Or, to cause it to imbibe such an extra quantity of water in its fabrication as shall add considerably to its weight, and so increase the profits of the maker? These are stated, on the best authority, to be the effects produced by it to the advantage of the trade. It will be seen that all the disadvantages fall to the lot of the consumers.
In his “Dictionary of Chemistry,” published more than thirty years since, Dr. Ure says: “The habitual and daily introduction of a portion of alum, however small, into the stomach, must be prejudicial to the exercise of its functions, particularly to persons of a bilious or costive habit; and as the best sweet flour never stands in need of it, the presence of this salt indicates an inferior and highly ascescent food, which cannot fail to aggravate dyspepsia, and which may generate also serious calculous disorders. I have made many experiments on bread, and found the proportion of alum in it very variable. Its quantity seems proportional to the badness of the flour.” Amongst the disorders to which it gives rise, he mentions, “acidity of stomach, heartburn, headaches, and palpitations;” and he instances others of a more acutely painful and dangerous character.
All that Dr. Ure has stated here has recently received the fullest confirmation in the evidence given before the Committee of the House of Commons, appointed to examine into the general question of the falsification of food and drugs*, now so common in this country. The combined testimony of medical men and of excellent practical chemists has proved beyond the possibility of dispute, the fact of the almost universal adulteration of many articles of our daily food, and of the medicines on which we depend for the restoration of health. It may well be called a cruel system, tending as it does to destroy the strength of the strong, and to shorten the lives of the weak and delicate, by converting what in its genuine state would be wholesome nutriment, into diet which is destructive to the unconscious eaters.
From the mass of evidence elicited by the Government Committee, a long array of facts might be selected in proof of the reality and magnitude of the evil which it was appointed to investigate, and of the necessity for some energetic measures for its suppression; but I confine myself to a short extract or two, bearing more immediately on the subject of bread and flour.
Dr. Challis, a physician, residing in Bermondsey, said that “he had had some experience in that district on the subject of adulteration. In the first place, the adulteration of bread was most extensively practised, even by the best bakers, who had admitted to him that they used twelve ounces of alum to a hundred and forty loaves,—a quantity most injurious to the health of all classes, more especially of the poor, as, owing to many causes, their stomachs were unable to digest it as well as others. He totally disagreed with the statement which had been made, that the constitution of the alum was so changed during the process of baking, as to be rendered innoxious. The heat required to bake the bread would not be sufficient to cause the change; and he had himself found crystals of alum in bread. As a medical man he was of opinion, that alum would affect the teeth and gums, and more especially the mucous membrane of children, producing at one time constipation, and at another relaxation.” But this is nothing compared with the substance of the following testimony of Mr. F. Crace Calvert, which appeared in the “Times,” within two or three days of the preceding report. “Mr. Calvert, professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution, Manchester, stated,—that he had frequently been called upon to examine into cases of adulteration of food and drugs. With respect to flour, his experience was chiefly derived from articles supplied to several Unions in Lancashire. He had found the wheat-flour to be adulterated with potato-starch, and flour of maize, to the amount sometimes of seventy-four per cent.; and not only was there this admixture, but frequently the flour was unsound! It was often the practice to buy wet or damaged flour at Liverpool, and, after it had been kiln-dried, to mix it with a portion of good flour, and to sell it as such!”
There is almost no need for comment upon facts like these! So incredible do they appear, that one is tempted to ask if indeed they can occur in a land so boastful of its pre-eminent civilisation as ours; and where the interests of the meanest subject are said to be protected as strictly as those of the highest class. Happily, such instances of flagrant injustice towards the poorest of the poor must be very limited, or exposure and redress could scarcely fail to follow them. It has been often said by the advocates of the bakers, that they are not the chief adulterators of the bread they sell, but that the flour they purchase is largely mingled with alum, and further falsified with rice-flour and other ingredients. If this be so, it reaches the public through a succession of inimical agencies.
Formerly in France, when the infliction of heavy fines proved insufficient to prevent dishonest practices on the part of the bakers, the following modes of punishment were resorted to. In one or two instances, if not more, the offenders were condemned to be “whipped naked at the cross roads;” and in 1521, four of their number were sentenced to be taken by the police from the châtelet to the porch of Nôtre Dame, bare-headed, and each one carrying a taper two pounds’ weight, “there to beg pardon of God, of the King, and of Justice, for the frauds which they had committed in the fabrication, and in the deficient weight of their bread.” This done, they were to be conducted into the church, and to offer their tapers to be burned in it; they, in the meanwhile, exhorting all other bakers to make their bread of the weight and quality required by law, “on pain of being scourged.” This sentence was strictly executed. At subsequent periods many other well-deserved punishments of various kinds were inflicted for similar offences. At the present day the penalties incurred by the defrauders are fines and imprisonment. In England the law deals even more leniently with such culprits, pecuniary loss being the only punishment allotted to them.