “happy” country; and to their cause, in conjunction with the horrid articles before stated, are to be assigned the number of sudden deaths that are daily occurring, and a large portion of the diseases under which mankind are suffering.

The presence of alum may be detected by immersing a small piece of the crumb of new baked bread in a quantity of cold water sufficient to dissolve it; when, if a pernicious quantity of alum be present in the composition the water will acquire a sweet astringency to the taste; the more astringent of course the greater has been the quantity of alum used. Or a heated knife may be thrust into a loaf before it has grown cold; if the bread be free from alum, scarcely any alteration will be visible on the blade; but, should alum have been made use of, as soon as the knife cools, a slight aluminous incrustation will appear upon it. But this last method is, as Mr. Accum properly observes, but an equivocal test, on account of the impurity of the common salt used in making bread. When spirits of vitriol, diluted with water, have been used, the only test to detect this most pernicious and unprincipled adulteration is by chemically analysing the suspected article.

But the adulteration-trade observing that the insertion of the “horrid array” of pernicious articles, which their diabolical ingenuity substituted in the stead of wholesome meal or flour, had an astringent effect on the human constitution, and, fearing the consequences of a detection, have lately had recourse to the introduction of jalap into their sponge, in order to give their mischievous composition a laxative or purgative effect on the constitution of their deluded customers. The best test of the insertion of this drug is its effects. Others counteract the constipating effects of the alum by the addition of subcarbonate of potash, which neutralizes the excess of the sulphuric acid of the alum, and promotes the disengagement of the carbonic acid gas, whereby the particles of the flour are more minutely divided, and the bread rendered lighter.

Having stated the ready methods of ascertaining the good or bad qualities of bread, it is a necessary consequence that I should not be silent about those of flour.

The following are the usual tests for ascertaining the quality of flour. Grasp a handful briskly, and squeeze it for half a minute; if pure and unadulterated, it preserves the form of the cavity of the hand in one piece when placed upon the table, although it may be roughly set down. Adulterated flour, on the contrary, soon falls down. That mixed with whiting, white clay, or the like materials, is the most adhesive, though it soon gives way; but if the adulteration be ground bones, gypsum, or plaster of paris, it almost immediately falls. Where there is the presence of much bran, the grasped specimen will soon crumble, and this fraud may, also, be discovered by the colour and feel. It may also be observed that genuine flour will retain the impression of even the grains of the skin longer than that which is adulterated, the latter soon throwing off the fine marks. Also, let a person, having a moist hand, rub flour briskly between the palms of both hands; if there be whiting in it, he will find resistance; but none, if the flour is pure. Or, partially dip the fore-finger and thumb into a little sweet oil, and take up a small quantity of the flour between them; if it is pure it may be rubbed for any length of time, and will not become sticky or adhesive, and the substance will turn nearly black; but if whiting is present, it will soon be worked up into the consistence of putty, and its colour but little altered. Lemon juice, or vinegar, dropped upon flour, will also show the presence of whiting or plaster of paris; if the flour is pure it will remain at rest; but if it is adulterated an immediate commotion takes place. Where there is time to try the unsoundness of flour, put a table-spoonful into a basin and mix it with cold water, until it is of the consistence of batter pudding; then set a small pan upon the fire containing half a gill of water, and when the water is hot, pour in the batter just before it boils, and let it boil for about the space of three minutes. If sound, the flour will unite like a good pudding does; if unsound it breaks, curdles, and appears somewhat watery. By observing it while it is warm, some judgement may be formed of its different degrees of unsoundness. The usual test of people in the flour-trade is to knead a small quantity of the article; if good, an adhesive, ductile, and elastic paste is immediately formed, which may be elongated and drawn in every direction, without being entirely separated. The only ready test for the detection of sharp whites and stuff is by the taste.

When the farina of potatoes, or, as it is commonly termed, potatoe-starch, is mixed with flour, the fraud may, according to M. Chevalier, a French chemist, be discovered by sprinkling a little of the suspected article on black paper, when through a powerful lens, or microscope, the farina or starch may be discovered by the brilliancy of its particles.

To ascertain the presence of insects in flour, examine it in a good light, and if your suspicion be correct, you will observe the whole surface in motion, and on a nicer inspection there will be found in it a great number of little animals of the colour of flour, and of an oblong and a slender form. When they have once taken possession of a parcel of this commodity, it is impossible to drive them out; and they increase so fast, that the only method of preventing the total loss of the whole parcel, is to make it into bread as soon as possible. The only known way of preventing those insects from breeding in flour is to preserve it from damp; to effect which it should be always carefully and thoroughly dried before it is put up, and the barrels, also, should be carefully dried before the flour is stored in them, and placed in a room tolerably warm and dry.

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The Butcher has his arts and sophistications. To make meat weigh as heavy as possible he checks the full bleeding of the victim of his knife, and to make it appear plump and white and glistening, particularly joints of veal and lamb, he inflates the cellular membrane, by blowing into it with all his might, the breath respired from his lungs: by means of which practice, should he be infected with any loathsome disease, his customers stand a very good chance of being inoculated with “the blessing.” The distension of the cellular membrane is the sign of meat having received the benefit of this operation.

Among other deceits in use among the “knights of the cleaver” is, the doctoring of joints of animals which have died of disease, by the skilful introduction of slips of fat into different parts of the joint, so as to give it the appearance of meat which had been killed in a healthy state. A recent occurrence at Guildhall has proved this practice in all its enormity, and shown that it is carried on to no trifling extent. From the same transaction it came out in evidence that the art is sufficiently extensive to employ a certain part of the “butchering craft” in its distinct mysteries. Probably by “professors of the knife and cleaver” it is considered as the ne plus ultra of butcher-skill, and has its appropriate honours and rewards. But this is known only to the initiated in the “profession.”

While discoursing of this feat of butcher-ingenuity, it seems not misplaced to observe that the sausages in London are often made out of the carcases of animals that have died. This fact, also, was brought to Mr. Bull’s knowledge, in the course of the evidence in the before-mentioned case. And I can assure my readers, that even when they are not favoured with sausages made of this savoury food, they do not often get meat in sausages better than carrion; and that more than one half of all sausage-meat consists of bone, gristle, and bread, reduced to almost an impalpable powder by means of the machine, and then worked up with a due modicum of water. Nor is this the least part of the evil. From accidental causes and the frauds of the vender, they are often poisonous. Dr. Paris has well observed, in his useful work on diet, that the viscera and intestines of animals, and also their livers, are often poisonous, while the meat of the animal is perfectly wholesome. This proves, as that gentleman well observes, that sausages are not deserving of that general use in which they are held in London: for the integument which encloses the sausage is often highly injurious to health, while the meat possesses no deleterious quality whatever. The poisonous nature of sausages arising from fraud is partly occasioned by the carelessness of the manufacturer in regard of the vessels in which he keeps his meat, but more generally from the quality of the meat which he uses. Some years ago a German chemist discovered, on analysing German sausages, that they contained a portion of prussic acid (the most potent poison known); from the eating of which several persons died. Could the exact cause have been ascertained, it would probably have been found that they were made from the meat of dead animals.

The goodness of meat depends much on the season of the year. Thus the flesh of most full grown quadrupeds is in the highest season during the first months of winter. Beef and mutton are in the greatest perfection in the months of November, December, and January. Pork is only good in winter; during the summer months it is not wholesome. Venison is in the highest season from the middle of June to the beginning of September. Lamb and veal during the summer months.

The distinguishing sign of young and old meat is, that in the latter the fat is chiefly collected in masses, or layers external to the muscles; while in the former it is more interspersed among the muscular fibres, giving the flesh a marbled appearance.

The quality of animal food is also considerably influenced by the sex; that of the female (which sooner attains perfection) being always more delicate and finer grained than that of the male, whose fibres and flavour are stronger and more rank. But this rule prevails only during the early age of the female; for, as it grows older, it gets tougher, instead of mellowing by age as the male does.

Over fat meat should not be chosen; as sheep in the first stage of the rot, or about four weeks after becoming tainted, feed inordinately, and are much disposed to fatten; which propensity graziers and butchers omit no opportunity to promote, in order to increase their profits. Excessive fatness is, therefore, no bad sign for judging of the unwholesomeness, or rather rottenness of mutton, as it is generally produced artificially.

Meat that has been over driven, and killed, as the butchers term it, on the drift, should be always rejected as unwholesome; besides, it weighs heavier than if the animal had been killed while its blood was in a healthy state; for, by the over-driving the blood has been so diffused in the cellular membrane, that it cannot be drawn off by bleeding; and the meat is heavier to the benefit of the butcher, but to the loss of the consumer. The florid colour of meat is a sign of the blood not having been properly drawn away.

The whiteness of the flesh of lamb and veal is often produced by feeding the animal with milk in which chalk is mingled, or by tying it up in a stall with a piece of chalk covered with salt constantly before it to lick. Sometimes calves are suspended by their hind legs with the head downwards for hours together, and then bled to death slowly, for the purpose of whitening the flesh. And, among the other complicated and lengthened acts of cruelty, to which avarice resorts to extract the largest possible price from the sufferings of a poor harmless creature, is the tying of calves together by the hind legs, and suffering them to remain suspended across the back of a horse, with their heads downwards, for hours together, in their way from market; a practice adopted by butchers for the purpose of rendering the meat of the body as white as possible.

Nor are fishmongers less crafty and dishonest than the other dealers in the necessaries of life. Sea-fish, particularly cod, haddock, and whiting, are subject to the operation of inflating the cellular membrane, in order to make them look plump, and increase the bulk of the fish. The imposition is detected by pressing each side of the orifice at the belly of the fish between the thumb and finger, when the air will be perceived to escape.

The signs that fish are fresh are the firmness or stiffness of the fish, the redness of its gills, and the brightness of the eyes. Whiteness of muscle and the absence of oiliness and viscidity are also signs of wholesomeness of this species of food. Flakiness and opaque appearance, with a layer of white curdy matter interspersed between the flakes, after the fish has been cooked, are signs of the goodness of turbot, cod, whiting, haddock, flounder, and sole.

The gills should also smell sweet, the fins be tight up, and the eyes not sunk. The reverse of any of these signs shows that it is stale. Thickness of flesh generally shows the good condition of fish.

Fish out of season, that is after spawning, are unwholesome; and for this reason the legislature has found it necessary to fix the periods at which the fishing of salmon and the dredging of oysters shall be lawful.

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No article of consumption is more subject to adulteration than the pleasant one which forms the principal ingredient of the tea-table. It is not only adulterated by the Chinese vender, but it undergoes sophistication by the Chinese artist. By the former several vegetable productions, particularly a kind of moss, are mixed among genuine tea, and often sold by the antemundane subjects of “the Brother of the Sun and Moon, and The Light of Nations,” in its stead.

Among the manufacturers and venders of tea in our “fair isle”—“the land of the wise, the eloquent, the free,”—the dried leaves of the birch, ash, or elder tree, and particularly those of the privet or white thorn, and the black thorn or sloe, (both which last-mentioned specimens possess more of the qualities of the tea leaf than any other known vegetable,) are manufactured and fabricated to represent this delicious article of English female consumption: and the colouring, dyeing, and staining process is accomplished by the agency of terra japonica, logwood, verdigris, copperas, Prussian blue, carbonate of copper, Dutch pink, &c. by the English, and, it is said, even by the Chinese artist; which ingredients (namely, the five last-mentioned,) are among the most potent poisons. According to Mr. Accum’s testimony (Culinary Poisons, p. 220, note,) Mr. Twining, the eminent tea-dealer, asserts that “the leaves of spurious tea are boiled in coppers with copperas and sheep’s dung.” And it is a known fact that tea-leaves are purchased, from the London coffee houses and shops, by a regular set of men, who make their weekly rounds for the purpose, to be re-dried and coloured.

As it may be interesting to my readers to be informed of the progress of the “march of intellect” in the imitative process of preparing sham tea, and to have an opportunity of admiring the ingenuity of fraud and villany displayed in the fabrication, I shall endeavour to gratify their reasonable curiosity.

The white thorn and the sloe, or black thorn, as I have already said, are the principal leaves employed in the fabrication of the sham or imitative teas, on account of their possessing more of the qualities of the tea-leaf than any other known vegetable. From the white thorn is manufactured the green tea; and from the black thorn, or sloe, the black variety. These leaves are gathered and collected from the hedges around the metropolis, by a number of agents hired by the fabricators; and these sub-imps in the “black art” are rewarded for their honest labours with a remuneration of from one penny to twopence a pound. I have been told by one of those worthies that he is able to make between two and three pounds a week by his “vocation,” and has not “hard labour too;” for he likes, as he says, “to play oft at times a bit of the gentleman.” And, by a tea-leaf collector, I was once informed that his usual returns, or rather clear gains, were between six and seven pounds per week, and this “for only mornings’ work.” Of course, I suppose, like other large “capitalists” and “the moneyed interests,” he put on his silk stockings in the evenings, and exhibited his “sweet person” at “Almacks,” or some of the fashionable “Hells,” or “Evening,” or “Musical parties” at the “West End.” But, as to the indisputable reality of this “transmogrification,” your deponent knoweth not.

But to the subject in hand. The sloe, or black thorn, leaves are first boiled; then, when the water is squeezed from them in a press, they are baked on a flat iron plate; and, when dry, rubbed between the hands to produce the curl of the genuine tea. The colour is then produced by the application of Dutch pink, and a small quantity of logwood; when, “mirabile dictu!” “good, wholesome, nutritious black tea” is produced equal to, and probably surpassing the specimens of the monopolists of Leadenhall-street.

The process is equally rapid and efficacious in the fabrication of green tea; the leaves being boiled, pressed, and dried in the same manner as I have described, takes place with the black imitation-tea, only that the drying process is performed on plates of copper. The blueish hue or bloom observable on genuine tea is produced by mixing with the leaves Prussian blue or Dutch pink, in fine powder, while the leaves are heating upon the plates, and verdigris is added to complete the operation. The leaves are then sifted, to separate them from the thorns and stalks; and should there not be a “quantum sufficit” of the fine green bloom (the indubitable criterion of genuineness in the estimation of our “fair countrywomen,”—the ancient, as well as “the bewitching;”) the operator kindly and generously adds, more verdigris and Dutch pink or Prussian blue. And again “pure, genuine, exhilarating” green tea is produced as quick as thought, and that even in the darkness of a town cellar, some few feet under ground.

The profits on these transmutations are enormous; Mr. Accum, at p. 205 of his useful book, says that it has been stated to be from £300 to £600 per cent. And the extent to which the nefarious traffic is carried is still more surprising. According to a report of the Committee of the House of Commons in the year 1783, it is stated that “the quantity of fictitious tea which was annually manufactured from sloe and ash-tree leaves, in different parts of England, to be mixed with genuine teas, was computed at more than Four Millions of Pounds.” This computation was made when the genuine teas, sold by the East-India Company, at their sales, amounted to only six millions of pounds annually. What then must be the amount of the illicit traffic now, when the Company’s sales are about thirty millions of pounds annually! This proves that the ingenious author of the following lines, which appeared in the Literary Journal, vol. 1, p. 14, cannot be supposed to be “much out in his reckoning:”

But John, “with all his easy gullibility,” will, no doubt say, “this is all stuff; show me proofs.” Well, John, thou art a good creature, thou wilt never believe “aught against thy enemy,” until he hath robbed thee of thy senses, and what is dearer to thee, thy “stuff.” But to prevent a too frequent repetition of thy misfortune, I will open the budget to thy admiring eyes. Look, John, over thy files of the London Newspapers, particularly the “Times” and “Courier,” from March to July, in the year 1818, and there thou mayest entertain thy optics and cerebral nerves with a goodly array of prosecutions and convictions of manufacturers and venders of factitious tea. In one instance, thou wilt read of £840 damages being given against one culprit. Nor is this all of the illicit doings, John. There have been many prosecutions and convictions since the time specified, with which I recommend thee to recreate “thy often infirmity” of incredulity. Mr. Accum, at page 203 of his work, says that, in Scotland and Ireland, the penalties imposed for this offence “amounted, during a few months, to more than fifteen thousand pounds!”

