Unscrupulous traders cutting costs led to clean food campaign

The first really effective law on food safety was passed 150 years ago this year, and until then, and for a long time afterwards, no-one could be entirely sure what it was they were eating and drinking - and sometimes the results were tragic. If you go back to Victorian Bristol by time-machine, Eugene Byrne advises you to bring a packed lunch.

- Eugene Byrne

In October 1874 the City Analyst, William Stoddart, was called before the weekly meeting of Bristol's council to give his report.

In the last three months, he said, he had received 89 samples of food and drink for analysis and that 47 of them had turned out to be impure or severely adulterated.

Of the nine samples of tea he had analysed, six were mixed with quartz, sand, vegetable stalks, paint and gum. Of the 12 samples of milk, one had had 70% of the cream extracted while most others had been watered down. The worst was 30% water.

“A sample of whisky was loaded with fusel oil which had produced highly unpleasant effects on those who drank it ... Two samples of cheese were charged with mineral salt to a poisonous extent.”

Seven samples of butter were adulterated with fat “and other matters”.

Mr Stoddart was a busy man. Not only was he called on to analyse suspect food and drink, he was also required to give testimony in magistrates’ courts in Bristol and the wider region when fraudulent suppliers were being prosecuted.

Honest traders, on the other hand, could make use of his services, too. Weston-super-Mare tea merchant Henry Podger sent three samples to Stoddart and proudly advertised the fact that Stoddart wrote that he had “analysed the above-mentioned articles of TEA, AND I FIND THEM ALL COMMERCIALLY GOOD”

He was busy because his appointment was a new one, and because so much of the food and drink on sale in Bristol, and everywhere else, was not always what it was supposed to be.

We take it for granted that the food we buy is what the label tells us it is. Assuming you cook it properly, that it’s within its sell-by date, and that you're not allergic to any ingredients, it's not going to make you ill.

We usually trust the food we buy, and it's not just because there are all manner of laws covering the quality of food and drink.