[In the following essay, Long discusses Dickens's participation in the national debate on the common nineteenth-century practice of adulterating food and drink.]

Much tension in Dickens's early work derives from the juxtaposition of scenes in which food and drink are consumed—sometimes seemingly continuously—with others of near or actual starvation. In later work, descriptions of meals increasingly serve to illustrate character traits and advance plots. A third aspect of Dickens's writing about food is his frequent reference to its poor quality. This article describes some of these references, and traces the background against which they were made.

In 1850, in an atmosphere of national debate and parliamentary legislation concerning many aspects of public health reform, Thomas Wakley initiated an investigation in The Lancet of the then prevalent practice of adulterating food and drink. Adulteration consists of the inclusion without acknowledgment in a genuine article of a cheaper, sometimes harmful, material. The investigation carried the name ‘Analytical Sanitary Commission’, an imitation of a recently instituted governmental Sanitary Commission.

Wakley, born in Devonshire in 1795, had become a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1817. He founded The Lancet in 1823, was M.P. for the borough of Finsbury between 1835 and 1852, and was elected coroner for West Middlesex in 1839. He continued as coroner and Lancet editor until his death in 1862.¹ Dickens observed Wakley in the House of Commons in 1835,² served under him as juryman at a coroner's inquest³ and referred to him in light-hearted notes⁴ in 1840, made complimentary comments on his conduct of an inquest involving criminal neglect of pauper children in 1849,⁵ and was apparently discussing Wakley's past legal affairs in 1860.⁶ Although Dickens resented Wakley's attacks in The Lancet on experiments in mesmerism carried out by Dickens's friend and family doctor, John Elliotson,⁷ Dickens obviously held Wakley in high regard, referring to him in 1863 as ‘nobly patient and humane’.⁸

Wakley's Commissioner, responsible for co-ordinating the Lancet investigation, was the microscopist Arthur Hill Hassall, one of whose books, The Microscopic Anatomy of the Human Body formed the basis of an article by Frederick Knight Hunt in Household Words in September 1851.⁹ Also involved was Henry Letheby, Professor of Chemistry and Toxicology in the Medical College of the London Hospital, and later Public Analyst to the City of London and President of the Association of Medical Offices of Health.¹⁰ His name was also to appear, in a January 1851 article by W. H. Wills, in Household Words.¹¹ Another strong supporter of the Lancet Commission, and long-time agent of public agitation about adulteration was the surgeon John Postgate, later Professor of Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology at Queen's College, Birmingham. His childhood experience as a grocer's boy in Scarborough had apparently given him ample insight into food adulteration.¹²

In the first number of The Lancet for 1851, Wakley began publishing the results of the Commission's work. In an accompanying editorial, he wrote:

We feel impressed with the conviction that we have undertaken a task, large and important enough to have engaged the attention of the Government of this country. … Let not any tradesman, mechanic, or manufacturer, imagine for a moment that he can defeat our vigilance. We bring the microscope and the test-tube—those simple but mighty instruments of modern investigation—to bear with unerring truth upon things hidden and secret enough from the observation of the unaided senses. These instruments, assisted by the powers of chemistry and structural botany and anatomy, are our detective police … A single glance of the practical microscopist, a single touch of the expert chemist, and most intricate mystifications stand confessed and naked. … The coming season is one in which such an undertaking is especially necessary. During the presence of the concourse drawn to the metropolis by the Great Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, the temptation to adulterate articles of food and drink will be immense.¹³

In the same issue, Hassall, introducing the first report, explained:

We propose … to institute an extensive, and somewhat rigorous, series of investigations into the present condition of the various articles of diet supplied to the inhabitants of this great metropolis and its vicinity, and probably the inquiries will be extended to some of our distant cities and towns. … A … feature will be the publication of the names and addresses of the parties from whom the different articles, the analyses of which will be detailed, were purchased …¹⁴

Reports of the Commission, under the heading ‘Records of the Results of Microscopical and Chemical Analyses of the Solids and Fluids consumed by all Classes of the Public’, and initially bearing the slogan ‘Forewarned, forearmed’ appeared in The Lancet between January 1851 and December 1854. During this time, analyses of samples of coffee, chicory, tea, cocoa, milk, butter, mustard, pepper, vinegar, curry powder, lard, arrowroot, isinglass, drugs (including opium), jalap, ipecacuanha, tobacco, snuff, sugar, bread, oatmeal, farinaceous foods, anchovies, sausages, beer, porter, gin, jellies, coloured confectionery, and various preserved fruits, vegetables, meats and fish purchased in London were published. The Commission was revived between 1857 and 1858 in order to analyse food articles from Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester, and some additional items from London. A few reports appeared between 1861 and 1867, and, in 1867, a similar occasional series of investigations entitled ‘Analytical Records’ began.