With respect to the medicinal or deleterious effects of tea on the animal economy, it would be misplaced to occupy the pages of a work of this nature with their discussion. To such of my readers as may wish to inform themselves on this subject, I recommended the perusal of “The Oracle of Health and Long Life; or, Plain Rules for the Preservation and Attainment of Sound Health and Vigorous Old Age. By Medicus;” as the intelligent author of that publication has discussed the matter with great ingenuity, and furnished a variety of hints and information calculated to be of essential service to the consumers of this most important article of Asiatic imports. Here it will be more useful to detail the ready tests or methods of detecting its adulteration. For it is an undoubted fact, as “Medicus” observes, that many of the noxious qualities attributed to tea, arise from the two-fold sophistication which it is frequently doomed to undergo both from the Chinese and English adulterator before it reaches the hands of the consumer.

Where it is suspected that tea is adulterated with the leaves of other shrubs, the fraud, if not discoverable by the appearance and fragrant odour of the article, may be detected by putting a grain and a half of blue vitriol into a cupful of the infusion, when, if it be genuine green tea, and set in a good light, it will appear of a fine light blue. If it be genuine bohea, it will turn to a deep blue, next to black; but when an adulteration has been made in either case, a variety of colours, as green, black, yellow, &c. will be seen in the samples submitted to the experiment.

Where the damaged and ordinary green teas or tea leaves have been prepared with japan earth, or other adulterating ingredients, for the purpose of giving the leaves the colour, and the infusion the tincture of bohea tea, the fraud may be detected by either of the following tests or methods: 1. A less quantity of this dyed tea will give a deeper colour to the same proportion of water than if the experimented articles were genuine. 2. The colour it gives the water will also be of a reddish brown, whereas, if the article be genuine, it should be dark. 3. When the leaves have been washed, by standing a little, they will look greener than good bohea. 4. This dyed tea is generally much larger than the genuine specimens; it is, therefore, always advisable to buy the small leaved bohea; remembering to examine whether the ingenuity of the artist has not been at work to break or crumble it into pieces, so as to disguise the size of the leaves: for the adulterator’s wits are always at work in “the black art.” 5. The liquor drawn off, which should be smooth and balsamic to the palate, tastes rougher and harsher than the genuine tea does. 6. If milk is poured into it, it will rise of a reddish colour, instead of a dark or blackish brown. 7. A little copperas put into this last-mentioned liquor will turn it to a light blue, instead of a deep blue inclining to black. 8. Spirits of hartshorn make good tea of a deep brownish colour, after it has stood awhile, similar to new drawn tincture of saffron; but the same effect does not appear when the tea is bad.

When green tea is counterfeited by dyeing bad bohea with green vitriol the cheat may be detected by the following means: 1. By putting a piece of gall into the infusion it will turn it to a deep blackish colour, which would not be the case were vitriol or copperas not present. 2. If the infusion made of this tea be of a pale green, and incline to a blueish dye, it is bad. 3. Spirit of hartshorn will give it a slight purple tinge, and precipitate a small sediment, instead of a deep greenish yellow after it has stood about half a dozen minutes. 4. Where the adulteration has been made with carbonate of copper, the fraud is detected, by shaking up a tea-spoonful of the suspected article in a phial with two tea-spoonsful of liquid ammonia, diluted with half its bulk of water; when the liquor, if copper be present, will exhibit a fine blue colour. Mr. Accum in his work, p. 219-221, gives other methods for testing adulterated tea.

As a general and ready test to distinguish genuine tea from the sloe, or black thorn, and the white thorn leaf, make an infusion of it in the common way, and then spread out some of the largest leaves to dry; when, if the tea be genuine, the leaf will appear to be narrow in proportion to its length, and deeply notched or serrated at the edges, and the end or extremity acutely pointed; while the sloe, or black thorn leaf is notched or jagged at the edges very slightly, and is obtusely pointed. Another distinction also is, that the genuine leaf is of a lively pale green colour, its surface smooth and glossy, and its texture very delicate; while the adulterated leaf is of a dark olive green colour, its texture much coarser and surface more uneven. The leaves of the white thorn, when moistened and spread, have a less resemblance to the genuine tea-leaf than is the case with the sloe-leaf. The leaves of the other imitative or sham teas have still a less resemblance, and for this reason they are but seldom used. With respect to the different kinds of tea imported from China the shape of the leaf is the same in all of them, though its size varies; for all the varieties are the produce of the same plant; the difference of quality and properties depend chiefly on the difference of climate, soil, culture, age, time of gathering, and mode of drying the leaves. The difference of the size of the leaf is occasioned in a great measure by the different seasons at which it is gathered.

Several substitutes are vended by the grocers and coffee-dealers, instead of the coffee-berry, when purchased in a ground state, or allowed to pass through the vender’s mill. Among many others may be mentioned ground dried acorns, horse-chestnuts, horse-beans, pigeon-beans, peas, nuts, barley, rice, wheat, parsnips, carrots, &c. but the best imitation of the real berry is obtained by roasting blue succory, or rye, with the addition of a few almonds. As all these articles, however, have but little resemblance in flavour to real coffee, except what they acquire from the torrefaction, and their empyreumatic oil, they are seldom vended solely by themselves, except to the coffee-shops of London, or those whom the dealers consider as “a plucked pigeon,” but are ingeniously mixed with a portion of the genuine berry.

Friend John will, no doubt, as usual, call to his assistance his native incredulity, and ask for proof against his “pals,” the grocer and coffee-dealer. To satisfy his just curiosity let him look to the same file of papers to which he was referred respecting tea, and there he will have no reason to be longer hard of belief. He will there find that one “gentleman grocer,” disliking the trouble of grinding horse-beans, pigeon’s beans, &c. proceeded by short hand, and threw in a dash (not a pinch) of gravel or sand; for which act of kindness towards his customers he was convicted in the penalty of £50. See the case of The King against Chaloner, a tea and coffee dealer.

But, probably, John, when he finds himself no longer able to cling to his strong hold—incredulity—will exclaim, shew us, then, your chemical test and analysis.—Ah! John, the coffee sophisticator is too much for us; his art is beyond the reach of short or long tests, or of hard or easy ones: he may do as he likes, unless thou canst put thy hoof upon some of his nicely packed-up parcels; and to accomplish this purpose thou, or thy representative, the poor, badly-paid, half-starved, ill-requited Excise-officer, must detect him in his machinations on his own proper “dominium” or “natale solum:” scarcely any other detection will satisfy that old lady’s scrupulosity and exactness—that “golden calf” of thy idolatry—that “all perfect and superhuman mass of incongruity and intricacy”—the law. Thou, therefore, seest plainly that the only certain way to have a drop of the “pure stuff” is to purchase the berry in its raw state and roast it, and what is still more important, to grind it thyself. But, if thou dost not understand all these processes to a-t—, thou mayst find them, with some other very interesting arcana of the science, detailed in a work which I shall shortly publish for the instruction and guidance of housekeepers of all kinds and descriptions, and which I shall entitle “The Housekeepers’ Guide to Domestic Comfort, Household Management, and Practical Economy.” This, John, I intend shall be a rare work—quite a tit-bit for thy fancy; and the price a mere “four-penny matter.” It shall not be a “marrowless collection of shreds and patches, and cuttings and pastings,” selected or stolen out of old useless books, but a collection of practical facts, conducing to domestic comfort and real economy.

As I must, friend John, have, by the foregoing particulars, alarmed thy coffee-drinking propensities, it is but fair to let thee into the secret of ascertaining good coffee.

Know then, friend Bull, and all ye little Bulls, who may have the satisfaction of deriving your paternity from that ancient and honourable stock, that coffee, commercially considered, is of three sorts: the Arabian, or Mocha coffee, the East-Indian coffee, and the West-Indian coffee. Of these, the Mocha, or Turkey, coffee is generally esteemed the best, and is so stated by all the writers on the subject; but this is not the case: for the Java coffee is considered, by all competent judges, to be superior, as it contains a considerably larger proportion of oil. Among the East-Indian species, that of Bourbon is preferred. Of the West-Indian produce, the growth of the French colonies is most esteemed, particularly that of Martinique. The coffee of Surinam, Berbice, Demerara, and Cayenne, is the least valued. The inferiority of the coffee of the British colonies is supposed to be occasioned by its being put to dry in houses where sugar and rum are kept, or by being set in vessels freighted with those commodities, or other substances of a strong scent, from which the coffee imbibes the flavour.

Mocha, or Turkey, coffee (namely, in a raw or unroasted state) should be chosen of a greenish olive hue, fresh and new, free from any musty smell, the berries of a middling size, and clean and plump. Good West-Indian coffee should also be of a greenish cast, fresh, free from mouldy smells, and the berry small. East-Indian coffee is of a pale, and partly of a deep yellow colour. Java coffee is distinguished by its being a large, light, yellow berry.

These are the general tests or methods for ascertaining the quality of raw coffee; those for roasted are similar as to the size of the berry: the other criteria are that it should not be too much roasted, but of a bright chestnut colour, and of a fresh fragrant smell.

I cannot, I apprehend, close this article more appropriately and serviceably, than by exhorting my readers to recollect that the presence of any of the adulterating ingredients in coffee is of the greatest prejudice to health, and is apt to cause a distressing weight on the stomach if the adulterated coffee be used daily for some time. The detail of the beneficial and injurious effects is ably stated in “The Oracle of Health and Long Life.”

Chocolate is frequently adulterated with noxious ingredients, particularly vanilla and castile soap; the first article is used for giving it a fragrant odour, and the second for causing it to froth when it is dissolved in the water: a large proportion of flour, also, instead of the kernel of the cocoa-nut, makes up the composition.

Chocolate, to be good, should be of a brown colour, inclining to red; when broken, it should appear of a smooth and uniform consistence in the fracture, without any granulated particles, and should melt easily in the mouth, leaving no roughness or astringency, but rather a cooling sensation upon the tongue; which last quality is the most decisive criterion of its genuineness.

Considerable ingenuity is exerted in the adulteration of sugar. The moist sugars are mixed up with sand, salt, flour, and a variety of other ingredients of little or no cost. The loaf, or lump sugar receives the addition of lime, chalk, gypsum, plaster of paris, or any white material which will save expense to the “refiner.”

Lump, or loaf sugar, to be good, should be close, heavy, and shining: though, by the bye, some of the craft have lately contrived to introduce some sparkling particles of marble, to produce the shining appearance. That which easily breaks, and appears porous or spongy and of a dull cast, has not been properly manufactured, and has an undue proportion of lime, &c. in its composition. Of the moist kind, chuse that which is distinguished by the sharpness, brightness, and loose texture of the grain, and which, when rubbed between the finger and the thumb, is not easily pulverized: those kinds are to be preferred which have a peculiar grey hue, in conjunction with the brightness and other criteria just mentioned. The soft and close grained sugars, though of a good colour, should be rejected as saturated with too much earthy matter. The East India varieties do not contain so much saccharine matter as the produce of the West India colonies. Neither is the crush-lump, which is manufactured from treacle and employed by grocers for mixing with the common sorts of brown sugar, equal to the West India produce in sweetening power. Adulterated sugar is readily discovered by the taste and sediment left at the bottom of the vessel in which it is dissolved. The presence of crush-lump may be recognized by the uniformity of the appearance of moist sugar.

Rules for the choice of currants, raisins, rice, and other articles of grocery, are detailed in “Domestic Comforts and Economy,” a work containing a store of information for the economizing and skilful management of household expenditure.

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Pepper is subject to adulteration, like most other articles of consumption. The spurious pepper consists of chalk, flour, ground mustard-seed, &c. mingled with a certain portion of the genuine berry, a quantity of pepper dust, or the sweepings of the pepper warehouses, mixed with a little Cayenne pepper; the whole being made into a cohesive mass by means of mucilage. Even the whole berry has not been able to escape the ingenuity of sophistication. The adulterated berry is manufactured of the hulls of mustard-seed, or oil-cakes composed of the residue of lint-seed, from which the oil has been pressed, glue, common clay or chalk, and a certain quantity of stuff known and purchased in the market under the name and cabalistical abbreviations of P. D. or D. P. D., the first mentioned of which delectable ingredients is the dust which falls from the pepper-corns by their rubbing against each other in their voyage from the place of their growth to that of their importation; the other is the sweepings or refuse of the pepper warehouses. The first abbreviation signifies pepper dust; the second, dirt of pepper dust. The mode of manufacturing these inviting ingredients is to granulate the mass by pressing it through a sieve, and then to roll the grains about in a cask until they take a globular form. “Artists” are then employed to stick into each pepper-corn little sprigs, in order to simulate the appearance of the genuine berry. This practice was long carried on in London, without the least interruption or suspicion of the fraud on the public and the revenue, until the collection of the duties was, in the year 1819, transferred from the Customs to the Excise; when, on that occasion, several convictions of the offenders took place, which may be seen in the newspapers published about that period.

Pepper is of two kinds, the black and the white. Black pepper should be chosen large, heavy, firm, and not much shrivelled. White pepper is either factitious or genuine: the former is the ripe and perfect berry, prepared by steeping in sea-water and urine the best and soundest grains of black pepper for about the space of a week, when the skin or rind bursting, they are taken out and exposed to the heat of the sun until the skin or outer bark loosens, when they are rubbed with the hand till the rind falls off. The internal kernels are next perfectly dried in the sun, and then they are fit to be ground or manufactured into white pepper, together with such foreign ingredients as the conscience or ingenuity of the adulterator may suggest. The genuine white pepper consists of the blighted or imperfect berries of the same plant as produces the black pepper; but as it does not possess a strength and pungency, even when not adulterated, equal to the common black pepper, it is by no means preferable to that variety for domestic purposes, except where appearance is consulted, as in the case of its being brought to table. In fact, white pepper is always, whether genuine or factitious, inferior in flavour and quality to black pepper; and where it is factitious, its peculiar flavour and pungency are nearly lost.

Where the berries are supposed to be factitious, the readiest way of detecting the fraud, (independent of the deterioration of quality and flavour, which must be evident to every judge of the genuine article,) is to throw a few of the pepper-corns into a little water; when the artificial produce will swell up and soon become soft and sticky, and on the least degree of agitation will dissolve or fall to powder, while the genuine corns will remain whole and unaffected.

The same precaution that I have said should be observed by the purchasers of coffee—namely, never to let it pass through the mill of the grocer or vender, should also be observed in the purchase of pepper. When the cunning varlets have none of the adulterated pepper-corns by them, they will be sure of exerting some sleight-of-hand in slipping into the mill some of the before-mentioned sophisticating articles, or flour, or powdered hemp-seed or rape-seed cake, or ivory black, or the hieroglyphical P. D. or D. P. D. (if they are not already patiently waiting in the mill to lend their services as make-weights;) notwithstanding the poor purchaser may suppose himself lynx-eyed, and proof against imposition.

