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 through the microscope. Eminent chemists had previously found great difficulty in establishing any satisfactory chemical distinction between coffee, chicory and other adulterants of coffee; the microscope immediately showed the structural difference of the particles, however small. The results of Hassall’s examinations were embodied in a paper which was read before the Botanical Society of London and was reported in The Times, 1850. A paper on the microscopic examination of sugar, showing the presence in that article of innumerable living mites, followed and attracted much attention. Hassall was in consequence commissioned by Thomas Wakley (1795–1862), the owner of the Lancet, to extend his examination to other articles of food, and for a period of nearly four years reports of the Lancet Analytical Sanitary Commission were regularly published, the names and addresses of hundreds of manufacturers and tradesmen selling adulterated articles being fearlessly given. The responsibility incurred was immense, but the assertions of the journal were so well founded upon fact that they were universally accepted as accurately representing the appalling state of the food supply. As instances may be cited, that of thirty-four samples of coffee only three were pure, chicory being present in thirty-one, roasted corn in twelve, beans and potato-flour each in one; of thirty-four samples of chicory, fourteen were adulterated with corn, beans or acorns; of forty-nine samples of bread, every one contained alum; of fifty-six samples of cocoa, only eight were pure; of twenty-six milks, fourteen were adulterated; of twenty-eight cayenne peppers, only four were genuine, thirteen containing red-lead and one vermilion; of upwards of one hundred samples of coloured sugar-confectionery, fifty-nine contained chromate of lead, eleven gamboge, twelve red-lead, six vermilion, nine arsenite of copper and four white-lead.

In consequence of the Lancet’s disclosures a parliamentary committee was appointed in 1855, the labours of which resulted in 1860 in the Adulteration of Food and Drink Act, the first act that dealt generally with the adulteration of food. The first section of this enacted “that every person who shall sell any article of food or drink with which, to the knowledge of such person, any ingredient or material injurious to the health of persons eating or drinking such article has been mixed, and every person who shall sell as pure or unadulterated any article of food or drink which is adulterated and not pure, shall for every such offence, on summary conviction, pay a penalty not exceeding £5 with costs.” In the case of a second offence the name, place of abode and offence might be published in the newspapers at the offender’s expense. As the act, however, left it optional to the district authorities to appoint analysts or not, and did not provide for the appointment of any officer upon whom should rest the duty of obtaining samples or of prosecuting offenders, it virtually remained a dead letter till 1872, when the Adulteration of Food and Drugs Act came into force, prescribing a penalty not exceeding £50 for the sale of injurious food and, for a second offence, imprisonment for six months with hard labour. Inspectors were empowered to make purchases of samples to be submitted for analysis, but appointment of analysts was still left optional. The definition of an adulterated article given in that act was essentially that still accepted at the present time, namely, “any article of food or drink or any drug mixed with any other substances, with intent fraudulently to increase its weight or bulk, without declaration of such admixture to any purchaser thereof before delivering the same.” The adoption of the act was sporadic, and, outside London and a few large towns, the number of proceedings against offenders remained exceedingly small. Nevertheless complaints soon arose that it inflicted considerable injury and imposed heavy and undeserved penalties upon some respectable tradesmen, mainly owing to the “want of a clear understanding of what does and does not constitute adulteration,” and in some cases to conflicting decisions and the inexperience of analysts.

Again a parliamentary committee was appointed which took a mass of evidence, the outcome of its inquiries being the Sale Of Food and Drugs Act 1875, which is in force at the present day, subject to amendments and additions made at later dates. This act avoided the term “adulteration” altogether and endeavoured to give a clearer description of punishable offences:—

Section 6. “No person shall sell to the purchaser any article of food or any drug which is not of the nature, substance and quality of the article demanded by the purchaser under a penalty not exceeding £20; provided that an offence shall not be deemed to be committed under this section in the following cases: (1) where any matter or ingredient not injurious to health has been added to the food or drug because the same is required for the production or preparation thereof as an article of commerce, in a state fit for carriage or consumption, and not fraudulently to increase the bulk, weight or measure of the food or drug, or conceal the inferior quality thereof; (2) where the food or drug is a proprietary medicine, or is the subject of a patent in force and is supplied in the state required by the specification of the patent; (3) where the food or drug is compounded as in the act mentioned; (4) where the food or drug is unavoidably mixed with some extraneous matter in the process of collection or preparation.”

Section 8. “No person shall be guilty of any such offence as aforesaid in respect to the sale of an article of food or a drug mixed with any matter or ingredient not injurious to health, and not intended fraudulently to increase its bulk, weight or measure, or conceal its inferior quality, if at the time of delivering such article or drug he shall supply to the person receiving the same a notice, by a label distinctly and legibly written or printed on or with the article or drug, to the effect that the same is mixed.”

The act made the appointment of analysts compulsory upon the city of London, the vestries, county quarter sessions and town councils or boroughs having a separate police establishment. For the protection of the vendor, samples that had been purchased by the inspectors for analysis were to be offered to be divided into three parts, one to be submitted to the analyst, the second to be given to the vendor to be dealt with by him as he might deem fit, and the third to be retained by the inspector: and, at the discretion of the magistrate hearing any summons, to be submitted, in case of dispute, to the commissioners of inland revenue for analysis by the chemical laboratory at Somerset House. The public analyst had to give a certificate, couched in a prescribed form, to the person submitting any sample for analysis, which certificate was to be taken as evidence of the facts therein stated, in order to render the proceedings as inexpensive as practicable. If the defendant in any prosecution could prove to the satisfaction of the court that he had purchased the article under a warranty of genuineness, and that he sold it in the same state as when he purchased it, he was to be discharged from the prosecution, but no provision was made that in that event the giver of the warranty should be proceeded against.

Section 6, quoted above, gave rise to an immense amount of litigation, and already in 1879 it was found necessary to pass an amending act, making it clear that if a purchase was effected by an inspector with the intent to get the purchased article analysed, he was as much “prejudiced” if obtaining a sophisticated article as a private purchaser who purchased for his own use and consumption. The amending act also dealt in some small measure with a difficulty which immediately after passing the act was found to arise in ascertaining whether any article was “of the nature, substance and quality demanded by the purchaser”—“in determining whether an offence has been committed under section 6 by selling spirits not adulterated otherwise than by the admixture of water, it shall be a good defence to prove that such admixture has not reduced the spirit more than twenty-five degrees under proof for brandy, whisky or rum, or thirty-five under proof for gin.” Almost insuperable difficulties as to the meaning of “nature, substance and quality” subsequently arose as regards every conceivable food material. As its it was obviously impossible for parliament