For the assistant librarian at the Royal Institution, London鈥檚 most fashionable science society, the evening of 20 December 1820 was decidedly uncomfortable. For 2 hours he stayed hidden inside a cupboard in the reading room, squinting through secret eyeholes at the institution鈥檚 patrons as they strode in from Albemarle Street. Finally, he spotted his prey: behind a stack of books, a respected member of the institution appeared to be surreptitiously tearing pages out of an issue of Nicholson鈥檚 Journal. The next morning, two police officers bearing a magistrate鈥檚 order hurried to Soho to search the home of chemist Frederick Accum. The demolition of Britain鈥檚 most powerful consumer advocate had begun.
LIKE many a great reformer, Frederick Accum adopted the country where he made his name. Born in the small German town of B眉ckeburg, near Hannover, he emigrated to England in 1793 to work as an assistant to the king鈥檚 apothecaries. In his spare hours, Accum frequented science lectures, anatomy theatres and public libraries. By 1798, he had mastered English and chemistry alike, was writing popular science articles, and passed out business cards announcing 鈥減rivate Courses of Lectures on Operative and Philosophical Chemistry鈥�. A few years later in 1801, he did a stint as assistant chemical operator at, working for the most renowned chemist of the time, Humphry Davy. His home in fashionable Soho became a veritable warehouse of laboratory gear and Accum himself came to be regarded as London鈥檚 finest chemistry lecturer and its pre-eminent scientific outfitter.
Accum could be remarkably cavalier in his experimentation. Yale University鈥檚 eminent chemistry professor Benjamin Silliman later recalled taking a tutorial with Accum during which they heated white arsenic in a crucible: 鈥淢r. Accum did not caution me against inhaling the fumes which were floating about the room鈥� We both suffered serious inconvenience for some days in prostrated muscular power.鈥� Later, when another experiment exploded glassware into Accum鈥檚 face, he simply turned around and wrote one of his most popular articles, 鈥淓xperiments and Observations on the Compound of Phosphorus and Sulphur and the Dangerous Explosions It Makes When Exposed to Heat鈥�. Yet for all his carelessness, Accum鈥檚 reputation grew, helped along by a string of popularising books such as A System of Theoretical and Practical Chemistry (1803), Chemical Amusement (1817), a decidedly dangerous handbook of home experiments, and his far-sighted Practical Treatise on Gas-Light (1815).
Advertisement
Accum鈥檚 most notable interest, though, was the slow poisoning practised upon the public by druggists, grocers and brewers. In one of his earliest articles in 1798 he examined the adulteration of coffee. Merchants bolstered their profits by selling cheap percolations of chicory, scorched black peas and broad beans, roasted rye, burnt carrots and parsnips, powdered bark, acorns 鈥� in short, almost anything but actual coffee. In the words of one retired grocer: 鈥淣ever, my good fellow, purchase from a grocer any thing which passes through his mill.鈥�
While the statute books contained numerous regulations against adulterating bread, beer and wine, and there were standards laid down for the strength of beer and hydrometers to test it, the authorities remained woefully inadequate at dealing with fraudsters. There were few reliable tests for faked foods, and most Londoners remained utterly ignorant of what they were eating. That was all about change.
In January 1820, hit the bookstands, its title page proclaiming 鈥�There is Death in the Pot鈥�. Accum鈥檚 book was a shocking expos茅 of London鈥檚 sordid trade in fraudulent food. 鈥淭he man who robs a fellow subject of a few shillings on the high-way, is sentenced to death,鈥� Accum charged in his preface, 鈥渨hile he who distributes a slow poison to the community escapes unpunished.鈥�
The fraudsters鈥� motives were to disguise spoilt or watered-down goods or to save money by substituting cheap ingredients for expensive ones. 鈥淭here are instances on record, of bakers having used gypsum, chalk, and pipe clay, in the manufacture of bread,鈥� he noted. Gypsum also turned up in wine, to clarify cloudy casks 鈥� as, more alarmingly, did dollops of molten lead. Crooked vintners aged cheap new red wines by tossing in sawdust and staining new corks to look old. Switching to tea was no healthier. Accum found bogus blends of whitethorn, elder and ash leaves and sheep dung. 鈥淕reen tea鈥� was created by adding poisonous copper carbonate.