Another article of the pepper kind, friend John, with which thou art fond of tickling thy delicate appetite, and of exhibiting on “gaudy days,” as the sons of Alma Mater phrase it, in thy well polished castors, to thy admiring guests, like a sparkling star to be found only in the remotest part of the heavens, is the subject of sophisticating roguery. What thinkest thou, John, of the “dear bought,” “far fetched,” “long sought,” “gentleman-like” Cayenne pepper, which thou often wrappest up in as many folds of paper as an onion hath coats, that it should not lose its virtue, being adulterated with “red lead,” to prevent the delectable mass of which it is composed from becoming bleached on exposure to the light. I was thinking, friend Bull, to furnish thee with a test for discovering the fraud, but as I know of no one better than that given by thy expatriated countryman, the much injured Accum, I must refer thee to his book, 4th edition, p. 247. Perhaps the following extract from that excellent work, (the only book on cookery extant, that can be safely trusted to; for the genius of cookery is, believe me, John, in colleague with the spirit of sophistication against thy health; and for a confirmation of this assertion thou needest only look to the formulæ given in cookery books for imparting a fresh and lively green colour or hue to pickles—not to mention the consequences of the concentration of the virtues of certain articles, which, though harmless, while used in their original and simple state, are, as the author of the “Oracle of Health and Long Life” observes, in their concentrated state, potent poisons;) the Cook’s Oracle, by the late Dr. Kitchener, will be better adapted to thy wants and taste.

“We advise those who are fond of Cayenne not to think it too much trouble to make it of English chillies—there is no other way of being sure it is genuine.—They will obtain a pepper of much finer flavour without half the heat of the foreign; and a hundred chillies will produce two ounces. The flavour of the chillies is very superior to that of the capsicums. Put them in a warm place to dry, then rub them in a mortar, as fine as possible, and keep them in a well stopped bottle.”

Wholesome and economical receipts for making most of the other articles vended in oil shops will be found in the same useful work. Buy the work, John, thou wilt have no reason to begrudge the price; it is equally valuable to the man of “high” or “low estate;”—to him to whom dinner is the chief business of the day, who merely lives to eat, than eats to live—who seeth the sun rise with no other hope than that he should fill his belly, before it sets, who is not satisfied till he is surfeited; as well as to the man who lives according to old English hospitality, and eateth merely to satisfy nature and his better health.

Great fraud is often practised by the vender in the sale of this commodity, either by depriving the cloves of their oil, which is easily drawn from them either by distillation or by simple pressure, or by causing them to imbibe or absorb a quantity of water a short time previous to their sale. When the oil has been extracted, the fraud may be discovered by the cloves appearing shrivelled, light, of a paler colour than their usual dark brown hue when perfect, without the ball or knob at the top, and with little taste or smell. When they have been forced to imbibe water for the purpose of increasing their weight, the adulteration may be detected by pressure between the fingers, and by the flavour and fragrance of the exudation. When good and bad cloves have remained long intermingled, the bad gradually absorb oil from the good, in which case the fraud becomes difficult of detection.

The clove to be in perfection should be large sized, plump, heavy, of a fine fragrant smell, and a hot aromatic taste, not easily disappearing off the tongue; easily broken, and when pressed between the thumb and finger should leave an oily moisture upon them, producing a slight sensation of smarting.

Cinnamon is adulterated by either mixing cassia bark with it, or a portion of the genuine article, which has been deprived of its essential oil by distillation.

Good cinnamon is smooth and thin, not much thicker than royal or stout writing paper, and rather pliable; of a light yellowish cast, inclining to red, a fragrant aromatic smell, and an agreeable sweetish taste. Thick, hard, brownish coloured specimens, of hot, pungent, or a bitter taste, should be rejected.

The cassia bark, which bears a great resemblance to cinnamon, is thicker, of a coarser texture, breaks short and smooth; whereas cinnamon breaks fibrous and splintery. The best method, however, of distinguishing cinnamon from cassia is by the taste. Thus, when cassia is taken into the mouth, it forms a sweet mucilage, and seems, when good, to dissolve almost entirely, whereas cinnamon has a bitter taste, and produces a bitter dryness in the mouth.

Criteria for judging of nutmegs, ginger, mace, &c. will be found in “Domestic Comforts and Economy.”

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Among the poisonous articles daily vended to the public, none are of more potent effect than the pickles sold by unprincipled oilmen. For the purpose of giving a fresh and lively green colour or hue to those stimulants of the palate, they are intentionally coloured by means of copper or verdigris, or at least placed for a considerable time in copper or brazen vessels for the purpose of allowing the articles to be impregnated by the joint action of the metal and the vinegar. The cookery books (save and except “The Cook’s Oracle”) in vogue also direct the “lovers of good cheer” to boil their pickles in bell metal or copper pots, or to boil halfpence or a bit of verdigris with them, in order to impart a green colour! Ought not the authors, whose gender seems “doubtful,” and Messieurs les Bibliopoles, of those pests, to be indited for a nuisance and malice prepense to the loving subjects of our late “good old king?”

The ready way to detect the presence of copper in these articles is to pour a little liquid ammonia, diluted with an equal quantity of water, over a small quantity of the suspected pickle reduced into small pieces, and placed in an enclosed phial or vessel; when, if the pickles contain the minutest quantity of copper, the ammonia will assume a blue colour.

Vinegar is adulterated with sulphuric acid, muriatic acid, nitric acid, oil of vitriol, a variety of acrid vegetable substances, and frequently contains metallic impregnations of lead, tin, pewter, iron, and copper, from the stills or vessels in which it is made. Its more harmless adulteration is a considerable dilution with water.

Vinegar is prepared from a variety of substances; but its common preparations are from wine, fruits, malt, sugar, and wood. The vinegar made from wood is the strongest, containing at least eight times the strength of the common preparations. It is perfectly colourless, and its taste is very pungent and grateful. But the vinegar generally prepared for sale in this country is made from malt; which to be good should be of a pale brown colour, perfectly transparent, of a pleasant and rather pungent acid taste, but without acrimony, and a fragrant grateful odour. These are the readiest and best tests of good vinegar. But as a false strength is frequently given to it by adding oil of vitriol, sulphuric acid, or the extract of some acrid vegetable, as pellitory of Spain, capsicum, &c. or metallic extracts, the tests for ascertaining these foreign substances are as follow: If it is suspected that vinegar is adulterated with oil of vitriol, put three or four drops of acetate of barytes into a glass of vinegar; filtrate the white precipitate thereby produced through paper, and heat the powder or residuum remaining in a tobacco-pipe until it is red hot. Then put it into spirit of salt or diluted aqua-fortis; if the precipitate dissolves, the vinegar is genuine; if not, it is adulterated. But if metallic adulteration is suspected, add liquid ammonia to the vinegar, until the odour of the ammonia predominates; if the mixture assumes a blackish tint, it is a sign that copper is present in the article. If the presence of lead be suspected, add water impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen to the suspected vinegar; if the mixture becomes black or yields a black precipitate, your suspicion is well founded.

Olive oil is frequently adulterated by mixing with it the oil of poppy seeds or a decoction of cucumbers, which latter ingredients easily unite with the oleaginous substances. It is frequently impregnated with lead, from the circumstance of the fruit which yields the oil being compressed between leaden plates, and the oil being suffered to remain in pewter or leaden cisterns in order to become clear before it is offered for sale. This last injurious quality is communicated afresh to the commodity by the retail venders, who frequently keep a pewter vessel immersed in the oil, for the purpose, as they assert, of preserving the liquid from becoming rancid. It is however proper to state that the metallic contamination by the wholesale manufacturer chiefly belongs to the Spanish produce: the French and Italian manufacture is usually free from the impregnation.

The presence of lead or any metal deleterious to health is detected, by shaking in a stopped phial some of the suspected oil with a quantity of water impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen, in the proportion of one part of the former to two parts of the latter ingredient; when the oil, if adulterated, will become of a dark brown or black colour. When the oil of poppy seed, or the decoction of cucumber, is supposed to have been made use of in the adulteration, their presence may be ascertained by exposing the mixture to a freezing temperature, when the olive oil will become frozen, while the adulterating ingredient will remain fluid.

The best olive oil is of a bright pale amber colour, somewhat inclining to a greenish cast; free from sediment, bland to the taste, and without smell.

Salt is frequently adulterated with sulphate of lime, for the purpose of making it weigh heavier, appear lighter, and less liable to become moist.

“Genuine mustard,” says Mr. Accum, (Culinary Poisons, p. 330) “either in powder, or in a state of paste ready made, is perhaps rarely to be met with in the shops.” Whether “patent,” “best Durham,” or of any other pretty and imposing name, it generally consists of a composition of mustard flour and wheaten flour; only for the additional cost of the “patent mustard” of the respective manufacturers, the purchaser is treated with a little cayenne pepper, a large quantity of bay salt, and a quantum sufficit of “aqua pura.” Turmeric is the grand adulterant of the merchant for giving the yellow colour to factitious mustard. The flour of mustard of the shops generally consists of the produce of mustard seed, cayenne pepper, wheat flour, and turmeric; and the essence of mustard of the fashionable oilmen is composed of camphor and oil of rosemary, dissolved in oil of turpentine, with the addition of a little of the flour of mustard!

Anchovy sauce is frequently contaminated with the pigments denominated Venetian red or Armenian bole, which are rubbed into the mass, while the operator is triturating the anchovy in his mortar. The Venetian red, which is frequently adulterated with red lead, affords the deepest and finest colour, and is accordingly used by the fashionable oilman; the aid of the Armenian bole is invoked by his more conscientious and less aspiring brethren.

But the anchovy itself is not exempt from the sophisticating ingenuity of the trade; for sprats are frequently prepared and sold for anchovies. The best way of discovering the fraud is by the appearance of the back bone, which in the anchovy is triangular for some space from the head, while that of the sprat is flat.

The test for detecting the fraud practised in the manufacture of anchovy sauce is the same as that which will be presently stated for discovering the adulteration of mushroom catsup.

This common article of consumption is frequently contaminated by copper. This deleterious quality it obtains from the mode of its manufacture, as well as from the articles from which it is manufactured.

The usual way in which it is prepared is by boiling in a copper the residue left in the still of the vinegar manufacturer, with a decoction of the outer green shell of the walnut (previously prepared also by having been boiled in a copper, in combination with common salt;) together with a portion of allspice or pimento, pepper dust, (or cayenne pepper, should the manufacturer be a man of taste;) and garlic.

The method of detecting the fraud is detailed at page 294 of Mr. Accum’s book: it is too long for insertion here.

Isinglass, which is prepared from the air-bladders of the sturgeons, is the subject of sophistication. The dried bladders of horses, the skins of soles, and the intestinal membranes of calves and sheep are frequently sold for it. The fraud may be detected by boiling the shreds in water; when, if the article is adulterated, the spurious ingredients will obtain only an imperfect insolubility, whereas genuine isinglass is almost perfectly soluble in water.

Isinglass to be good, should be white, perfectly transparent, dry, fibrous, and of a faint odour and insipid taste. The best variety occurs in the form of a lyre or horse-shoe; the worst, flat, in the form of a pancake. The saltish taste of fictitious isinglass is also another of the criteria for judging of its goodness.

This article is subject to great adulteration by the introduction of foreign ingredients into its manufacture. The easiest and speediest test of its genuineness is by dissolving or cutting it. By the first method, if good, it dissolves easily, while that of a coarse or an adulterated kind dissolves with difficulty, and settles at the bottom of the vessel. By the second method, (and which is the best criterion of its goodness,) when cut with a knife, it exhibits a red copper-like appearance. Where this shade is absent or only very slight, the indigo is of an inferior quality.—Other signs of its goodness are that it should be light, of a close texture, break easily, float on water, be free from white specks or sand, and from white adhesive mould externally, and when rubbed with the nail, it should have a shining copper-like hue.

Soap is subject to great adulteration, as every person is aware who has had an opportunity of witnessing the specimens made twenty years ago, before “Messieurs les Artistes” had made their prodigious advances, as our “Yankee” brethren across the Atlantic phrase it, “in the progressing knowledge of the age.”

Good mottled soap is hard, but not brittle, well mottled, and without any rancid, tallowy, or unpleasant acrid smell. If any of this smell should be present, there has been an undue portion of soda or potash used in the manufacture. A quantity of fuller’s earth is often used to conceal the imperfections and add to the weight of the article, by enabling it to imbibe a large quantity of water. Rancid tallow also is often used in soap and candle-making, which has had a portion of its substance quite destroyed by putrefaction. Of course the articles from which it is made are of a very inferior quality. Those specimens which have a disagreeable odour are made of horns of animals, woollen rags, &c. instead of oil, clay often supplies the place of tallow.

There are several methods for proving the quality of soap. The author of “The Maidservant’s Companion and Directory” informs us that there are “some people who can ascertain it by the taste.” But as the same gentleman observes, as it is not likely that many persons will feel a pleasure in making the experiment, a more pleasant method is to slice an ounce or two of the soap very thin into a basin, and having poured boiling water upon the slices, to stir them well till they are quite dissolved; then place the basin and contents before the fire for the space of about twelve hours. When the mixture is quite cold, turn it out of the basin; if no sediment appears at the bottom, it is a sign of the goodness of the soap. Or the adulteration of the soap may be detected, by pouring upon a little of the suspected article, thinly sliced into a bottle, rectified spirit of wine, in the proportion of one part of soap to six parts of spirit: then, when the bottle, being slightly stopped, has remained a short time in a warm place, the adulterated parts of the soap will appear unacted upon by the agent; but if the soap be genuine, it will have become wholly dissolved.

To those who are desirous of economizing the consumption of soap, many useful hints may be found in “The Maidservant’s Companion and Directory;” a work which every sensible master and mistress should cause to be carefully and attentively perused by their domestics.

Nor are candles exempt from the sophisticator’s art. Tallow candles, to be good, should be made of equal parts of bullock’s and sheep’s fat; which is discoverable by their being of a firm texture, a good white colour, and not an obnoxious smell. When made of hog’s fat, they gutter, emit an ill smell, and a thick black smoke. If alum or pulverized marble has been mingled with the tallow, for the purpose of giving a white appearance and a hard consistence, the wicks burn with a dead light, and the alum spits or emits slight explosions from the wick as it burns.

Some useful directions respecting the management and the economizing of the consumption of candles, whether wax, mould, or dips, are to be found in “Domestic Comforts and Economy.”

This commodity is subject to much adulteration by the manufacturer. When good, it is dry, easily reducible to powder, tasteless, and without odour. In its use in the laundry, there is no good housewife but can distinguish, by its effects on her “lavatory occupations,” the difference between good and bad starch: it is therefore unnecessary to detail tests.

Bees’ wax is frequently adulterated with rosin, tallow, pease-meal, potatoe-starch, and a mixture of oil and litharge. The introduction of rosin into it may be discovered by its hardness, brittleness, and want of tenacity. When adulterated with tallow, the fraud may be detected by scratching the finger over the surface; when its clamminess and adhesiveness to the fingers will indicate the presence of that ingredient. In the purchase of cakes of bees’ wax the cake should be broke, in order to ascertain whether the impurities called foot, are not ingeniously encased in a shell of pure wax. White wax is adulterated with carbonate of lead and white tallow, to increase its weight.

Bees’ wax, when good, is of a compact substance, somewhat unctuous to the touch, but not adhering to the fingers or to the teeth when it is kneaded or chewed: and when scratched by the finger-nail, no obstruction is met with, and but little indentation or fissure made; it also has an agreeable smell partaking of a slight odour of honey, and a clear fresh yellow colour. Its texture is also granular.

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Butter is not exempt from adulteration: the inferior kinds are frequently mixed up with hogs-lard which has lost its flavour and appearance; and not unfrequently kitchen-stuff forms a portion of the bulk.

