Up until the Victorian era the population of Britain was widely spread throughout the country. Most people lived in rural settlements or small towns and villages. Food was prepared and preserved either by the family themselves or if they were wealthy by their domestic staff. The ingredients were for the most part grown and bought locally. Meat came from local farms or estates, and farmers and landowners had reputations to maintain, as did the local mill for flour, and the local shopkeepers for all that they sold. Richer households had their own ovens, while poorer people would pay a small sum to use the ovens of the local baker.
Yet as the Industrial Revolution took hold, so the population in towns and cities grew. Britain became more dependent on imported foods. People were also acquiring expensive tastes for tea, coffee, sugar, cocoa, and sauces and spices from around the world. To make them more affordable the “adulteration” of food and drink (additives) became increasingly commonplace. This “adulteration” might be to improve appearance or improve taste, but it’s usual aim was to decrease costs and increase profits. It became so common that books on housekeeping routinely carried warnings and tests for detecting added chemicals like plaster of Paris in flour. Mrs Beeton in prefacing a recipe for a popular anchovy paste warned against shop-bought pastes,
“In six cases out of ten, the only portion of those preserved delicacies, that contains anything indicative of anchovies, is the paper label pasted on the bottle or pot, on which the word itself is printed.”
The wealthier residents of towns and cities could of course afford a “better” diet, but there was no refrigeration at the time and little concept of hygiene. Meat was killed locally, but then it had to be stored, sold and transported to the home. As late as 1862 the government estimated that one-fifth of butcher’s meat in England and Wales came from animals which had died of disease or were carrying considerable disease – Meat that should never have been allowed to enter the food-chain. And at the start of the nineteenth century butcher’s boys would deliver meat to the wealthier homes, carried on their heads, in baskets or trays, open to the heat and dirt of the day.
If food was dangerous for the wealthy, it was positively deadly for the poor. They bought mainly from itinerant “costermongers” selling from barrows, and their reputation depended more on cheapness than it did on quality. Most of the poor lived in rented rooms, often shared and usually without access to cooking facilities. Any hot food they consumed was street-food, like baked potatoes or pies. Most though subsisted on a diet largely consisting of bread. They lived from hand-to-mouth and bought food in “pennyworths” or even “half-pennyworths.” Buying in these smaller quantities (enough for the day) meant goods often cost four or five times more than they would have cost had they been bought in regular quantities. Bread itself could be bought as “quarter” or “half” loaves, but even then, bakers used chalk to make the bread whiter, and alum to enable the use of inferior flour, and while alum was not poisonous it inhibited the digestion and decreased the nutritional value of anything else their customers ate.
Producers, importers, merchants and sellers all began adding more and more ingredients to increase bulk or “improve” appearance or reduce costs. Of course none of them knew what had been added by the others in the chain, so they each had a cumulative effect. in the end, by the time products were bought, no one really knew what was in them. Milk was often watered down, sometimes by as much as 50%, and so too was beer. Indeed, the making of beer had more to do with chemistry than the brewing process. As Dr Richard Wetherby says, in my novel, “Avon Street”:-
“Have you any idea of how they adulterate the beer in the ale houses around Avon Street? It is full of foxglove, henbane, opium and God knows what other concoctions. They use chemicals so that they can water down the beer, keep its taste and appearance, but make it stronger, and still sell it cheaply.”
Indian Berry, Henbane, Nux Vomica and Opium were used to increase the intoxicating properties of the watered down beer. Foxglove, Jalap and Potash were used to keep the bitter taste and to stop it from turning sour. Most of these ingredients were of course poisonous and carried severe side-effects.
In 1851 “The Lancet,” (medical journal) commissioned a doctor from the London Royal Free Hospital to examine the adulteration of thirty common foods in Britain. The study revealed that:-
Rat and mice droppings, insects and faecal contamination were found in many foods. Tea imported from China contained 45% sand and dirt together with traces of sulphate of iron; lard contained carbonate of soda and caustic lime; coffee included chicory, mangel wurzel, sawdust, and acorns; cocoa and chocolate were coloured with earth and included arrowroot and Venetian lead; sweets (candy) were found to contain chromate of lead, sulphate of mercury and various other noxious flavourings and colourings. Red lead and other chemical colourings were found to be routinely used in foodstuffs such as “Red Leicester Cheese.”
Even after the study by “The Lancet” was published, the merchants, tradespeople and government were slow to respond. Thankfully though, technology and innovation helped in the interim. In 1857 a process for the mass production of ice was patented allowing foods to be better preserved and transported. The availability of canned goods also increased. The army had been supplied with canned foods since 1820, but the cans had to be opened with a chisel or a bayonet, until the can-opener was invented in 1858. As technology improved, mass-produced processed foods like soups, sauces, biscuits, chocolate, pickles and egg-powder became more popular and were prepared to more rigorous standards. Finally, in 1860 that the Adulteration Act was passed, and though it was largely resisted, in 1872 official inspectors were created with the power to test food and impose substantial fines. Quality and safety of food “magically” began to improve.