If you fancied lemonade instead, vendors saved themselves the trouble of procuring lemons by flavouring the stuff with sulphuric acid. Mixing a shandy was even worse: beer was 鈥渨here the greatest frauds are frequently committed鈥�, reported Accum. Draughts were 鈥渁ged鈥� with the help of yet more sulphuric acid and watered-down casks made more potent with the help of fishberry seeds (Anamirta cocculus), a source of stimulating but highly poisonous alkaloids. A flat brew could be disguised with a counterfeit 鈥渉ead鈥� produced with dashes of alum, green vitriol (hydrated ferrous sulphate) and salt.
Accum also included simple experiments for detecting frauds. False peppercorns made of clay and cayenne 鈥� itself commonly adulterated with red lead 鈥� fell apart when dropped into water. Pickles and sweets coloured green with copper, often by boiling with a halfpenny, could be unmasked by adding liquid ammonia, which turned them blue. A few drops of iodine added to cream adulterated with arrowroot also turned it a telltale blue. And while genuine olive oil froze when dripped onto ice, substitutions such as poppyseed oil remained fluid.
Public reaction was immediate: the book sold out in weeks. Blackwood鈥檚 Edinburgh Magazine observed that Britain had been revealed as a sort of Mutual Poisoning Society: 鈥淭he apothecary, who sells poisonous ingredients to the brewer, chuckles over his roguery and swallows his own drugs in his daily copious exhibitions of brown stout. The brewer, in his turn, is poisoned by the baker, the wine-merchant, and the grocer. And, whenever the baker鈥檚 stomach fails him, he meets his coup de grace in the adulterated drugs of his friend the apothecary, whose health he has been gradually contributing to undermine, by feeding him every morning on chalk and alum, in the shape of hot rolls.鈥�
Not everyone appreciated Accum鈥檚 revelations 鈥� for he didn鈥檛 just describe the nature of the frauds, he named the fraudsters. Despite a stream of anonymous threats, he persisted. In the book鈥檚 second edition he warned, 鈥淭hose assailants in ambush are hereby informed, that in every succeeding edition of the work, I shall continue to hand down to posterity the infamy which justly attaches to鈥� knaves and dishonest dealers.鈥�
鈥淎ccum didn鈥檛 just describe the frauds, he named the fraudsters鈥�
His crusade might have succeeded if only he had stayed away from the Royal Institution on 20 December 1820. That night, the assistant librarian caught him ripping articles from some of the library鈥檚 journals rather than waste time taking notes. The next day, Accum was hauled before a magistrate, accused of theft. The magistrate was unconvinced. The pages themselves, he noted tartly, were mere waste paper: 鈥淚f they had weighed a pound,鈥� reported one observer in the Royal Institution鈥檚 minutes on the affair, 鈥渉e would have committed him for the value of a pound of waste-paper, but as that was not the case he discharged him.鈥� No matter, the damage to Accum鈥檚 reputation was done, and after the Royal Institution stubbornly began legal proceedings against him for the theft of fourpence-worth of paper, he jumped bail and returned to Germany.
Was Accum framed? He had made plenty of enemies, any one of whom might have been tempted. Yet there was probably a simple explanation for his behaviour. Writing in Accum鈥檚 defence, his patron Sir Anthony Carlisle pointed out in a letter to The Times that it was his 鈥渮eal for science and heedlessness as to the value of literary materials that made him tear up books or destroy expensive apparatus to save time and trouble鈥�. Accum 鈥渘ever estimated books beyond crucibles or even the coals to be consumed in experiments鈥�.
For a generation of British consumers, the loss of Accum was a disaster; it would be another 30 years before Thomas Wakley, publisher of The Lancet, and physician Arthur Hill Hassall addressed the problem anew. After analysing London goods in the 1850s, Hassall found only two of 34 samples of annatto spice to be genuine, the others containing everything from wheat flour to red lead. Pickles adulterated by copper remained virtually universal, and nearly half the vinegar on sale was adulterated with sulphuric acid. Cheap coffee contained roasted horse liver and sawdust. 鈥淔rom morning to night [the Englishman] is the subject of perpetual fraud,鈥� Hassall complained, and Parliament鈥檚 outrage over his findings led finally to the landmark Food Adulteration Act of 1860.
Accum never saw his work receive the recognition it deserved, yet his Treatise on Adulterations concludes with a paragraph on lead paint still pertinent today. 鈥淐hildren are apt to put every thing, especially what gives them pleasure, into their mouths; the painting of toys with colouring substances that are poisonous, therefore, ought therefore to be abolished.鈥� The fight Accum began, it seems, has not ended yet.