Good butter is hard and firm; therefore that butter which is often sold in the shops in London, that adheres to the knife when applied to, or stuck into it, is factitious, that is, manufactured in a machine, of the following materials—viz. rancid fresh butter, the cheap unsaleable Scotch butters of various hues and dyes, and a quantity of salt, well rummaged and pomelled together. This spurious commodity is of a white cast, and generally sold under the denomination of “Dorset.” It should be recollected that the cheesemongers never beat the good butters, as the beating injures the flavour; they bestow their friendly castigations only on the worthless commodity for the purpose of extracting a portion of its rancidity and obnoxious smell.

Butter should be bought by the taste and smell. Both fresh and salt butter should smell sweet, and be of an equal colour throughout; if veiny and open, it has been mixed with a staler or an inferior sort. The quality of tub butter is ascertained by putting a knife into the butter; and if, on drawing it out, any rancid or unpleasant smell should attach to the knife, the butter is not good; but, perhaps, the best criterion is to taste the butter near the sides of the tub, for the middle is often sweet when the parts near the sides of the tub are quite rank.

Hogs-lard is adulterated with the skimmings of the liquor in which pork or bacon has been boiled. Lard thus adulterated has a grey colour, a soft consistence, and a salt taste; whereas lard, when pure, is white, granular, and rather firm in texture.

When annatto is dear, or of inferior quality in appearance, it is customary with the venders of the article to adulterate it with vermilion or red lead. This contamination has chiefly been confined to the Gloucester cheese; and may be detected by macerating a small quantity of the suspected article in water impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen, acidulated with muriatic acid; which will immediately cause the cheese to assume a brown or black colour, if the minutest portion of lead be present. I am informed by a respectable dealer, that cheese, especially old Stilton cheese, is frequently greened in particular parts with verdigris, in order to assume the appearance of age.

The best cheese is that which is of a dry compact texture, without holes in it; of a whitish colour, and which, on being rubbed between the finger and thumb, almost immediately becomes a soft and somewhat greasy mass. Nor is a moist smooth coat a bad criterion of its quality. It should also be of a moderate age; for neither very decayed, nor decaying cheese, is wholesome; nor is that which is new, adhesive, and ropy, when heated by the fire, of a good kind. Cheshire cheese which crumbles and tastes bitterish has been made of bad milk. Though cheese is generally chosen by the taste, this is by no means a criterion of its nutritive qualities; as the flavour generally depends on the nature of the food which the cows eat, and often on the mode of management in the manufacture of the cheese.

In the purchase of bacon and hams, pray bear in mind, friend John, that many more thousands of tons of those articles are sold annually in the metropolis of this land of “just and equal dealing” as “fine, new Hampshire bacon and fine Yorkshire hams,” than are received from those counties altogether; and that though the bacon merchants are supplied with bacon from Ireland, none sell Irish bacon. The large Irish hams are also dried and sold for “fine fresh” Yorkshire or Westmoreland varieties, to tickle the fancy of the “Bull Family” for rarities and expensive purchases.

The usual sophistication of milk is a liberal quantity of warm water, and to give consistence to the mixture, and correct the colour, a composition of flour and yolks of eggs is added; but should there not have been sufficient time for the operation, the immediate aid of the cock or the pump is invoked. But some of the more skilfully initiated “artistes au lait” dissolve the common cheese dye, annatto, which occasions a mixture of milk and water to assume the colour, and nearly the consistence of cream. Among some of the less expert a composition of treacle and salt supplies the place of the annatto; but this mixture does not combine so well as the annatto with the milk. Pure milk is of a dull white colour, and a soft sweetish taste; adulterated milk is of a bluish appearance and thin consistence.

Cream receives a copious addition of skimmed milk, flour, starch, rice-powder, or arrow-root boiled together, to increase the “milk-merchant’s” profits. But arrow-root is the substance which is best adapted, and most employed for the purpose. The generally received opinion that milk is adulterated with chalk and whitening is, as Mr. Accum observes, erroneous; for neither of those ingredients could be held in solution in the milk, and would therefore be useless to the adulterator, as they would sink to the bottom of the pail while the manufacturer was doling out his composition to his customers. But the practice of putting the milk into leaden pans, or vessels made of that metal, to occasion the milk to throw up a larger portion of cream, is sufficiently authenticated, and deserves exposure, from the liability of having the milk impregnated with particles of lead.

Perhaps some of my readers may be lovers of curds and whey; if so, I recommend them to endeavour to get a sight of the calf’s maw, from which the rennet is made before it is boiled. I have had the fortune of being “blessed” with “the captivating sight” more than once; and in each instance I absolutely saw the bladder moving alive with maggots.

Even the humble green-grocer exerts his ingenuity and “tact” in the art of sophistication: to augment the weight of his “murphies,” and “make them tell,” he soaks “the dear cratures” in water during the night previous to their sale.

While discoursing of the little peccadilloes of the honest tradesmen of “this land of Christianity,” I never apprehended that it was possible to sophisticate fruit. But at the very moment I was about to consummate my bold, and I hope it will prove, patriotic undertaking, by affixing the important and consolatory, though little word, “Finis,” a new discovery presented itself to my astonished optics! Can you believe me, John? I happened to pop in rather inopportunely, that is to say, a-la-mode Paul Pry, on a fruit-artist, who was preparing some stale plums for sale, and giving them all the bloom and fragrance of having been just plucked from the tree. This recondite feat of fruitist-ingenuity consists in anointing certain parts of the fruit with gum water, and then shaking a muslin bag containing finely powdered blue upon the prepared parts of the fruit, which are laid uppermost upon a board, to receive the precious unction.—From the honest tradesman whom I thus found patriotically engaged in furthering “the trading and commercial interests of his dear native land,” I also learned that some of the more skilful and enterprizing artists soak plums in water, when they have become shrivelled, in order to plump them out, and make them, as it is fashionably phrased, en-bon-point.

What an age of intellect do we live in! Could our good old Druidical ancestors have supposed that their puny and degenerate offspring would be endowed with the extraordinary gift of being able to rejuvenize old worm-eaten nuts? Rare and sublime discovery! What, John, may we not next expect? Surely, we have reached the millenium of the march of intellect and the perfection of sophistication. But I must not keep the reader longer in suspense.

The rejuvenization of Old Nuts! Just as I had finished writing the above article, an old and almost forgotten friend called on me, one who has long and scientifically been patriotically engaged, “in this age of intellect,” in rejuvenizing old, rotten, worm-eaten walnuts and almonds, of each last year’s growth, and giving their “externals” all the whiteness and beauty of the lily-white hand of a “fine lady,” and their “internals” all the plumpness and en-bon-point admired by his “most moral majesty,” our late “gracious and beloved sovereign,” in his “fair defects of nature.” By this scion of “the trading interests” I am informed that old nuts of all kinds are first soaked in water in order to plump them out, and then they are fumigated with sulphur for the purpose of rendering the shells white and clean.

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The confectionary-artist is not behind his compeers in trade in the honourable vocation of sophistication. There are few articles which owe their paternity to his handy-work, that partake wholly of the ingredients to which they bear resemblance in name and appearance: all, almost all, here is the work of “the black art.”

But this is not the worst part of the business. Were any person to be admitted into the “elaboratorical pandemonium” of a pastry-cook or a confectioner—were he to see the disgusting appearance of the vessels in which they manufacture their articles—many of them containing the ingredients with perfect rims of cupreous matter surrounding them—were he to regale his eyes with the sight of the most rancid butter bleaching for the purpose of making pastry, as I have seen, I am sure that he would hold the productions of the confectioner and pastry-cook’s shop in abhorrence, and would not consider Dr. Paris’s denunciation of them, in his useful work on Diet, p. 247, as “an abomination.” A lady with whom I am acquainted, and who lodged at different times in the houses of confectioners and pastry-cooks, had so good an opportunity of witnessing the cleanliness and wholesomeness of their operations, that for many years she has not tasted any commodity that comes out of their manufactories; and I verily believe that she would die of hunger before she could induce herself to allow a scrap of their delicacies to enter her mouth.

But these “artists” not only endanger the health and lives of their customers by the carelessness and nastiness of their conduct in their compositions, but they employ preparations of copper, and also of red lead in colouring their fancy sweet-meats. In the preparations of sugar-plumbs, comfits, and other kinds of confectionary, especially those sweat-meats of inferior quality, frequently exposed to sale in the open-streets, for the allurement of children, Mr. Accum, p. 288, informs us, that the greatest abuses are committed by means of powerful poisons. The white comfits, called sugar-peas, are chiefly composed of a mixture of sugar, starch and Cornish clay (a species of very white pipe-clay); and the red sugar drops are usually coloured with the inferior kinds of vermillion or sap green, and often, instead of those pigments, with red lead and copper. As a yellow colour, cromate of lead is used, and prussiate of iron as a blue. The stuff called “hard rock,” “hard bake,” “white lollypop,” and other baby attracting names, is of an equally deleterious quality. Nor are the ginger-bread or sweet cakes of the ginger-baker less injurious to the health of children, especially the “gilt ginger-bread” as it is termed, which is covered with Dutch leaf,—a composition consisting of an alloy of copper and zinc, or brass and copper. Indeed, all parents should, as the author of “The Oracle of Health and Long Life” observes, anxiously instruct their children never to buy any thing offered for sale in the streets: among my acquaintance more instances than one have occurred in which lamentable results would have been the consequence had not timely aid been afforded the little sufferers. And for the same reason it seems necessary to caution parents never to give painted toys (which are always coloured with red lead, verdigris, and other potent poisons,) to children, who are apt to put every thing, especially if it gives them pleasure, into their mouths.

The mischievous consequences occasioned by the use of sugar confectionary, coloured with metallic and vegetable poisons, are provided against by the French Government, by being under the surveillance branch of the police, entitled the Council of Health, by whom an ordonnance is issued, that no confectionary shall be sold, unless wrapped up in paper, stamped with the name and address of the confectioner; and the ordonnance further provides that the vendors shall be held responsible for all accidents occasioned by confectionary sold in their shops. M. Chevallier has, in the Journal de Chimie Médicale for Jan. 1831, discussed this subject with considerable ability.

“The foreign conserves, such as small green limes, citron, hop-tops, plumbs, angelica roots, &c. imported into this country, and usually sold in round chip boxes, are frequently impregnated with copper.” Indeed, most of the delicacies and “good things” to be obtained in confectioner’s shops, are tinted with all the colours of the rainbow, by the agency of lead, copper, brass, arsenic, or some other poisonous metal.

The presence of lead and copper is readily detected by pouring liquid ammonia over the article suspected of being adulterated with the first mentioned metal, which will acquire a blue colour; and sulphuretted hydrogen, acidulated with muriatic acid, where the second article is suspected to have been made use of in the adulteration, when the article will assume a dark brown or black colour. The adulteration by means of clay may be ascertained by dissolving the suspected article in boiling water, when the sediment or precipitate at the bottom of the vessel ready discovers the fraud.

For the purpose of communicating an almond or a kernel flavour to custards, blanc-mange, and other productions of his art, and to render them grateful to the palates of his customers, the pastry-cook flavours them with the leaves of the poisonous plant, the cherry-laurel. And the basis of his favourite blanc-mange often consists of the shreds of the dried bladders of horses, the skins of soles, and other animal membranes, as cheap substitutes for isinglass. Among his less objectionable sophistications may be mentioned, his fabrication of creams, custards, tarts, and other kinds of pastry, from rice powder and skimmed milk.

The negus and lemonade made by pastry-cooks, and the punch of public and coffee-houses, are made of tartaric acid, as a cheap substitute for citric or lemon acid.

The perfumers, the keepers of the “emporiums and bazaars of fashion,” the manufacturers of the “best genuine bears’ grease,” of the “incomparable Macassar Oils”—of the “Kalydors”—of “Les Cosmetiques Royales”—of the “Red and White Olympian Dews,” and other prodigiously grand and etymological titles “breathing the spirit of patriotic rivalry,” have all exerted their respective wits in the art of economising expense and “saving a penny.” In fact the tooth-powders, the dentrifices, the ottars of roses, the musks, the cosmetics, the lotions, the balsams, the Hungary waters, the Eaus de Cologne, as well as all the other frenchified eaus, the milks and creams of roses, the pomades divines, the blooms, the pearl-waters, the lip-salves, the perfumes,—the Naples almond and beautifying soaps,—the cephalic, Macouba, and other-hard named snuffs, are all vile sophistications, and (to omit speaking of their injurious properties to the health and the skin,) contain but little of the ingredients of which the artists profess that they are made. On this subject I shall address myself especially to my fair readers: craving leave to premise, that it is strange that British ladies, to whom Nature has been so bountiful, should destroy their native charms and have recourse to the wretched substitutes of art, which are destructive of beauty, and produce real deformity.

As many ladies attempt to improve their complexions by the use of the pernicious cosmetics, which are continually and unblushingly advertised as beautifiers of the skin, most of which are either worthless or dangerous, (for if they have any effect, it is that of conveying mercury, lead, or bismuth into the system, and too frequently laying the foundation of diseases which are often dangerous, and sometimes fatal;) I cannot refrain from advising those “fair ones” who have been in the habit of using trash of so villainous a nature, that if they have any of it by them, to throw it away at once, and to be persuaded that the best cosmetics are exercise in the open air, an active attention to social and domestic duties, regular hours of repose at night, and cheerful hilarity and tranquility of mind, and that those cheap and wholesome remedies will not, as the author of “The Toilette Companion” well observes, fail to animate their countenances and beautify their complexions beyond the blooms and the balsams, the Grecian and the Egyptian Waters, the Kalydors and the Macassar Oils, the Gowland’s Lotions and the Pearl Powders, the Cosmetiques Royales, the Red and White Olympian Dews, the Essences, the Eaus, and the Pomades Divines, the Essences Apolloniennes or Tyrian, and the Tonic Wines, and all the other puffed and delusive nostrums, that knavery, cupidity, and effrontery, have ever palmed upon a credulous public, by which dull and lustreless eyes, sallow and shrivelled skins, lifeless and cloudy complexions, and impaired and ruined health, are infallibly super-induced: or those simple and easily purchased ingredients, with a strict attention to cleanliness, that is, well washing the skin every day, and drying it with a course towel,—or when the head, neck, or face perspire, rubbing it dry with a towel of the like description, will, as the author of “The Oracle of Health and Long Life” says, more effectually beautify the complexion, preserve the skin pure, soft, and pervious, and consequently the health firm and unaffected, than all the frauds that have ever been contrived to cheat and deceive the unwary or the inexperienced. Cold water, however, should not be used when the skin is warm, nor very warm water when it is chilled. For as the author of that clever little work “The Toilette Companion, or The whole Art of Beauty and of Dressing,” says, “Many a beautiful face, neck, and arm, have been spoiled by not observing this caution.”

I have mentioned the dangerous consequences from the use of the repellent cosmetics and other quack nostrums puffed off in the newspapers; but, as example is more convincing than precept, I shall present my readers with a few cases of their lamentable results, which fell under the observation of the celebrated Dr. Darwin.

“Mrs. S. being much troubled with pimples, applied an alum poultice to her face, which was soon followed by a stroke of the palsy, and terminated in her death. Mrs. L. applied to her face for pimples a quack nostrum, supposed to be some preparation of lead. Soon after she was seized with epileptic fits, which ended in palsy and caused her death. Mr. Y. applied a preparation of lead to his nose to remove pimples, and it brought on palsy on one side of his face. Miss S. an elegant young lady, applied a cosmetic lotion to her face for small red pimples. This produced inflammation of the liver, which required repeated bleedings with purgatives to remove. As soon as the inflammation was subdued, the pimples re-appeared.” (Darwin’s Zoonomia.) Every person could enlarge this catalogue from the sphere of his own acquaintance.