The 1851-1854 reports, and the persistent promptings of Postgate, led to the appointment in 1855 of a House of Commons Committee of Inquiry on adulteration, on the motion of, and subsequently chaired by the Birmingham M.P. William Scholefield. Dickens had corresponded with and met this radical politician in 1844, when the latter, as treasurer of the Birmingham Polytechnic Institution, invited Dickens to speak at a public meeting in support of the institution.¹⁵ During 1855 and 1856, Scholefield's committee heard evidence from many people, including Wakley, Hassall, Letheby and Postgate. Hassall, in his ultimate appearance, was ‘assisted by some 40 diagrams which embellished the walls of the committee-room, displaying the horrors of adulteration as seen by the aid of the microscope’.¹⁶

The committee's final report, suggesting new legislation, appeared in August 1856, but it was not until after several delays, to which strenuous lobbying by food retailers no doubt contributed, that Scholefield succeeded, in 1860, in pushing through an Adulteration Act. This comparatively gentle measure gave local authorities the option of appointing public food analysts, and the power to prosecute offending tradesmen. It dealt only with adulterations likely to be injurious to health, and not at all with the fraudulent aspects of adulteration. The act as made more rigorous by an amendment in 1872, and was eventually replaced by the Sale of Foods and Drugs Acts of 1875 and 1879. Wakley, who was, of course, not to see these later measures, was only moderately satisfied with the 1860 Act; nevertheless, the work of his Commission in itself produced some diminution in adulteration, and the campaign received wide and enthusiastic press coverage—so much so, that a eulogistic leading article in The Times on July 24 1855 provoked an unseemly verbal scuffle in the newspaper's correspondence columns, between Wakley and Hassall, about the precise origin of the Commission.¹⁷

Household Words was as active as other publications in covering the issue. Between 1850 and 1857, articles dealing directly with, or mentioning, adulteration were contributed by Wills, Richard H. Horne, Charles Strange, James Hannay, William B. Jerrold, Henry Morley, George A. H. Sala, Eustace C. G. Murray and Edmund S. Dixon.¹⁸ One Morley article¹⁹ was, in fact, based on Hassall's book Food and its Adulterations, produced in 1855, and comprising a revised and extended version of the Lancet reports. Later, in All the Year Round, articles published between 1860 and 1869 on various aspects of food and drink also referred to the topic.²⁰ Such articles and references doubtless had editorial approval, and Dickens's interest in and concern about the adulteration issue is revealed in his own writings. To Forster he wrote:

O what a fine aspect of political economy it is, that the noble professors of the science on the adulteration committee should have tried to make Adulteration a question of Supply and Demand! We shall never get to the Millennium, sir, by the rounds of that ladder …²¹

This diatribe was probably written in response to an appearance before the Committee of Inquiry of Thomas Blackwell, of Messrs Crosse and Blackwell.

This witness … observed that the adulterations … were made in direct deference to the public taste. … The public would have green pickles and red anchovies, and, as pickles were not green or anchovies red in their natural state, they had to be made so by colouring,—i.e., by adulteration. “The mode of operation,” said Mr. Blackwell, “was to boil the vinegar in the copper vessel a certain time, and then allow it to cool. It was then boiled a second, and afterwards a third time, in the copper vessel, the result of which was that the vinegar became bright green, owing to the action of the vinegar on the copper. …” Well, this delectable process had been abandoned … but “a considerable diminution of custom” was soon experienced, and people … wrote to say “they did not like the loss of colour.” Witness had actually felt astonishment at the tenacious and decisive prepossessions of the public in favour of these corruptions. “He had formerly,” he said, “manufactured both green and white gooseberries,” and had never had any complaints made. At this, however, ‘he had often wondered, because when the gooseberry-pie was cut open it appeared most unnaturally green.” Green as it was, however, it seems that the consumers were still greener. … It is clear that whatever tint is in demand will be supplied …²²

