Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-01-24 00:00:00

FOOD ADULTERATIONS

OUR Manchester neighbours have set us an
example which we might forthwith set about
following, with manifest advantage to those
industrious classes of our population who, by
reason of the circumstances in which they are
placed, are more than all others exposed to frauds
and fatalities, We have set Manchester a good

example, over and over again ; and now, there-
fore, that it has set us one, and so good a one, in
return, it behoves us to pay all due respect to it.
A public meeting has been held, convened by the
Mayor, in compliance with a requisition, to con-
sider the propriety of urging the Government to
introduce a bill to Parliament, for the purpose of
preventing the sale of adulterated ?ood and medi-
cines ; and after some discussion, resolutions in
favour of the object were passed, and a petition in
accordance with them was readily adopted.

We quite agree with the Manchester Guardian,
that " the adulteration of food is one of those
social evils which, pressing upon the poor with all
the weight of terrible calamities, cause the rest of
the world no great anxiety, because they are
known to it only in their least gross, and therefore
least injurious, forms." Were the evil more gene-
rally diffused throughout society, it would be
more likely to be remedied, because it would affect
classes of the community personally who would
not long endure it. But confined, as it is, in a
great measure at least, to the poor, it is merged in
their too common accumulation of suffering : being
one of many evils which unhappily attach to
their condition, it fails to attract the attention
which from its enormity it ought to do.
The state of the case is thus described ; and it is
one which, it is to be feared, prevails, though
not perhaps quite as extensively, in Liverpool
as in Manchester,—" It is, unfortunately be-
yond dispute, that in the poorer quarters
of our large towns, the most pernicious
kind of adulteration of food prevails. Where
there is so much ignorance on this as on
other subjects, it is inevitable that rogues should
take advantage of it. The custom, which is a
necessity to the poor, of making purchases in
small quantities from day to day, not only enables
the retail dealer to charge a higher price for his
goods, but gives him facilities for adulterating

them with very slight risk of detection. And, as
the food of the poor is at the best but of second-
rate quality, while that of the very poor is what
we should call refuse, it follows that, in order to
adulteration profitable, the vilest and
filthiest trash must be mixed with the meat
and drink of the people. So that the very
class which the Legislature ought to consider
itself chiefly bound to protect is exposed,
by a combination of circumstances, to be
plundered and poisoned with impunity."
Here, then, is an operation of cause and effect
which, wherever there are the poor to work upon
with it, will be found, it is to be feared, more or
less, to prevail. The very ingenuity of the age
keeps ministering to its 'success, and its extension.
The times, too, are those of keenest competition, to
carry out which with profitable effect necessitates
the adoption of a cheapening process,—and in
order to make things cheap, they must be
adulterated, and even imitated. " Even as
regards the daily bread of the poor," as our
Manchester contemporary goes on to remark,

make

" the consequences of this state of things are
fearful to contemplate ; and it was well said at the
meeting that this kind of adulteration of food may
be regarded as a nuisance, which ought to be
removed, if only as a measure of sanitary and
social reform." It is, however, something infini-
tely worse than a nuisance. It is a fearful curse
to the poor, and through them to the community
generally, thus to have the requirements of health
and strength, nay, the very sources of their
vitality itself, infected and polluted. As an act
of protection to the poor—of justice and charity to
them—as well as, in a more general point of view,
a matter "of sanitary and social reform," it
certainly demands legislative attention,
Then there is the subject of medicine
again, it is to be feared, the poor are often most
cruelly victimized. Not they only, indeed, but all
of us, are liable to be sacrificed to ignorance
or carelessness, as well as to fraud and deception.
Our respectable Chemists and Druggists are not,
of course, to be objects of suspicion in this wise.
But there are those, in certain low quarters of
most of our populous towns, who adopt the
cheapening process even in the sale of medicine ;
and who have often those about them that are
unqualified to meddle in matters involving the
issues of life or death. Truly is it therefore
observed, that "it is impossible to allow a system
to go on by which any number of lives may be
daily sacrificed ; and, if the Legislature provide
that in future no one shall be allowed to begin
business as a Chemist and Druggist who has not a
certificate of competency, it will have done its
part ; and upon the public will depend the
responsibility of calling to account those who
defy the law. The regulation, together with a
more extended inspection of articles of food, and
heavier punishments for offenders, would at all
events mitigate the severity of the evil." • That it
is an evil which urgently needs, not to be
mitigated merely, but reformed altogether, there
cannot surely be two opinions. And if the
Legislature is to be influenced to take it up by
any such " pressure from without " as that which
is being so laudably exerted at Manchester, it

Here,

must proceed, not from one, but from all the large
towns where it prevails. There must be " a long
pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether ;" and
Liverpool ought not to delay one moment in taking
part in it with all its might.