I am willing to believe that I have (to use a legal phrase) made out a sufficient case to prove the inefficacy, nay the dangerous consequences of cosmetics, and the rest of the long list of et-ceteras for beautifying the skin. It will now be my duty to direct my attention to the other frauds and impositions practised under the titles of “hair strengtheners”—“hair beautifyers”—of “best genuine bears’ grease”—of “incomparable Macassar Oils”—of “Pommades Divines,”—and the remaining hair hoaxes and humbugs, played off as hair oils, Russia oils, and similar puffed nostrums, under pretty and taking titles, by Prince, Ross and Son, M’Alpine, and the rest of the bear’s grease and hair-oil men; and I shall feel a singular pleasure should I be the medium of saving any “lovely or loveable woman” from becoming the dupe of imposture and deception.

Amongst the various cosmetics recommended by the adventurer for the dressing room, it must be admitted that none seems more harmless than those which profess to give a fine curl to the hair. But to assert that any liquid will, of itself, give a permanent or temporary curl to the hair is fallacious; though it is true that the application of a weak soap lye, or a solution of caustic potash, will render the hair more susceptible of adopting the artificial curl given by putting it into papers. But then it must be recollected that the effect occasioned by soap lye or potash is only produced by a complete alteration of the organic structure of the hair, superinducing a slow but certain destruction of that beautiful ornament of the human head. This effect may not be immediately observed, either in youth or in advanced life; but it is certain and inevitable.

Equally destructive are the various liquid dyes so loudly boasted of, and extensively advertised, by quacks for colouring the hair; some of them, indeed, do produce the effect proposed, particularly the black dyes; but they are all injurious, especially the black, as their basis consists always of nitrate of silver, (that is, silver dissolved in nitric acid or aqua-fortis) or lunar caustic when in a dry state; but the operation is destructive of the hair, as must be evident to any one who has seen the effect of caustic on warts on the skin. It has been well said that if we wish to save our hair, we must first save our money, by abstaining from the whole list of those puffed and unprincipled recipes and nostrums that stare us in the face in every newspaper, and in almost every shop-window.

The folly of giving credence to any of the impudent and disgraceful impostures for the pretended power of certain ingredients to change the colour of the hair, must, as the author of The Toilette Companion observes, be evident to every person when he is told that the hair depends on a peculiar secretion, and that, when that secretion ceases, which it does from several causes, as grief, fright, ill health, great mental exertion, age, &c. the hair becomes grey: “for Nature, like a provident mother, when she feels the powers of life impaired or decaying, exerts all her energies to support and preserve the vital organs, and can no longer, from her limited means, supply the outposts and ornamental parts of the system as before, which therefore suffer and are sacrificed.”

Nor are the deceits of the base nostrum-mongers for making the hair grow and curl, or for making the bald pericranium of a nonagenarian vegetate in all the luxuriance of rejuvenization, the only frauds practised: equally destructive are the advertised depilatories, the general basis of which is yellow orpiment, a certain poison if taken inwardly. It is true that the Turks, with whom bald heads are in fashion, and also the Chinese, do use this as an unguent, to save the trouble of frequent shaving; but it should be recollected that those cosmetics which may be harmless on the head of a robust Janissary,—of a bashaw of three tails or a fat Mandarin, do not necessarily become fit adjuncts for the toilette of a “British fair,”—“the lovely daughters of Albion, Erin, or Scotia,” or even that of an “Herculean delicate,” a Lilliputian dandy, or a Bond-street exquisite.

Snuff-sniffers and tobacco-munchers and puffers, do ye know what the delectable ingredients which form part of the articles of your recreation, are? Have you never heard that snuff is often compounded of pulverised nut-shells, of the powder of old rotten wood, called powder post; that the colour is improved by ochre, and the appearance and feel modified by an addition of treacle or urine? And have you never been told that the pungency of snuff is increased by the agency of powdered glass or the muriate of ammonia? Tobacco smokers and “chawers,” have ye never been told that your favourite “quid” is often composed of black hellebore, corrosive sublimate, dried dock-leaves, and a variety of other innocent ingredients? Oh, dear! what a deal you have yet to learn before you “become wise as serpents!”

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Devoted to disease by baker, butcher, grocer, wine-merchant, spirit-dealer, cheesemonger, pastry-cook, and confectioner; the physician is called to our assistance; but here again the pernicious system of fraud, as it has given the blow, steps in to defeat the remedy;—the unprincipled dealers in drugs and medicines exert the most diabolical ingenuity in sophisticating the most potent and necessary drugs, (viz. peruvian bark, rhubarb, ipecacuanha, magnesia, calomel, castor-oil, spirits of hartshorn, and almost every other chemical preparation in general demand;) and chemical preparations used in pharmacy; and the fraud has increased to so alarming an extent, says Mr. Accum, and his assertion is borne out by the experience of every one familiar with chemistry, that nine-tenths of the drugs and medicines in use that are vended by dealers, even of respectability and reputation, according to the usual interpretation of those words, “and who would,” as that gentleman emphatically expresses himself, “be the last to be suspected,” are adulterated. And what tends to aggravate the evil is that manufactories and mills on “an amazingly large scale” are constantly at work in this metropolis for the manufacture of spurious drugs. From these licensed elaboratories of disease, the adulterated articles are vended to unprincipled druggists, at less than a third of the price of the genuine article. And as there are no certain tests or methods of detecting the fraud, the consequence is, that the physician’s prescription is rendered useless, and the most consummate skill often baffled in the subjection of disease. Some idea of the extent of the adulteration of drugs may be formed, when it is stated that a spurious peruvian bark is sometimes sold, compounded of mahogany saw-dust and oak-wood, ground into powder, with a proper proportion of genuine quinquina; and that magnesia, even the calcined sort, is adulterated with lime.

Chemical cunning has even contrived to extract the quinquina, in which consists the whole virtue of the bark, leaving it a completely inert mass. And even the quinine itself is sophisticated, being frequently contaminated with lime, tallow, sugar, and sulphate of cinchonas.

It is necessary also to make some little inquiry, and use some little exercise of one’s understanding, in ascertaining for what reasons certain physicians recommend particular druggists, and particular drugs which are manufactured by the “said particular” druggists. Dr. Reece, in his Monthly Gazette of Health for August 1829, has tended to open one’s eyes a little on the subject. He informs us that the late Ambrose Godfrey, the nostrum-monger, contrived to get his preparation of arrow-root into notice and sale at double the price for which it might have been obtained of any other druggist, by accompanying samples of his commodity with presents of haunches of venison to certain physicians, and that by judicious repetitions (“neither few nor far between”) of the said conciliating haunches of venison, he contrived to maintain the reputation and supposed superiority of the said arrow-root, and to keep the monopoly to himself, as all the said learned and grateful physicians always, as in due allegiance and duty they were bound, recommended the said Godfrey Ambrose’s arrow-root as superior to that of all other simple wights, who supposed that their composition of arrow-root could be good for any thing, if they forgot, or were not able, to give character to the commodities by means of the mute but irresistible influence or eloquence of the said judiciously disposed-of haunches of venison. From this account it appears that the “sons of Galen” and the artificers of “the pestle and mortar” are not behind their brethren of “the long robe,” and “of the quill and parchment tribe” in the “art of huggery.” How often has a “learned barrister” contrived to get into the good graces of an attorney and secured practice by invitations to dinner, and judiciously and well timed (for few persons are better versed in the art of throwing a sprat to catch a whale than a hungry and briefless, and it must be admitted, often highly gifted barrister;) presents of game, by a hearty and unseen shake of the hand in the street, which he dared not have given at Westminster Hall, and by all those ingenious means, to which men of great talent have before now condescended, and by which men of little talent have sometimes gained considerable fortunes.

Nor has the spirit of adulteration allowed even the accredited patent or quack medicines to escape its ingenuity. Dr. James’s Fever Powders, and Norris’s Fever Drops, besides a variety of other popular receipts, are to be obtained in all possible degrees of strength and flavours from the various venders and manufacturers of the articles.

Even the simple articles arrow-root, worm-seed, Spanish liquorice, lemon acid, soda water, lozenges, honey, spermaceti, and a long list of other commodities in general use, receive the benefit of the sophisticators’ ingenuity.

The greater part of the commodity sold under the name of arrow-root in the shops of the druggists and grocers is prepared from the fecula or starch of wheat and of dry mealy potatoes, with a portion of arrow-root. When good, the grains of arrow-root are very fine, with numbers of little clots which are formed by the aggregation of the minuter grains while the commodity is drying, and when examined by a magnifying glass appear pearly and very brilliant.

The seeds of the tansy are often offered for sale, for worm-seed; but the more conscientious dealer sometimes treats his customers with an equal portion of the genuine and the adulterated article.

The Spanish liquorice juice of the shops is generally composed of the worst kind of gum arabic, called Indian or Barbary gum, and imported chiefly for the purpose of making shoe-blacking, with a small portion of the genuine juice; and the factitious composition, when inspissated, is formed into rolls, resembling the genuine article imported from Catalonia, nicely sprinkled or stratified with particles of dry bay-leaves, and skilfully impressed with the word “Solaz,” in the true cast of Spanish engraving. Refined liquorice is frequently manufactured from Spanish juice, with an equal quantity of carpenters’ glue or starch. The specimens of genuine juice are generally small, perfectly black, brittle, and break with a smooth and glassy fracture. They are also soluble either in the mouth or in water, without leaving any residue.

The lemon acid of commerce is, as I have before said, a counterfeit; tartareous acid being employed as a cheap substitute for lemon or citric acid.

The soda-water on general sale is frequently contaminated with copper and lead, produced from the action of the carbonic acid contained in the water on the metallic substances of which the apparatus in which it is made is constructed.

The lozenges of all varieties, hues, flavours, and qualities, particularly those in the composition of which ginger, cream of tartar, magnesia, &c. are used, are sophisticated with a liberal portion of pipe-clay, as a cheap substitution for sugar; but this fraud is readily detected by laying one of the suspected lozenges on the pan of a fire shovel or sheet of iron made red-hot; when, if it be pure, it will readily take fire and be consumed, but if it be adulterated, it will burn feebly, and a hard strong substance will remain, resembling the lozenge in form.

It is well known that but little genuine honey can be obtained in London. The tests of good honey are its fragrance and sweetness. When it is suspected to be adulterated with starch or bean flour, the fraud may be discovered by dissolving the honey in cold water, when the flour will be readily seen, as it will not dissolve, but falls to the bottom of the vessel in powder. If honey thus adulterated be exposed to heat, it soon solidifies and becomes tenacious.

Honey is of three kinds; the first, called virgin honey, and which is of the finest flavour, is of a whitish cast, and in a fluid state, about the consistence of a syrup. The second is that known by the name of white honey, and its texture is almost solid. The third kind is the common yellow honey, obtained from the combs, by heating them over the fire, or by dipping them into hot water, and then pressing them.

Manna is sometimes counterfeited by a composition of sugar and honey, mixed with a small portion of scammony.

The adulteration of spermaceti is generally effected with wax; but the fraud may be detected by the smell of the adulterating ingredient, and by the dulness of the colour; whereas pure spermaceti is of a semitransparent crystalline appearance. It is also said that a preparation of the oil obtained from the tail of the whale is likewise vended for genuine spermaceti; but, as this factitious commodity assumes a yellow shade when exposed to the air, this imposition is also of easy detection.

The adulteration of the essential oils obtained from the more expensive spices is so common, that, as Mr. Accum says, “it is not easy to meet with any that are fit for use,” and so much subtle ingenuity is made use of in the sophistications, that no known tests or agents exist for the detection of the fraud. The only certain tests are the taste or flavour, and the smell.

It is worth while to attend to the plausible excuses of the respective “artists” of these sophistications. They allege that they are obliged to have recourse to the fraud, to meet the fancies “of those clever persons in their own conceit who are fond of haggling, and insist on buying better bargains than other people, shutting their eyes to the defects of an article, so that they can enjoy the delight of getting it cheap; and secondly, for those persons, who being but bad paymasters, yet as the manufacturer, for his own credit-sake, cannot charge more than the usual price of the articles, he thinks himself therefore authorized to adulterate it in value, to make up for the risk he runs, and the long credit he gives;”—they therefore are reduced to the necessity of keeping, as they term it, “reduced articles,” and genuine ones. This is excellent logic, and no doubt well understood by the whole sophisticating tribe. The public are indebted to Dr. T. Lloyd for this information, which he communicated to the Literary Gazette, No. 146.

The ready methods or tests for ascertaining the good qualities of the most common drugs are:

Castor-oil, when good, is of a light amber or straw colour, inclining to a greenish cast. That which has the least smell, taste, and colour, is considered the mildest. The necessity of some attention to these signs may appear, when I state that I once took seven ounces of this oil in successive doses, and do verily believe that I might have continued to this present hour taking, daily, the usual dose furnished from the same quarter, with as little effect, had not my good genius directed me to send for an ounce from Apothecaries’ Hall. I recommend my readers to purchase their drugs, &c. in the same place.

Ipecacuanha.—As this drug is sold to the public in a pulverized state, there is no short or off-hand test for discovering its purity. It is adulterated with emetic tartar.

Opium.—Good opium in a concrete state should be of a blackish brown colour, of a strong fetid smell, a hard viscous texture, and heavy; and when rubbed between the finger and thumb, it is perfectly free from roughness or grittiness. This drug is liable to great adulteration, being frequently vitiated with cow-dung, or a powder composed of the dry leaves and stalks of the poppy, the gum of the mimosa, meal and other substances. The flavour alone indicates the goodness of opium in a liquid state.

Rhubarb.—The marks of the goodness of rhubarb are the liveliness of its colour when cut; its being firm, dry, and solid, but not flinty or hard; its being easily pulverizable, and appearing, when powdered, of a fine bright yellow colour; and its imparting to the spittle, when chewed, a deep saffron-colour, and not proving slimy or mucilaginous to the taste. When rhubarb has become worm-eaten, druggist-ingenuity is called into play, by filling up the holes with a paste made of rhubarb-powder and mucilage; and then the physic-artists roll the mended pieces in the finest rhubarb powder to give their handy works a good colour and an appearance of freshness.

Senna leaves are frequently mixed and sophisticated with leaves of argol, box leaves, &c.

But among the frauds and impositions practised on the public, none are more odious and unprincipled, and, at the same time, more loudly call for the prompt and active interference of the Legislature, than the tricks and effrontery of impostors, quacks, and empirics in medicine, both regular and irregular. It cannot but have been the frequent subject of regret to every honest and reflecting person that this vile trade should receive a legal sanction and protection, which it most assuredly does by virtue of the stamp duty imposed on the villainous trash; and it cannot be sufficiently deplored that any government should find itself reduced to straits so deplorable, or be so short-sighted in its views of enlightened policy, as to be under the necessity of extracting a paltry and disgraceful profit to the revenue of the state, from the tolerance and encouragement of ignorance, imposture, and mischief.