In fairness to Blackwell, it is also clear that, in response to the Lancet's investigations, the firm had discontinued these and similar practices, and, as Hassall reported to the Committee of Inquiry, behaved ‘in a most honorable manner’.²³ The letter to Forster quoted above, and the Household Words item mentioned at the end of this article, in which the image of adulteration is used allegorically, were written at a time when the first numbers of Little Dorrit were being composed,²⁴ and the title—‘Under the Microscope’—of the illustration in which Miss Wade observes Tattycoram in the first number, reflects the current interest in such methods of analysis.

Earlier, Dickens in a Household Words article of 1850 had used a supposed report of the annual Lord Mayor's Day procession as a vehicle in which to make comments on sanitary reform. The reporter describes the parade's elephant.

His capacity of intellectual development under proper training, his strength and docility, his industry, his many noble qualities, his patience and attachment under gentle treatment, and his blind resentment when provoked too far by ill-usage, rendered him … a touching symbol of the great English people … In parading an animal so well known for its aversion to carrion, and its liking for clean provender, the City of London, pleasantly but pointedly, avowed its determination to seek out and confiscate all improper human food exposed for sale within its liberties, and particularly to look, with a searching eye, into the knackers' yards, and the sausage trade.²⁵

An incident in the same year illustrates the cause of Dickens's concern. On 27 June, The Times carried an extract, entitled ‘A View of Sharp's-Alley’, from a Household Words article by Richard Horne.

It is a large knacker's yard, furnished with all the usual apparatus for slaughtering diseased or worn-out horses, and plentifully bestrewn with the reeking members and frightful refuse of the morning's work. … Three of the corners are completely filled up with a heap of dead horses lying upon their backs, with their hoofs sticking bolt upright; while two other angles in the yard are filled with a mass of bodies and fragments … A strange, ghastly rattling sound, apparently from the adjoining premises, is kept up without intermission; a sort of inconceivably rapid devil's-tattoo, by way of accompaniment to the hideous scene. … The walls vibrate with it. Machinery of some kind? Yes—it is a chopping machine … Ay, it is so, in sober and dreadful seriousness. Here, in this Sharp's alley, you behold the largest horse-slaughter-house in the city; and here, next-door, you will find the largest sausage manufactory in London. The two establishments thus conveniently situated belong to near relations—brothers, we believe, or brothers-in-law.

On the following day, The Times reported the appearance before the Mansion-House magistrate of a deputation ‘of the most respectable butchers in Newgate-market’. Their spokesman explained:

that within the last few days a quantity of the best quality of meat had been received in the market in such a state, in consequence of the weather, as to be wholly unfit for human consumption, and Mr Pocklington, the meat inspector, had, in the active performance of his duty, seized and destroyed it. The loss sustained by such condemnation was considerable … Under such circumstances, and as there was in the meat a vast deal of fat which could be profitably disposed of to soap-boilers, the butchers applied to the magistracy for permission to separate the fat from the lean, and sell it to the boilers …

The magistrate expressed concern about the possible fates of such meat, if it were not to be destroyed, and ‘Mr Pocklington said, without meaning for a moment to throw any suspicion touching the conduct of the respectable tradesmen who formed the deputation, he must say that there were persons ready to be purchasers of bad meat, who meant to do something with it very different from soap-making.’

Alderman GIBBS. [the Magistrate]—I am afraid you allude to some of the gentlemen who make sausages. (A laugh.)

Mr Pocklington.—I certainly do, Sir. I know one or two boilers who certainly would turn the meat to that use, and there are some gentlemen amongst the deputation who know them too.

Eventually, the wishes of the butchers were apparently acceded to, at least in principle. After the hearing, Pocklington, on reading the extract from Household Words quoted above ‘declared that the description was not the slightest degree over-charged, and that the operations of the sausage grinders were described to perfection in that admirable work’.

