Report upon the law relating to the adulteration of food and suggestions as to its amendment / by Charles Alfred Swinburne.

  • Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Report upon the law relating to the adulteration of food and suggestions as to its amendment / by Charles Alfred Swinburne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    * 0 and preserves, with salts of copper; snuff, with various chromates, red lead, and powdered glass; tobacco, with water, sugar, rhubarb, and treacle; vinegar, with water, sugar, and sulphuric acid; confec¬ tionery, with plaster of paris and other similar ingredients, coloured with various pigments of a highly poisonous nature ; and acid drops, purporting to be a compound of jargonelle pear, Ribstone pippin, lemon, &c., with essential oils, containing prussic acid and other dangerous ingredients. The Committee also reported that the adulteration of drinks deserved especial notice, because they could not but conclude that the intoxication so deplorably prevalent was, in many cases, less due to the natural properties of the drinks themselves, than to the admixture of narcotics or other noxious substances, intended to supply the properties lost by dilution. A bill, founded upon the report of the Committee, was subsequently introduced into the House of Commons, but it met with such a reso¬ lute opposition upon the part of all traders that its more stringent measures were abandoned, and it was eventually reduced to t* e milder form which it now assumes under the head of *23 and 24 Viet, c. H4— ‘‘An Act for Preveniing the Adulteration of Articles of Food and Drink.” The preamble of this act states that the practice of adulterating articles of food and drink, for sale, in fraud of her majesty’s subjects, and to the great hurt of their health, requires to be repressed by more effectual laws than those which are now in force for that purpose. The act then proceeds to inflict certain pfnalties upon persons selling articles of food or drink with which, to the kmavledge of such„ person, any ingredient or material injurious to the health has been mixed ; and upon persons selling as pure or unadulterated any article of food or drink which is adulterated, or not pure, and directs how the vendor may be protected against articles of food and drink being tam¬ pered with by the purchaser. Then comes a clause empowering corporate bodies, courts of quarter session, &c., to appoint analysts and regulate their salaries as they may think fit, with certain powrers for purchasers of articles of food and drink; or the justices before whom any complaint has been made to have such articles analysed ;