The assertion is true, that those pests of society the charlatans and nostrum-mongers “quarter” themselves only on the ignorance and credulity of mankind, and that their patrons and supporters are wealthy but ignorant men, and superstitious old women, or profligate and thoughtless rakes; but this is a miserable excuse, and but lame kind of reasoning: if it means any thing, it proves the necessity of public protection from the abominable and anti-christian nuisance. Can there be greater libel on the utility and operation of English law, than that vermin of the description of the “Balsam of Rackasiri” empirics[M] should be tolerated and allowed to spread their mischief and destruction among the population of a country professing Christianity and civilization, and forsooth, to boast of “the thousands they pay yearly to the government and the public press,” in the form of duty to the one for its sanction and licence, and to the other in the form of remuneration for giving a disgraceful and destructive publicity to their nefarious designs.[N]

Nor is the absence of a proper discrimination between right and wrong of a certain prating brazen-faced

“barrister” less reprehensible. I love and venerate “the Bar;” but I must be free to say that when a man can be found so devoid of just and proper feeling as to appear, for the paltry remuneration of a few pounds, or for any remuneration however large, in the defence and propagation of naked and disgusting fraud and peculation—aye, and the secret and wide-spreading destruction of health and life too!—it evidently proves that there are some members of that distinguished profession who are not possessed of the high and honourable feelings which belong to those who are gentlemen by birth and breeding, scholars by education, and Christians and honourable men from moral and religious feeling. But it is to be hoped that there will never occur again a similar exhibition to that which took place at Marlborough-street on the infamous Rackasiri-balsam fraud, practised on Miss May, by “the learned graduates of Petticoat-lane,” and “regularly bred physicians,” the Jew pedlars and old clothesmen “of wonderful abilities,” the “Doctors” C. and J. Jordan; who “feel awkwardness in recommending to public notice their uncommon discoveries and talents.” The more I consider that transaction, the more I am satisfied that the magistrates are to blame for having allowed the piece of impudent effrontery and imposture to have had the semblance of their sanction, by their singular taciturnity which happened on that occasion. Of the newspapers which gave currency and circulation to the artful and fiend-like exculpation, language will not afford terms strong enough to express one’s abhorrence and indignation. O shame! where is thy blush? How much human misery and destruction has the insertion of those disgraceful and wicked puffs occasioned, by inducing the weak and credulous to give credit to that as a piece of intelligence coming from editors of accredited and impartial journals, which is merely the contrivance and fabrication of wicked impostors to delude and ensnare the thoughtless and unsuspecting; and for the giving of its mischievous publicity, the proprietors and editors of certain newspapers received large sums of money. But let those thoughtless men reflect, that it is the very consummation of cruelty and unprincipled conduct to sanction the infamous tampering with the lives and happiness of one’s fellow creatures for the mere sake of lucre. Nor is the conduct of the magistrates of certain police offices (particularly those to whom the jurisdiction of the city of London is entrusted) less reprehensible, and less fraught with mischievous consequences. What! ought the frauds and murderous designs of the basest miscreants alive to receive the solemn and imposing sanction and authority of an oath made before a judicial tribunal? Surely a grosser violation of duty and a more stupid and reckless indifference to the destruction of human health and life, were never, in the most barbarous country, and the most uncivilized age, exhibited, than the want of sense and foresight displayed by some city-magistrates in allowing affidavits to be made before them of the “wonderful cures” performed on the deluded and perjured agents and “stalking horses” of the empirics and impostors; but, fortunately for mankind, the culpable act will ever remain on record as a stigma and reproach of city-legislation and moral economy. The trade of legalized poisoning and destruction of public health has received greater and more effectual help and recommendation from that source than from all the arts and devices of the impostors, though aided by the sanction of a government duty, and the disgusting and unprincipled puffs and paragraphs of a certain portion of the public press. To put an end to these culpable and mischievous proceedings, either on the part of magistrates or of editors of newspapers, in future, I wish those gentlemen to bear in mind that their “misdoings” shall entitle them to a “niche and an escutcheon of immortality” in the pages of “Deadly Adulteration and Slow Poisoning Unmasked;”

and that no threats or intimidations of “actions” and “reparations due to the wounded feelings of gentlemen,” shall deter me from my duty. If I should offend, of course the courts of justice are open to every injured man, and he will most assuredly receive his due measure of justice there; but should I give that offence for which the “law of the land” affords no redress, the man of honourable feelings and conduct shall never have to complain of my backwardness to give a most prompt and satisfactory reparation; but, at the same time, I wish that those who have been privy, whether by overt or covert acts—whether from their love of “filthy lucre,” or their natural propensity to fraud—to the destruction of the lives or health of their fellow-creatures, to recollect that I shall be prepared to treat them with the scorn and contempt which their conduct and their misdeeds may merit.

It has been well said that it is not easy to determine whether the fraud and impudence of the empiric or nostrum-monger, or the folly and credulity of the sufferer, are the greater. But the fact is that quacks and impostors of all kinds, whether medical or political, pædagoguecal or corporational, live and thrive on the infernal popish maxim, that ignorance is the mother of devotion, that is, in plainer phrase—of gullibility. But to the case of the quacks.—It surely indicates no ordinary share of dupery, to believe that one and the same nostrum can cure all and every disorder contained in the long catalogue of human woes and miseries; such a belief must incline the victim of its hallucination to suppose an exact similarity of symptoms and a perfect identity of nature in all the disorders to which the frailty of our common nature has rendered us subject. On this momentous subject few persons have written more forcibly than the admirable author of the “Manual for Invalids.” May the following quotation from that valuable work awaken the attention of those who foolishly confide their health and lives to the care of quacks, nostrum-mongers, jugglers, and impostors![O]

“Where dwells the boasted march of intellect when the understanding is continually insulted with the most impudent and daring pretensions of impostors, who, while they pretend to restore your health, are making a direct attack upon your credulity and your purse. What encouragement exists for the well educated men, regular graduates of Universities, of high classical and literary attainments, who have chosen the profession of medicine or surgery as a business of life, and in order to practice with credit and character, have directed their attention, their time, and their property to its studies,—who have made the nature of diseases and the efficacy of remedies a study of life—when they find themselves completely superseded by some inspired pretender—some ignorant quack. Lord Bacon has long since said, in his work on the advancement of learning, ‘If the same honours and rewards are given to fools, which ought to be awarded to the wise, who will labour to be wise?’ That the ignorant pretender should be encouraged by the public, is a reproach to the understanding of any people; but that the revenue of any country should be supplied by a stamp duty[P] on empirical nostrums, instead of the government taking measures either of prevention or punishment, can only be explained by exhibiting similar acts of atrocity on the sentiments of nature; but the truth is, the auri sacra fames has the power of making that appear relatively right, which is absolutely wrong.”[Q]

“Beware of hypocrisy of every description,” adds the same excellent writer; “you may as well believe that the Pope can send you to perdition, as that an advertising charlatan can, by any empirical nostrum, restore you to health.”

But, unhappily, it appears that poor John Bull and “his hopeful family” are not gifted with the power of being “beware of hypocrisy,” “advertising charlatans” and “empirical nostrums;” but that through their proneness to gullibility and the love of the marvellous, the trade of quackery is daily increasing, and that hundreds of quacks swarm in every quarter of the metropolis, and fatten on the murders which they are constantly perpetrating with their poisons; and to add to the monstrous combination against the lives and health of the community, that the aid of even the pulpit is invoked to further the propagation of the imposture! Instances are on record where mercenary preachers have been wicked enough to sermonize and expatiate on the miraculous virtues and benefits of the poisonous nostrums[R] and remedies of the mountebank jugglers and impostors.

But humbug and imposture, as it has been truly said, is a many-headed monster, and is of very catching influence; it has worshippers at the corner of every street; hordes of the most ignorant vagabonds and jugglers are engaged in its propagation, and announce their impostures as “prepared and sanctioned by His Majesty’s august authority;” but to waste my pages with the mention of the “ladies’ fever” doctors Lamert, Peede, Davis, Eady, Caton, Courtenay, (alias Messrs. Currie and Co.) Fiedeberg (alias Sloane and Co. alias Jones and Co.);—the surreptitious knights, His Carpentership, Sir Gully Daniels, and his Plastership, White Arsenic Sir Cancer Aldis;—the firm of Goss and Company, the consulting Surgeons of Ægis and Hygeiene notoriety;—the miniature painter, “the learned and celebrated” artful artist and curer of consumption, Long St. Long,—the crazy chap who entitles himself the “hygeist”[S]—Taylor and Son, the Leake’s pill-men,—Samuel, the syphilis-pill-man,—the old canting staymaker and life-guardsman, Gardner, who can manufacture tape-worms wholesale and of a league in length from the intestines of cats and chickens,—the piddle-taster, or morning water-doctor, Cameron (alias Crumples,) as also all other quacks, whether of the masculine or feminine gender, who cure by proxy, or by simply pronouncing that the disease shall be cured, (for there have been impostors impudent enough to make such pretensions;) or by any art or delusion, and who by chalk, chuckling, and chicanery are battening on the vitals of society, would be an insult to the understanding of my readers, further than to say that each of those worthies, as well as their honourable compeers the balsam of Rackasiri vagabonds and impostors, can, no doubt, recognize the reality of their deeds in the following quotation from the pages of Hudibras:

Perhaps a few words said on the subject of the former occupations of some of the mountebank impostors, who are practising, and have practised their frauds and villanies on the community, may tend to open the eyes of this very gullable nation as to the extent and quality of their medical knowledge, unless it should be supposed that they acquired it by miraculous inspiration or divine influence, to which high pretensions, indeed, many of the vermin have had the audacity to lay claim, well knowing that the bolder their assertions were, the more gullable they would find their ninny patients.

Know then that the “groundly learned physicians” —“of superior skill and judgement”—high character and situation,” the Doctors Mordecai J. and C. Jordan, were Jew pedlars; (and here, reader, recollect that more than one half of the mountebanks and impostors who have gulled and laughed at our gullable nation, are or were circumcised Jews, either of native or of foreign breed;)—the renowned Doctor Eady, of cyprianic memory, and who owed his reputation to the joint exertions and recommendation of the saints of Providence Chapel, and the coal-heaving-preaching-and-praying-sinner-saved Huntingdon, was a bumpkin haberdasher and retailer of small wares in an obscure country village;—Monsieur John St. John Long, the celebrated curer of consumption, was a dauber in the miniature-line;—the once celebrated, and now warmly nestled and scoffing Doctors Brodum and Solomon were, by turns, porters either in a drug warehouse or Jew pedlars; the canting worm manufacturer in Long Acre was a staymaker and life-guardsman;—Yankee noodle do Whitlaw and Don celestial Graham filled the honourable posts of a day labourer and tom-fool to a strolling company of players;—and many of the by-gone mountebank vagabonds were cobblers, tailors, weavers, footmen, blacking-makers, cat’s-meat men, &c. &c. &c.: but they all, during their tremulous career of iniquity and canting,

The sanction and encouragement given to quacks and quackery in this country have long and loudly been stigmatized by foreign writers as a national opprobrium to Britain; and it must be allowed very justly. The increase of these vermin and pests of society has long been a disgrace to the legislature and government of the country. “They manage these things,” as Sterne says, “better in France.” How careful our neighbours are of the health of their community may be gleaned from the following paper lately read before the Royal Academy of Medicine, at Paris:—

“1st. That for several centuries, by the vigilance of the administration, in concert with the most distinguished medical men, the strongest efforts have been made to rid society of the pestilence constantly springing up from secret remedies. 2dly. That the most favourable circumstances are at present combined to free them from the tribute of money and life, which, on no consideration, ought longer to be tolerated.”

It is to be hoped that our government will be influenced by like motives and follow the glorious example of our neighbours. If they want precedent,—the great bugbear of improvement either in morals, politics, law, religion, or even common sense, in our error-ridden nation, history furnishes us with sufficient examples. But, while those methods and laws are being planned and prepared, let us, in the mean time, resort to the good old practices of correcting and punishing the jugglers of the present day.

In the reign of Edward VI. one Gregg, a poulterer, in Surrey, was set in the pillory at Croydon, and again in the Borough of Southwark, during the time of the fair, for cheating people out of their money, for pretending to cure them with charms, by only looking at the patient, and examining his water. In the reign of James I., an order of council, founded on the statute of Henry, granted to the College of Physicians, was issued to the magistrates of the city of London, for the apprehension of all reputed empirics, to bring them before the censors of the College, in order to their being examined as to their qualifications to be trusted either with the lives or limbs of the subject. On that occasion several mountebanks, (among others, Lamb, Read, and Woodhouse,) water casters, ague charmers, and nostrum venders, were fined, imprisoned, and banished. This wholesome severity, it may be supposed, checked the evil for a time; but in the reign of William III. it became again necessary to put the laws in force against those vermin; in consequence of which many of them were examined, and confessed their utter ignorance even of reading and writing. Some of the miscreants were set in the pillory, and some were put on horse-back with their faces towards the horses’ tails, whipped, branded, and banished.

In Stowe’s Annals is to be found an account of a water caster being set on horse-back, his face towards the horse’s tail, which he held in his hand, with his neck decked with a collar of urinals, and being led by the hangman through the city, was whipped, branded, and afterwards banished. One Fairfax, in king William’s time was fined and imprisoned for doing great damage to several people, by his aqua celestis. Antony, for his aurum potabile; Arthur Dee, for advertising remedies which he gave out would cure all diseases; Foster, for selling a powder for the green-sickness; Tenant, a water doctor, who sold his pills for 6l. each; Ayres, for selling purging sugar plumbs; Hunt, for putting up bills in the streets[T] for the cure of diseases; and many others, were all punished, and compelled to relinquish their malpractices.

But it is not only the interloping quack—the irregular and illegitimate charlatan and self-dubbed doctor that does mischief and destroys the health of the public, but the “regular” and legitimate pretender to medical knowledge, or as they have been significantly and appropriately termed by Dr. Morrison, the “roturiers,” or dabblers in physic, often do not much less mischief. The following extract from the Manual for Invalids is so much to the purpose, that the wider its circulation can be promoted, the greater good will be produced to society at large.

“In the restoration of health, the poor often try the efficacy of the wine vaults and the medical wisdom of the druggist, who flourishes greatly in low neighbourhoods, in the metropolis, and even in some large provincial towns. These men, whose solitary qualification for this honest mode of existence has been commonly an apprenticeship behind the counter, have often placed in imminent peril many a valuable life. Sometimes it has occurred that a shrewd boy, employed to clean bottles and sweep out the shop, has received an intuitive call, and has felt himself fully qualified for the important office of recovering and regulating the health of many invalids. The writer has a knowledge of a general practitioner of this description who was received behind a druggist’s counter in the manner before related, and perhaps, learning audacity from his late employer, has obtained, through the medium of puffing friends, a surreptitious reputation, and is cried up by those worthies as a very skilful, even a “delightful” and “fine” man, particularly for nervous invalids, and more especially for the disorders of women and children.”

Thousands and thousands of the population of this blessedly gifted country in medical science, are killed by this disgraceful quackery of the drug-shop, and the iniquitous drug-jobbing of apothecaries. What murders, what numerous murders have those men to answer for by their careless and injudicious use of powerful medicines—calomel and opium! But perhaps they console their unfeeling and selfish hearts with the miserable subterfuge that they are merely removing that portion of the increasing population which is the great bugbear, that is hourly threatening to eat up Mr. Parson Malthus and his believing disciples by wholesale.

But the prescribing druggist, the drugging apothecary, and the soi-disant surgeon are not the only regular and legitimate quacks; we have quack physicians, who by the remittance of the enormous sum of £15 to a Scotch university are entitled, legally and professionally, to tack the wonder-working cabalistical initials M.D. to their names, and are then entitled to kill the king’s liege and loving subjects, “secundum artem,” with licensed and legitimate potion, pill, and draught; who to return obligations to their “pals” the apothecary and surgeon, prescribe draughts by the quart and the gallon—bleeding, blistering, and purging, ad infinitum. By these mystified and jabbering doctors, whose little-or-no wisdom consists in foolish words of little or no meaning, and dog Latin, or disputes about precedence and the receipt of fees, the laws of vital existence and the astonishing functions of the animal economy, are understood by hearsay and inspiration!