Later, in Household Words, Dickens contributed a lighter-hearted article entitled ‘Well-authenticated Rappings’,²⁶ which combines comments on adulteration with ridicule of spiritualists' phenomena. The writer, ‘starting up in bed [on Boxing Day] with his hand to his forehead, distinctly [feels] seventeen heavy throbs or beats in that region … accompanied by … a general sensation not unlike that which is usually attendant on biliousness.’ Convinced that the rapping is of spiritual origin, he asks the name of the spirit, and eventually receives the reluctant reply ‘Port!’ Asked ‘What, upon the whole, is most like you?’, the spirit replies ‘Blacking’.

Other references to adulteration, practised either privately or commercially, are found throughout Dickens's writings. In Vauxhall-Gardens by day, ‘studious men [are rumoured to be] constantly engaged in chemical experiments, with the view of discovering how much water a bowl of negus could possibly bear …’,²⁷ and, at the half-yearly ball at Minerva House, the visitors consume ‘warm water disguised with lemon, and dotted with nutmeg, under the denomination of negus.’²⁸ Later the Marchioness's wine is, of necessity, orange-peel in water.²⁹

Thomas Spruggins probably dilutes the workhouse soup and beer,³⁰ Cherry Pecksniff Pinch's tea,³¹ Mrs Todgers (according to Bailey) the soup and table-beer,³² and ‘The people at Cecil Street’ the young Dickens's hashes.³³ At the Bath Assembly Rooms, according to Mr Dowler, ‘They lay on hot water, and call it tea.’³⁴

Sam horrifies Pickwick with his stories of cats in meat pies,³⁵ and of the adulteration in person of his product by the ‘inwenter o' the patent-never-leavin'-off sassage steam ingine’.³⁶ Dickens himself, describing the recovery of sheep and cattle carcases from the sea following a wreck on the Goodwin Sands, writes ‘One lean-faced boatman murmured, when they were all ruminative over the bodies as they lay on the pier: “Couldn't sassages be made on it?” but retired in confusion shortly afterwards, overwhelmed by the execrations of the bystanders.’³⁷ Betsey Prig complains that the Bull's cold meat ‘tastes of the stable’,³⁸ ‘dead-dog preparation’ is offered for sale at the sausage-shop in Saint Antoine,³⁹ and Tom and Ruth Pinch, in Covent Garden market, see ‘white country sausages [which unlike some others are] beyond impeachment by surviving cat or dog, or horse or donkey …’⁴⁰ Bounderby calculates that he has ‘eaten in his youth at least three horses under the guise of polonies and saveloys’⁴¹ and the Uncommercial Traveller tells us that ‘Down by the [London] Docks, you may buy polonies, saveloys, and sausage preparations various, if you are not particular what they are made of besides seasoning’;⁴² in a lighter vein, he remembers Captain Murderer's peculiar taste in meat pies.⁴³

It comes as no surprise that Betsey Trotwood, arriving in Lincoln's Inn Fields, expresses her own ideas concerning London provisions. ‘I hope the steak may be beef, but I don't believe it. Nothing's genuine in the place, in my opinion, but the dirt. … It would be no pleasure to a London tradesman to sell anything which was what he pretended it was.’⁴⁴ Even Littimer, in prison, complains of the cocoa. ‘I don't think the milk which is boiled with it is quite genuine; but I am aware, sir, that there is great adulteration of milk in London, and that the article in a pure state is difficult to be obtained.’⁴⁵

When Maggy demonstrates her learning to Arthur Clennam by reading notices in the grocer's shop outside the Marshalsea, they include ‘various cautions to the public against spurious establishments and adulterated articles.’⁴⁶ And Mortimer, languidly describing the origin of ‘the man from Somewhere’, says ‘he comes from the place … where they make the wine.’ Eugene suggests ‘Day and Martin's.’⁴⁷ ‘“No, not that place,” returns the unmoved Mortimer, “that's where they make the Port”’.⁴⁸

