Pioneering work on food "adulteration"
In the course of an extremely active career in London, Accum attracted a number of enemies and their number increased sharply after the publication, in 1820, of his best-known work "A Treatise on Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons".
The tone is set in the Preface where he declares "However invidious the office may appear, and however painful the duty may be, of exposing the names of individuals who have been convicted of adulterating food, yet it was necessary for the verification of my statement.".
After the opening chapter, dealing with water, he devotes separate chapters to consider the adulteration of wine and beer, bread, brandy, cream, custards and olive oil, interspersed with shorter sections dealing with counterfeit tea, coffee, pepper and poisonous cheese and pickles. The RSC's copy has been rebound but the original had light green boards, with white designs of snakes writhing around a rectangle enclosing a spider's web, in which a large spider was engaged in grabbing a fly. At the top was a banner bearing a skull and cross-bones, with "There is Death in the Pot" inscribed underneath.
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Each section details the methods of adulteration and how they may be detected. The largest section is devoted to the adulteration of beer, a wide-spread practice in spite of the numerous Parliamentary Acts which imposed heavy fines on defaulting brewers. In the introduction, Accum states "It has been a matter of frequent complaint, that ALL porter now brewed, is not what porter was formerly." He reports that the major London brewers, such as Truman, Hanbury & Co. and Henry Meux & Co, were producing a brew containing approximately 7.25% alcohol but by the time the retailers were selling it on to the publicans, this had dropped to an average 4.5%. Not only was the original brew being diluted with cheaper, weak beer but it was also being treated with green vitriol, (iron(II) sulphate) alum (aluminium potassium sulphate) and salt to give it a good "cauliflower head" when poured. An extract of Cocculus Indicus, originally prepared for the dyeing and tanning trade, was used to enhance the bitter taste, in spite of its poisonous and stupefying properties. These additives, being strictly illegal, were usually stored off-site and it was a frequent practice for the retailer on "brewing days" to turn up at work, in a specially large coat, with specially large pockets, filled with these additional ingredients. Accum had no compunction in "naming and shaming" brewers who had been convicted of adulterating beer and druggists convicted of supplying them with the harmful materials. He supported his statements by quoting the official court reports. The fines imposed were very substantial, amounting to around £400 in the bad cases. Grocers similarly adulterated their produce -cayenne pepper was frequently laced with red lead to cover up the fact that it was old and had faded considerably, ground pepper was "extended" by mixing it with PD (pepper dust - warehouse sweepings). Used tea leaves were dried on copper plates to acquire a green patina and then resold, pickles were boiled in copper vessels or half-pence were added to the recipe ingredients to produce "a lively green colour". The same copper pigments occurred in green confectionery, jellies and blancmange, together with vermillion (mercury(II) sulphide mixed with red lead) in the red items. The first edition of a thousand copies was sold out within a month of publication and the second edition appeared later in the same year, in spite of a number of threatening anonymous letters which he had received. The book attracted widespread interest abroad, with an American reprint appearing in Philadelphia (1820) and a German translation printed in Leipzig in 1822. The consequences were, for Accum, nothing less than a disaster. |