This statement of the general ignorance of the medical profession is not exaggerated. “Five sixths of the medical profession,” says Dr. Morrison, in Medicine No Mystery, “know little or nothing of the science of life.” The cause of this lamentable ignorance arises from the abominable and disgraceful system of medical education in vogue, according to which the bought and sale prices of the current drugs, and the art and mystery of dispensing medicines often constitute the whole and sole knowledge of those who are entrusted with the health and lives of their fellow-creatures; in whose bungling and self-interested practice hearsay and precedent supply the place of experience, and by whom signs and symptoms are mistaken for causes. Another cause is the deplorable deficiency of the public in the knowledge of medicine. Were the principles of medical science to form a part of general education, the public would be enabled to select well educated and honest medical men, and escape the fangs and delusions and murderous acts of quacks and impostors, whether interlopers, or those who are enrolled in one or other of the medical institutions of London. It really seems an anomaly in the pursuit and attainment of knowledge that a man should conceive it necessary to be able to judge whether his shoe or his cravat is made in a good and workman-like manner, but of that science which treats of himself, and with which his health, his life, and all his comforts are so intimately and seriously connected, he should be in the most abject state of ignorance, and, unhappily, not hesitate to avow that ignorance! But while it is an incontrovertible truth that the community in general should have some knowledge of medicine, in order to enable them to judge of the qualifications of their medical attendants, (to the attainment of which knowledge popular medical writings, such as Dr. Kitchener’s Art of Invigorating Life; Sir John Sinclair’s Code of Health and Longevity, Dr. Reece’s Medical Guide, and the Oracle of Health and Long Life, or Plain Rules for the Preservation and Attainment of Sound Health and Vigorous Old Age, and a few others, are calculated to afford the most effectual help;) it must be deeply regretted by every well disposed member of society, to observe books got up by rash and inexperienced persons, professing to give directions for the management of health, which are filled with the crudest and the falsest instructions, the nature and consequence of which are decidedly destructive of health, if not of life itself. And what must add to that regret, is that the title-page and covers should be blazoned with the professed sanction and recommendation of a late eminent medical practitioner. But surely that gentleman could never have read, among many other dangerous fooleries and extravagancies, the silly and monstrous instructions to sleep with open windows, to swallow as much salt as possible, &c. &c. &c. or if he did read them, it is but an act of courteous feeling towards him to suppose that he did not comprehend their purport. Another circumstance deserving reprobation respecting the means which have been taken to get that ill-judged little book into circulation has been the profuse and repeated attempts of a portion of the public press to give it notoriety and circulation. It certainly savours a little of presumption, that those who have not made the science of medicine a study or a profession, should venture to give opinions of the merits or demerits of a work professing to treat of the momentous subjects of health and life. These remarks are not made in any petulant feeling. I believe the author to be a well-intentioned though a misguided man, and as he hints that he published his work with the hope of adding to his income from the profits, I sincerely wish that he had chosen a subject for which he may be more competent, as then I should have been relieved from the necessity of making these remarks, in the expression of which a sense of public duty has alone actuated me. It gives me, however, great satisfaction to draw the public attention to the masterly abstract of Cornaro’s Treatise appended to the book, and which, from its disparity of style, is evidently written by another person. It is no extravagant praise to say that the public is under infinite obligations to the able and experienced writer who made that valuable addition to the book. Comaro’s works may now be read with advantage by every one, as it is freed from the disagreeable prosings, tautologies, and incongruities which pervade that work. It is to be hoped that the proprietor of the book will favour the community with its publication in a separate form.

Considering the severity of the remarks I have made in the preceding pages on the medical profession, it may be supposed I have set myself up in opposition to medical men of all descriptions. I have no such intention. The intelligent and skilful physician and surgeon I reverence, and only wish that the following observations were not a true portrait of their often unsuccessful progress.

It is certain no body of men can produce more noble instances of integrity, liberality of mind, and strength of intellect, than the Professors of Physic; but, as with other bodies of men, this high character will not apply diffusedly. To find, therefore, a fit person with whom to intrust our health, is not an easy matter. Fortunately, however, for the profession, people are not very fastidious on this point; and if they or their friends are but sent to the grave in a regular way, they bear the load of ills which their own follies and the ignorance of the practitioner may have heaped upon them, with great philosophy, imputing the whole to the natural order of things. Indeed, to judge of the merits of a medical man is extremely difficult; and, when we see one man ordering away, with contempt, the medicine which another has thought a specific, and pursuing a totally different course, we are forced to conclude that education alone will not make a physician. Reputation is not unfrequently got without merit, for who is to judge? Accident, solely, both with the drug and the doctor, has often been the maker of their fame. This may be exemplified by an anecdote of a deservedly eminent physician, which, though perhaps it has been often related, is not less to the point. The doctor happened to be sent for one evening, after having indulged at a convivial meeting, so that by the time he had been whirled to his patient’s door, he was very ill qualified to decide in a case of difficulty. Having made shift to reach the drawing room, and seeing a lady extended on a sofa, assisted by a female attendant, he, by a sort of mechanical impulse, seized her hand; but finding himself utterly unable to form an opinion on the case, he exclaimed, “D—— d drunk, by G—d!” (meaning that he was in that unfit state) and immediately made the best retreat he was able. Feeling rather awkwardly at this adventure, he was not impatient to renew his visit; but being sent for on some other occasion, he took courage, and was preparing an apology, when the lady presently removed his apprehensions, by whispering these words in his ear—“My dear doctor, how could you find out my case so immediately the other evening?—It was certainly a proof of your skill, but for God’s sake not a word more on that subject.” Thus, the doctor added to his repute by a circumstance which might have endangered that of a less fortunate man. This, though a ludicrous event, may serve, as well as a graver one, to elucidate the fact that many owe their celebrity, not so much to any judgement of their own, as to a want of it in others. As it is with other professions, so it is with physic. Many of its professors possessing great skill are doomed to pass their lives in obscurity, whilst they see others, of inferior knowledge and judgement, rise to importance. It has been truly said by one who was not unacquainted with the causes of medical success or failure, that, “Even among the regularly bred physicians accident will often accomplish what merit strives for in vain; and those coincidences of circumstances which frequently elevate one man and depress another in the medical art, are more the production of what is called chance, than from any extension of mind, or any peculiar tact or skill in the art of intellectual combinations.”

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There are few trades in which greater frauds are practised than in “the coal trade.” The dealers in the “black diamonds” are versed in all the allowable legerdemain and trickery of “auld England’s honest tradesmen:” the most skilfully initiated in the art of sleight-of-hand would find himself at fault in attempting to rival the dexterity of the true “son of the coalshed,” under the old régime of measuring, in ingeniously tossing his “spadefuls” into the measure so as to enable “the darlings” to lie lightly and “go far,” and assume the form of a solid cone, while the hollow cavity within proved as treacherous to any one treading on its “well raised summit,” as if he had put his foot on the surface of a quagmire. Nor was the well-fed, gaily clothed, richly lodged coal-merchant, with his “extensive concerns” to be easily “out-done” in well devised craft and contrivance: nicely pinched sacks, not foolishly flapping inwards so as to betray the precise amount of their contents,—well planned deliveries, either so early in the morning that the heads of the family might prefer the arms of Morpheus to the hazard of being choked with volumes of coal dust, or so late in the evening, that there might be a possibility of their being engaged in the “solid recreation” of their dinner, were a few of the demonstrations of generalship frequently exhibited by this portion of “the monied interest” and “great capitalists of the nation.”

But to come to the point in hand. An honest writer on the subject, Mr. Eddington, in his Treatise on the Coal Trade, p. 94, informs us that the keeper of a coalshed felt himself dissatisfied with his measure, if in doling out his article to his poor, half-starved, shivering neighbours, in pecks, half pecks, or bushels, he could not measure out at the rate of forty-two bushels from every chaldron of thirty-six bushels; without taking into consideration the gain to be obtained from vending the inferior coal, and the consequent increase of quantity by throwing a few bushels of sifted ashes, pieces of stone, bones, or any other commodity which will assume a black form after having been well rummaged among the heap of coals.

Another great source of unfair profit arising to the vender of coals is the “Macadamizing” of them, and like true “nursing fathers” carefully and sedulously giving them their due quantum of moisture. For under the old régime of measuring, the cunning varlets knew full well that by the greater number of angular points that they were able to produce, they filled their measure with the least possible quantity of coals. This paternal fulfilment of the command “to increase and multiply” they still piously and faithfully observe, as the greater progeny of small bits and dust that they can produce from a lonely and solitary lump, the more they will be able to increase the weight by their considerate and frequently repeated waterings and drenchings. Accordingly they set their shoulders to the work, and patriotically and radically proscribe every rebellious lump in their shed, by smashing it into as many figures as possible, often exceeding in number the ever varying mutations of the kaleidoscope, or Orator Hunt’s two hundred thousand unity tales. Nor are their “betters” “the merchants” less skilled in the art. Those considerate and sharp-sighted gentry, foreseeing that the large masses and blocks which are delivered out of the ships into their barges, round as they came from the mine, would be an inconvenience to their customers, and probable tumble on some fair and delicate damsel’s toes, kindly set to work, and smash away; so that when the round coals of every chamber, containing the ingrain of five chaldron and a half, have undergone the process of their friendly thumpings and republican equalization, they will measure out again from six to six and a half chaldrons. The increase by breakage appears by the following statement from Dr. Hutton’s Mathematical Dictionary: “If one coal measuring exactly a cubic yard (nearly equal to five bolls) be broken into pieces of a moderate size, it will measure seven bolls and a half; if broken very small, it will measure nine bolls.”

And even after the coals have gone through the conjuring process of being increased in bulk by the aforesaid smashing or Macadamising art, and have reached their destination at the wharf, the ingenuity of “the monied interest” and “the great capitalists” is still at work. Careful that the purchaser may not be put to the trouble of wetting his coals to make them cake and burn well, those considerate and obliging gentlemen relieve him from the task by scientifically wetting the commodity; and as a reward for their well intentioned and meritorious labours they generally contrive to produce, as Mr. Eddington informs us, “from six to six and a quarter, or even six and a half, chaldrons from each room,” containing five and a half chaldron of smashed or “macadamized” coals. A correspondent to the World newspaper for September, 1829, who signs himself a Coal Merchant, says that instances are on record where eighty and even ninety sacks have been measured out of a room of coals!

According to the new régime of weighing, (which has already proved one of the most deceitful hoaxes that ignorance and cupidity ever contrived against the interests of the poor,) the quantity is increased in a like proportion in favour of the coal dealer.

Another hint or two on this matter may be of some service to thee, friend Bull. Always recollect, John, in the purchase of your coals, that you pay attention to the season of the year; for there is with every article a cheap season and a dear one, and with none more than with coals: by purchasing at the proper season, often from twenty to thirty per cent. are saved. The method of purchasing should always be considered; for by purchasing a room of coals, which is called pool measure, two fourths of a chaldron is often obtained in every five chaldrons; for a room of coals contains in general from sixty-three to sixty-eight sacks. Therefore, where the quantity is too much for the consumption of one family, two or more should join together in the purchase.

But the legislature, that is, “the collective wisdom of the nation,” aware of thy disposition to gullibility, has, John, taken thy affair of coals into its paternal and law-making consideration, and has made some regulations, as to the possibility of thy receiving “good and lawful” weight. They are as follow:—To ensure lawful weight to the purchaser, and prevent frauds in the sale and delivery of coals, the vender of all coals exceeding 560lbs. is to cause the carman to deliver a paper or ticket to the purchaser before he shoots any of the coals out of his cart or waggon, specifying the number of tons, the description of the coals, and the weight of the sack. And a weighing machine is to be carried in such cart or waggon, with which the carman is directed to weigh gratis the coals contained in any one or more of the sacks which the purchaser or his servant may require to be so reweighed. But no ticket is necessary to be delivered with coals purchased at the “Coal Market,” or with coals exceeding 560lbs. purchased in bulk from any vessel or wharf, if purchasers do not require a ticket. The seller of the coals not sending a ticket and a weighing machine with the coals, and the carman not delivering the ticket, or neglecting or refusing to weigh the coals, are subject to distinct penalties.

No less than seventy-seven kinds of sea coal are brought to the London market; forty-five of which are imported from Newcastle, and the rest from Sunderland. The best of the Sunderland produce are Stewart’s main, Lambton’s main, and Hetley main, or as they are more generally termed in imitation of the old Russell Walls End, Stewart’s Walls End, &c. The Scotch and Staffordshire coals are inferior to the sea coal both in durability and the heat which they give, being about one-third less productive in those qualities than the Newcastle and Sunderland varieties.

The test of good coal depends on the burning, and the quantity of bitumen it affords in its combustion; and no bad signs of its inferiority are that it is dull, small, stony, or slaty. But the quality of coals is in a great measure determined by the weight; for there often occurs a difference of 30lbs. weight in two sacks of different qualities, though equally filled: largeness of size is no proper criterion, for the inferior coals are often of the largest size.

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The spirit of adulteration pursues poor John even into his domestic arrangements. Should he design to decorate his dwelling—“his neat suburban cottage”—and have the walls or wainscot of his drawing-room painted a delicate pink colour to rival the carnation tints of the cheek of his “cara sposa,” or those of his breakfast parlour, to imitate the lively blue of the bright eyes of his “lovely cherubs,” the vile sophisticators mar all his wishes, and he is able to obtain nothing else than dull and darkling daubs. In fewer words, he cannot obtain genuine colours wherewith to have his house painted. And this sophistication does not only extend to the common house-paints, (as where white lead is mixed with carbonate or sulphate of barytes; vermilion with red lead, and a long et-cetera;) but should honest John wish that his hopeful progeny may rival the Zeuxis or Apelles of antiquity, or confine his paternal longings to the more modern artists—a Reynolds, a Gainsborough, a Moreland, or a David,—he has the mortification of seeing his fond illusions dissipated by the adulterating manufacturers of ultramarine, carmine, lake, Antwerp blue, crome yellow, Indian ink, and all the other et-ceteras of artist-decoration.

The covering of even John’s sconce is not exempt from sophistication. In the room of the dear bought, far fetched beaver, the adulterators adorn John’s pate with a strange combination of wool and the homely and cheaply purchased fur of the rabbit and mole. This, it must be admitted, is cruel usage of the good old gentleman, and must, as the witty author of the Indicator says, bring to his mind an odd association of ideas, (namely, of cheatery and forgiveness,) in one of those communings with his hat’s lining, while, like a polite worshipper, he is whispering his preparatory ejaculations, before he turns round with due gravity and composure, and makes a bow of genteel recognition of the Mr. and Mrs A. and the Misses B. who have assembled in the pew before him.

Nor is he better treated by his clothier or man’s mercer. Not to mention the slight texture of the articles, and the substitution of inferior materials for the “best superfine Spanish” and the “super-extra Saxony,” the sly varlet artfully stitches the selvage of broad cloths, kerseymeres, and ladies’ “extra superfine,” dyed of a permanent colour, to the edge of cloth dyed with a fugative or fading dye; and this operation is performed with so much skill and nicety as to elude John’s most penetrating optics.

Neither are Mrs. Bull and her “lovely daughters” more exempt from the knaveries of the linen-draper, the dealers in laces, veils, silks, “Cashmere shawls,” French cambrics, and the other paraphernalia of the female wardrobe: they are all sophisticated, and often no more like the native article than “the moon is like green cheese.” Like “a true bred knight,” I shall not forget to furnish the female part of Mr. Bull’s family with the means and criteria for judging of the goodness of those commodities, in the work which, as I have before said, I have nearly ready for press. Nor shall I omit to take notice in the same publication, to give directions for the proper selection of the articles of furniture of the old gent’s house; such as feathers, blankets, carpets, &c. &c.