Children, not surprisingly, are particularly put upon: the apprentice in the morning London streets,⁴⁹ Squeers's new pupils at the Saracen's Head,⁵⁰ the young Scrooge,⁵¹ probably Mrs Pipchin's charges,⁵² and the schoolboy telling the story of Old Cheeseman⁵³ all seem to be described as, remember, or complain of having adulterated food or drink foisted on them. Pumblechook adulterates Pip's milk with ‘such a quantitity of warm water … that it would have been more candid to have left the milk out altogether’⁵⁴—perhaps he is unwittingly retaliating for Pip's earlier adulteration of the brandy with tar-water.⁵⁵ In contrast, the butler at Doctor Blimber's probably practises beneficient adulteration—he is rumoured to mingle ‘porter with [Paul's] table-beer to make him strong’.⁵⁶

Travellers too, cannot escape food and drink adulteration, as the Uncommercial Traveller⁵⁷ and the boy at the Mugby Junction Refreshment Room⁵⁸ explain. At the Golden Cross, the waiter prepares David's sherry by mixing stale leavings ‘like a chemist and druggist’,⁵⁹ and the traveller staying at an ‘extinct town-inn’ in ‘one of the chiefest towns of Staffordshire’, wonders where it gets its Sherry.

If I were to send my pint of wine to some famous chemist to be analysed, what would it turn out to be made of? It tastes of pepper, sugar, bitter-almonds, vinegar, warm knives, any flat drinks, and a little brandy. Would it unman a Spanish exile by reminding him of his native land at all? I think not.⁶⁰

At the Temeraire Hotel, ‘(very) mock-turtle soup’ is served, apparently consisting of ‘lukewarm dish-water holding in solution sour flour, poisonous condiments and (say) seventy-five per cent of miscellaneous kitchen stuff rolled into balls …’⁶¹En route for Italy, thin soup and wine are encountered,⁶² and, in Genoa, wine is labelled ‘Champagne’ or ‘Madeira’ without regard to its actual identity.⁶³ It is no wonder that Dickens, sending Count D'Orsay wine bought on his way home from Genoa, is anxious to assure him that it is ‘perfectly pure and genuine.’⁶⁴

The lodging place in the little square behind Aldersgate Street where Jasper stays while in London is exceptional: it advertises ‘almost apologetically … that it does not expect [the traveller], on the good old constitutional hotel plan, to order a pint of sweet blacking for his drinking, and throw it away; but insinuates that he may have his boots blacked instead of his stomach …’⁶⁵

Some respite may also be gained in the serene tranquillity of Arcadian London, deserted during the Summer holiday season. The Uncommercial Traveller appreciates

the Shepherdess character of the few milkwomen who purvey so little milk that it would be worth nobody's while to adulterate it, if anybody were left to undertake the task. On the crowded sea-shore, the great demand for milk, combined with the strong local temptation of chalk, would betray itself in the lowered quality of the article. In Arcadian London [the Uncommercial Traveller derives] it from the cow.⁶⁶

Adulteration also provides imagery in unexpected contexts: an apparently depressed acquaintance is described as ‘an Atlantic of the feeblest milk and water’.⁶⁷ Mr Dombey is said to ‘regard [Major Bagstock] as a choice spirit … who had not that poisonous ingredient of poverty with which choice spirits in general are too much adulterated’.⁶⁸ When news of the overnight quarrel between Drood and Landless reaches Miss Twinkleton's establishment before breakfast, the author speculates that ‘the milkman delivered it as part of the adulteration of his milk …’⁶⁹ And of course, that most famous of Analytical Chemists, the Veneerings' butler, is ‘always seeming to say, after “Chablis, sir?”—“You wouldn't if you knew what it's made of”’.⁷⁰

Perhaps the most telling use Dickens makes of the adulteration image is seen in a Household Words lead item of August 11, 1855.⁷¹ The article, entitled ‘Our Commission’, mimics the language of Hassall's reports. Its subject is not food adulteration, but political corruption and incompetence. The article begins:

The disclosures in reference to the adulteration of Food, Drinks, and Drugs, for which the public are indebted to the vigor and spirit of our contemporary The Lancet, lately inspired us with the idea of originating a Commission to inquire into the extensive adulteration of certain other articles which it is of the last importance that the country should possess in a genuine state.

