A strict Adulteration of Food, Drink and Drugs Act amends Britain's 1860 pure food laws, making sale of adulterated drugs punishable and making it an offense to sell a mixture containing ingredients added to increase weight without advising the comer. A new British Sale of Food and Drugs Law tightens restrictions against adulteration, making any adulteration injurious to health punishable with a heavy fine and making a second offense punishable with imprisonment. Glasgow grocer Thomas Johnstone Lipton opens his first shop at age 26. Lipton sailed to America at age 15 to spend 4 years learning the merchandising methods employed in the grocery section of a New York department store. The last shipment of coffee beans will leave the island in 1899.
Demand increases for Latin American coffee.
Annual British tea consumption averages 10 pounds per capita, up from 2 pounds in 1797. It joins the line of Nabisco products that includes Social Tea Biscuits. Tea bags are pioneered by New York tea and coffee shop merchant Thomas Sullivan who sends samples of his various tea blends to customers in small hand-sewn muslin bags. Finding that they can brew tea simply by pouring boiling water over a tea bag in a cup, customers place hundreds of orders for Sullivan's tea bags, which will soon be packed by a specially developed machine. Green tea and Formosan continue to outsell black tea five to one in the United States.