While gallantly professing my knight-errantry in the cause of Mrs. Bull and “her lovely daughters,” I find that I have made an unpardonable omission—not a word on laces and muslins! To propitiate their “kind consideration,” I hurry to supply the unpardonable omission. Let then every “lovely fair one” know that laces are now generally made from single cottons (instead of good double thread, as was formerly the case), and in order to make them look fine and clear, they are stiffened with starch, which occasions the delusive articles, as soon as they are washed, to fall to pieces. In some articles of lace, particularly veils, many of the springs and flowers are fastened on with gum, which, as soon as they are wetted, immediately fall off and betray the cheatery. Caps and other articles of female habiliments sold in the streets, are often united together in the most ingenious manner by means of gum or paste.

Muslins are not free from sophistication-ingenuity. Poor, thin, rough specimens are rendered stiff, high glazed, and thick with a quantum sufficit of pipe-clay, &c.; sometimes a paper-pulp is spread over the deteriorated article; and the fibres of the cotton which ought to be dressed off, are left in order to hold the composition put in.

Stockings are often rendered stiff and thick to the feet, by bleaching them with brimstone. And coarse woollen cloth receives the addition of large quantities of fuller’s-earth to give it body and closeness; while the right or pressed side is finished off with oil, in order to give the cloth a fine, soft, and smooth appearance. Never choose woollen cloth which is glossy and stiff.

“The frauds committed in the tanning of skins, and their conversion into leather; and in the manufacture of cutlery and jewellery,” says Mr. Accum, “exceed belief.” And I can assure my readers that that gentleman is not mistaken in his assertion; and, had he added that of cabinet wares and silver plate of all sorts, he would not have over-stepped the limits of truth. To those acquainted with the manufacture of silver goods, it is well known that you cannot always be sure that the various costly articles are of the legal standard with which Pride and Vanity, Luxury and Fashion, when they “set up for Gentry and Stylish people,” and have a desire for “shewing off,” gratify their whims and fantastic notions of gentility, and their ambition of “outplating and outdishing” their friends and neighbours. The prosecution instituted some years ago against a “legitimate” son of Crispin for the manufacture of shoes, the soles of which were ingeniously united to the welts by only six stitches in each shoe, while the external parts of the soles exhibited evident traces of a multiplicity of stitches rivalling the number of the stars of the firmament of the heavens in extent and variety, and their exact mathematical precision seemed to display the exertion of the genius of a Euclid, cannot have slipped the recollection of all my readers.

And to complete the climax of sophistication, even the paper on which John gives birth to his “winged words,” and expresses his indignant feelings at the extent and the audacity of the frauds and impositions practised on his good-nature and credulous disposition, is sophisticated. In the manufacture of paper, a large quantity of plaster of Paris is often mixed up with the paper-stuff, instead of its consisting of good linen rags only, and the foreign substance is added to increase the weight of the commodity. Nor is he, when, like ourselves, desirous of having his thoughts and discoveries rendered “enduring for ages,” (monumentum ære perennius,) by having them cast in stereotype, and thus “save a penny,” exempt from the designs and contrivances of sophistication;—the founder deceives him by casting his “words that breathe and thoughts that burn” in a metal as soft and ductile as lollipop. Thus honest Bull is circumvented in all his intents, and surprised and overpowered at every turn by the Genius of Sophistication.

Friend Bull! if thou hast carefully and dispassionately (that is, if thou hast sufficiently divested thy honest mind of its usual scepticism—videlicet, its unwillingness to be convinced against its constitutional prejudices,) read my disclosures, I am willing to believe that thou wilt readily admit that I have established all my allegations of the frauds and impositions to which thou art subject in this sophisticating age, and that I have proved the truth and propriety of the title of my little book, “Disease and Death in the Pot and the Bottle.” What remedy (for a good advocate seldom forgets that prospective part of his duty,) to recommend thee to adopt, in order to free thyself from the knavery and effrontery of the sophisticators, I know not, except, hermetically to close thy jaws so as to prevent the entrance of any of the sophistications into them, or the more pleasurable remedy of preferring a petition to thy “gracious Sovereign,” who “can do no wrong,” praying “the omnipotency of Parliament,”—in its “collective and superlative wisdom” to take thy deplorable case into consideration,” and to devise some means, in the plenitude of its conjoint wisdom, to protect thee and thy “little ones,” in this “land of equal law,” from the arts and devices of slow poisoning. In the success of thy humble and righteous remonstrance believe me, thy fellow sufferer, and “enemy of fraud and villany,” will heartily and sincerely join.

THE AUTHOR.

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Postscript.—In reviewing my well-meant, and, I trust, useful denunciations of fraud and villany, I find that I have omitted to speak of false weights and measures. But as the proverb says, better late than never. Not to mention the trick of clapping a piece of weight or other metal underneath the scale in which the commodity to be sold is weighed; commercial balances are frequently misconstructed for fraudulent purposes, by making the arm from which the substance to be weighed is suspended longer than that from which the counterpoise is hung, thereby giving the substance to be weighed a greater leverage.

⁂ Authenticated communications of adulterations thankfully received, and liberally paid for.

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Note to page 28.

I have said at the above mentioned page that “the perfection of adulteration is in gin;” and on reviewing that passage I have no cause to modify the expression; but must, with all my heart and soul, assent to the declaration of honest Jonas Hanway, that it is “a liquid fire;” and must further agree with the said true-hearted old Englishman, that “it should be sold only in quart bottles, sealed up with the king’s seal, with a very high duty, and never sold without being mixed with a strong emetic.” This I admit is a very harsh prescription, and no doubt every true lover of “blue-ruin” will exclaim, notwithstanding that he or she is aware that their “comfort” is in the most abandoned state of adulteration, and is a rank slow poison, equally ruinous to the health and the purse;—What! a gin-drinking nation, and yet not a drop of “the genuine”—of the popular English beverage, the diurnal consumption of which in the metropolis alone, would inundate the largest parish within the bills of mortality—not a drop of “the genuine” to be had for money! Yes, Bull, whether thou beest of the masculine or feminine gender, this is the truth; and it is a circumstance, the reformation of which would well become the labours of the informing tribe and the bellowers of radical reform. Here there would be a fine field for radicalism and “informing” to exercise themselves in.

Note to page 83.

I have stated at page 83, that fish out of season is unwholesome. The following fact will confirm the truth of this assertion. It is well known that in Ireland and Scotland, where great facility is presented to the country people in catching salmon, both during and after the spawning season, the eating of the fish in that state has been productive of very serious consequences to the health of the consumers. Probably the unwholesome consignments of noxious fish obtained exclusively, as the fashionable fishmongers phrase it, out of season, and to be purchased only at extravagant prices, often occasion to their epicurean customers and the legitimate gourmands much of the illness assigned to other causes.

Note to page 87.

At page 87, I have said that the quantity of tea consumed in this country is between twenty and thirty millions of lbs. weight; but I forgot to state that between two and three millions of pounds sterling are drawn out of the pocket of the public yearly in its purchase, either in the form of price or of duty. Surely the expenditure of this enormous sum by the good people of this country, and considering that tea has become so essential a part of the diet of every person in the kingdom, imposes an obligation on the sovereign company of tea dealers in Leadenhall Street to take care that the inhabitants of “this land of milk and honey,” who pay nearly eight times as much as their neighbours do for the same article (namely bohea tea), have a good and fresh commodity, instead of the tasteless, parched, insipid, and scentless rubbish which they retail out to the public, after having remained in the warehouse long enough to perish its good qualities even were its flavour and taste ten times more delicious and grateful than they are. Would it not, as it has been well said, be to the credit of some of our genuine members of the legislature to endeavour to procure the sale of a pure and good article, instead of the trash that is foisted upon the public at present, and which they cannot appeal from, by introducing a law into parliament legalizing the purchase of the article from other hands than the Leadenhall Street monopolists.

Note to page 89, &c.

An experienced friend in the tea trade who has read over and approved of the various tests I have mentioned at page 89, &c. for detecting the qualities of tea, has kindly furnished me with the following valuable communication:

“As a ready test of black tea being manufactured from old tea-leaves, dyed with logwood, &c. moisten some of the tea, and rub it on white paper, which it will blacken when not genuine. If you wish to be more particular, infuse a quantity of the sample in half a pint of cold soft water for three or four hours. If the water is then of an amber colour, and does not become red when you drop some oil of vitriol or sulphuric acid into it, you may presume the tea to be good. Adulterated black tea, when infused in cold water, gives a bluish black tinge, and it becomes instantly red with a few drops of oil of vitriol.

Note to page 154.

I observe that I have forgotten to give “a local habitation and a name” among the morning water and Sir Reverence doctors, to his Doctorship Doctor Laing, of Newman Street, Oxford Street. And I have to beg pardon, most humbly and reverently, for passing over the quondam Greenwich Crumples, alias Doctor Cameron, alias Mister Coley, in Berners Street, Oxford Street;—the Doctor to a new patient with his morning water and “shiners” in hand, but Mister, when the said “humbugged” patient, having discovered the fraud practised upon him, returns to “blow up” the Doctor for his tricks and ignorance.

Note to page 166.

After all the vapouring and drivelling nonsense that has been said, sung and trumpeted forth by a certain portion of the Periodical Press respecting the “Simplicity of Health,” it is really consoling to find at last a man of sense and critical acumen having spirit and honesty enough to relieve the public from the delusions under which it is suffering from the book in question.

“An immense quantity of drivel,” says the spirited Editor of The Edinburgh Literary Journal, 1829, “has found its way into books professing to give an account of the best mode of preserving health; but of all the drivel it has ever been our lot to peruse, that contained in the work entitled the “Simplicity of Health,” is the most pre-eminent.” The ingenious and honest reviewer, after having pointed out several of the fooleries and extravagancies of the book, adds, “We have no patience with a piece of humbug like this; we shall not insult the good sense of our readers with more of this doting nonsense.” It must be admitted that this sentence is dictated in the strictest and the justest sense of criticism, and that had all those who have ventured to laud and recommend that dangerous little book adopted somewhat of its spirit, much bodily and mental suffering might have been saved to many people who will become the victims of its misjudged and culpable directions.

The burst of indignation and ridicule expressed by the Critic respecting Hortator’s foolish directions for “Squirting water briskly into the eyes by a syringe,” is too fraught with truth and utility to be omitted: “Is it not plain from this, that the poor squirting wretch must have bleared and blood-shot eyes? Imagine a beautiful girl at her morning toilette, presenting one of this dirty old booby’s squirts at her clear blue laughing eyes! But the fact is, this impudent old wife must be descended from a long line of tailors, who have bred in and in, till the imbecile race has ended in the scarecrow who has spawned the “Simplicity of Health.”

It is with much satisfaction that I am able to support the opinion which I have expressed at page 166, by so just and judicious a criticism as the above; had I stood alone in opinion, that opinion would have been assigned to any other than its true cause—a sense of public duty, which ought with every true patriot to be paramount to every other consideration.

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I shall now close my well meant, and I hope I may say, useful and patriotic little volume, with a few words respecting those pests and scourges of society, the sharking and extortionate part of the pawnbroking trade, and those banes of human comfort and existence the madhouses.

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It has been well said, that as the poorest, the most distressed, and the most friendless are those who are compelled to have dealings with, and are exposed to the “tender mercies” of pawnbrokers, it is of the utmost consequence that such men as follow the calling should be honest, correct, and even humane characters. For the sake of honesty it is to be hoped that there are many of this description; but a little, and but a little unhappy experience when urgent necessity may compel the unfortunate to have recourse to shops of this description, will convince the most thoughtless person alive, that there are numbers of heartless, griping, and extortionate scoundrels in that trade, whose conduct and dealings are a disgrace to the most contemptible sharper and swindler alive,—who by every species of fraud, extortion, and oppression, rob, harass, and plunder the poor and the miserable, and add to the distresses of those whose misfortunes have reduced them to have dealings with the detestable harpies. The taking of illegal and excessive interest is comparatively the least important of their delinquencies, though this to the poor and unfortunate is grinding in the extreme, as these knaves in their dealings with those who have neither money nor friends, treat the act of Parliament for the regulation of the Pawnbroking trade as a mere dead letter. The substitution of articles of inferior description for such as are of a greater value,—the taking off the gold hands and removing the interior works of watches, and replacing them with others which resemble them, of base metal or inferior value,—and the scraping or diminishing articles of plate and the cases of watches, are well known to those whose wants or emergencies compel them to send their property on its travels up the spout of the pop-shop. And through the defect of the law, and as the poet Crabbe says, “the protection of a drowsy bench,” sufferers but rarely obtain any redress. A periodical writer, in expressing his abhorrence of the frauds of these vermin, recommends the sufferers to lay “incessant informations against the malpractices of these villains.” But had that kind-hearted man been acquainted with the fact that informations have been repeatedly laid, and have always miscarried, and will always miscarry while the law remains in its defective state, he would, no doubt, have recommended a petition to Parliament, praying to subject the infamous impostors to the punishment of transportation for their audacious and daily frauds and swindlings practised “on the children of sorrow and the heirs of unnumbered woes and wants.” The fate of informations has been fully proved in the numerous instances in which a scoundrel in the neighbourhood of Snow Hill has defeated the purposes of justice by the contemptible quibbles, evasions, and subterfuges resorted to by his attorney in all cases in which he has been summoned before the magistrates at Guildhall, and by whose very disgraceful objections as to technicalities, he has contrived as hitherto, to laugh at and hold in contempt both Law and Justice!!!

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“Where the noble mind’s o’erthrown.”

How true is the remark that “the history of the Red and White Houses,” like that of the Red and White Roses, would afford many interesting though appalling particulars were they collected in a detailable form.

“Yes! there still live some few who have escaped perpetual torture and confinement, which the soothing care of disinterested friends would have buried alive in those inquisitorial receptacles, but for the acute discernment of the eye of humanity, which accident or curiosity had directed to the spot.

“Of private madhouses there has long been but one prevailing opinion. The generality of them are instituted as a medium of existence by talentless and avaricious individuals, who are better, by far, adapted for the office of turnkeys to Newgate, than for the exercise of such moral and physical means as would appear calculated to restore lost reason. They manage these things much better in Paris; but it is not our intention to enter into particulars as regards the management of these licensed houses of correction in the home department, where every fibre of humanity appears paralysed, where victims are left to linger out their miserable and wretched existence, and to perish by means we know nothing of.” Instances innumerable are on record of the improper treatment of the unhappy persons immured in these dreary abodes; the inquest that sat at the Elephant and Castle, Pancras Road, on the body of a poor woman named Ann Goldstock, alias Coldstock, in the month of August, 1828, who came by her death, under singular circumstances, in the madhouse, otherwise yclep’d the White House at Bethnal Green, kept by one Warburton, cannot have slipped the recollection of all my readers. The case of an unfortunate man of the name of Parker confined in that place for alleged insanity, is also too remarkable to be passed over in silence. My man-servant importuned me to see the poor fellow. I accordingly went to him, and must acknowledge, that after a long interview in which I closely cross-examined him, he gave a statement of his life and transactions, distinguished for its accuracy, minuteness, and consistency. I wish the parties concerned in that affair to recollect, though I have been refused admittance to the unhappy man by one of the understrappers of that place, that I will not let this affair pass unheeded, as I have very little doubt but that I shall be able to bring to justice the knaves who have stripped the poor fellow and his injured family of their property, and who, to screen their villany, have consigned him to a madhouse.

THE END.

LONDON:
MARCHANT, PRINTER, INGRAM-COURT.

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