The first subject of inquiry is a sample of the commodity ‘“Government” … purchased … at a wholesale establishment in Downing Street.’ This product is reported to be characterised by its ‘excessive dearness’ and deficiency in ‘flavour, character, clearness, brightness … it was what would be popularly termed wishy-washy, muddled, and flat.’ It contained a harmful ‘volatile ingredient’. It was ‘frightfully adulterated with immense infusions of the common weed called Talk.’ A ‘precipitate of Corruption’ had been obtained from the purchase, which ‘turned white into black, and black into white … a Grey deposit produced vacillation and weakness … another specimen of the same commodity [purchased] at an opposition establishment’ was found to be ‘equally deleterious …’ Among other subjects of inquiry was the ‘bitter drug called Public Offices … obtained from shops in Downing Street, Whitehall, Palace Yard, the Strand, and elsewhere’. These specimens were shown to be adulterated with the deadly poison ‘Noodledom’.

The most ‘laborious and painful’ of the analyses involved a ‘miserable sample’ of

Representative Chamber … brought from Westminster Market. … It was fearfully adulterated with Talk … and diluted with large quantities of coloring matter of a false and deceptive nature. It was thickly overlaid with varnish which [the Analyst] had resolved into its component parts, and had found to be made of Trash … boiled up with large quantities of Party Turpitude, and a heap of Cant. … It was almost inconceivable … how an article in itself so wholesome as Representative Chamber, could have been got into this disgraceful state. It was mere Carrion, wholly unfit for human consumption, and calculated to produce nausea and vomiting.

The Commission asks the Analyst ‘What hope [is there] of seeing this necessary of English life, restored to a genuine and wholesome state?’ The Analyst replies that the ‘sole hope [is] in the public's resolutely rejecting all coloring matter whatsoever—in their being equally inexorable with the dealers, whether they threatened or cajoled—and in their steadily insisting on being provided with the commodity in a pure and useful form.’ ‘The Commission’, Dickens writes, ‘then adjourned, in exceedingly low spirits …’

Notes

1. Dictionary of National Biography, XX, 461-465.

2. Carlton, W. J., The Dickensian, 50, (1954), 100-109.

3. Carlton, W. J., The Dickensian, 52, (1956), 65-69.

4. The Letters of Charles Dickens, II, 25-27; 27-29; edited by Madeline House and Graham Storey (Oxford, 1969).

5. Dickens, C., The Examiner, January 20, 1849, 27.

6. Meckier, J., The Dickensian, 71, (1975), 5-20.

7. The Letters of Charles Dickens, II, 368-369.

8. Dickens, C., All the Year Round, 9, (1863), 280.

9. Hunt, F. K., Household Words, 4, (1851), 13-15. Attributions of authorship of Household Words articles follow those of Household Words: a Weekly Journal 1850-1859 Conducted by Charles Dickens; compiled by Anne Lohrli; (Toronto and Buffalo, 1973).

10. Dictionary of National Biography, XI, 1010.

11. Wills, W. H., Household Words, 2, (1851), 426-427.

12. Dictionary of National Biography, XVI, 203-204.

13. The Lancet, I, (1851), 18-19.

14. Ibid., I, (1851), 20-21.

15. The Letters of Charles Dickens, IV, 6-7; 23; 56-57; 57; edited by Kathleen Tillotson (Oxford, 1977).

16. The Times, May, 3; 1856.

17. Correspondence reported in The Lancet, II, (1855), 110-114.

18. Household Words, vol. 2, 145-151, 277, 323, 426-427; vol. 3, 49-53, 203-204; vol. 5, 423-426, 562-566; vol. 6, 10-11, 208-210; vol. 11, 505-509; vol. 15, 593-596.

19. Ibid., 11, 213-216.

20. All the Year Round, vol. 3, 54-57; vol. 13, 126-131 (in which Hassall's work is again mentioned), 474-477; vol. 15, 589-592; vol. 20, 79-83, 153-156, 247-250, 295-298, 343-347, 424-426, 476-480; series 2, vol. 2, 352-355.

21. Forster, J. The Life of Charles Dickens, Volume 2, Book XI, 478 (London, 1876). Any thought Dickens might have had of making adulteration a major campaigning issue must have been forestalled by the appearance of the following passage in the Edinburgh Review's famous attack on Little Dorrit (July 1857, p. 127). ‘In every new novel he selects one or two of the popular cries of the day, to serve as seasoning to the dish which he sets before his readers. It may be the Poor Laws, or Imprisonment for Debt, or the Court of Chancery, or the harshness of Mill-owners, or the stupidity of Parliament, or the inefficiency of the Government, or the insolence of District Visitors, or the observance of Sunday, or Mammon-worship, or whatever else you please. He is equally familiar with all these subjects. … We recommend him to draw the materials of his next work from Dr. Hassall on the Adulteration of Food, or the Report on Scotch Lunatics. …’

22. The Times July 31, 1855.

23. Ibid. July 19, 1855.

24. The Life of Charles Dickens, Volume 2, Book VIII, 222. ‘The Microscope’ had also been mooted as a possible title for the periodical that was to become Household Words (The Life of Charles Dickens, Volume 2, Book IV, 81).

25. Dickens, C. Household Words, 2, (1850), 217-219.

26. Dickens, C. ibid., 17, (1858), 217-220.

27. Sketches by Boz, p. 126. Unless stated, all references to Dickens's works are to the Oxford Illustrated Edition.

28. Ibid., p. 332.

29. The Old Curiosity Shop, p. 481.

30. Sketches by Boz, pp. 22-23.

31. Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 85.

32. Ibid., pp. 141-142.

33. The Letters of Charles Dickens, I, 5-6; edited by Madeline House and Graham Storey, (Oxford, 1965).

34. The Pickwick Papers, p. 501.

35. Ibid., pp. 254-255.

36. Ibid., p. 423.

37. The Letters of Charles Dickens, III, 130-131; edited by Mamie Dickens and Georgina Hogarth, (London, 1882).

38. Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 411.

39. A Tale of Two Cities, p. 29.

40. Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 622.

41. Hard Times, p. 130.

42. The Uncommercial Traveller, p. 221.

43. Ibid., pp. 150-153.

44. David Copperfield, p. 345. A contemporary of Betsey's, Charles Kingsley's Scottish bookseller Sandy Mackaye, shares her misgivings about metropolitan food: ‘“It was a' poison,” he used to say, “in London. Bread full o'alum and bones, and sic filth—meat over-driven till it was a'braxy [OED: diseased]—water sopped wi' dead men's juice. Naething was safe but gude Scots parrich and Athol brose.”’ (Alton Locke, Chapter 6).

45. David Copperfield, p. 852.

46. Little Dorrit, p. 103.

47. i.e. the blacking manufacturers. Putative adulteration with this article (see also references 26, 65) may have been of particular significance to Dickens.

48. Our Mutual Friend, pp. 12-13.

49. Sketches by Boz, p. 50.

50. Nicholas Nickleby, p. 45.

51. Christmas Books, p. 29.

52. Dombey and Son, p. 101.

53. Christmas Stories, p. 49.

54. Great Expectations, p. 50.

55. Ibid., Chapter 4.

56. Dombey and Son, p. 186.

57. The Uncommercial Traveller, pp. 52-60.

58. Christmas Stories, pp. 515-524.

59. David Copperfield, pp. 285-286.

60. Reprinted Pieces, pp. 550-552.

61. The Uncommercial Traveller, p. 337.

62. Pictures from Italy, p. 267.

63. Ibid., p. 291.

64. The Letters of Charles Dickens, IV, 541.

65. The Mystery of Edwin Drood, pp. 262-263.

66. The Uncommercial Traveller, p. 160.

67. The Letters of Charles Dickens, IV, 32-33.

68. Dombey and Son, p. 272.

69. The Mystery of Edwin Drood, p. 81.

70. Our Mutual Friend, p. 10.

71. Dickens, C. Household Words, 12, (1855), 25-27. Punch, after commenting approvingly (Volume 20 (1851) p. 65, 175) on the Lancet campaign, like Household Words, set up its own ‘Commission’. In Volume 21 (1851) p. 207 it announced that this body had examined ‘the mental food vended by some dealers in the metropolis’. ‘The Comic Penny Titillator!’, ‘The Secrets of the Bosphorus! … a “stirring romance,” …’ and ‘The Moribund Pillowslip … a “sound religious publication” …’ were analysed, and, not surprisingly, found to be adulterated.