Section I The Adulteration of Wines and Spirits, and the Tricks of Wine and Spirit Dealers
1. Wines
The frauds and malpractices in use among the wine and spirit brewers and compounders of the metropolis, and the noxious and deleterious ingredients with which those unprincipled men “make up” the poisonous compounds, that they are daily vending to the public, under the names of wines and spirits, exceed the devices, and are, if possible, of a more deadly operation than the sophistications and vitiated manufactures palmed upon the public by the wicked and avaricious cozeners of all other adulterating trades.
The art or mystery of manufacturing spurious and counterfeit wines and liquors forms a regular trade of great extent in this metropolis, and is carried on with so much skill and ingenuity, and has attained so great perfection, as to render the irony of the witty author of the Tatler no longer figurative; namely, that “the transmutation of liquors under the streets of London was so perfect, that the operators by the power of magical drugs could convert a plantation of northern hedges into a vineyard; could raise the choicest products of the hills and valleys of France under the streets of London; could squeeze Bourdeaux out of the sloe, and Champagne from the apple.”
Nor has the reprobation of the contaminations of wines and spirits with substances deleterious to health been confined to former times; they have been stigmatised on account of their alarming and deadly increase in numerous recent publications. I quote the following artless lines, in which an honest country lad is represented as expressing his abhorrence of his relative, a London wine-merchant’s sophistications, not for the elegance of the poetry, but as conveying an important truth in a plain garb; perhaps its unaffected satire is not ill adapted to awaken attention:
“So I buss’d Luke and mother, and, vastly concern’d,
Off I set, with my father’s kind blessing,
To our cousin, the wine merchant, where I soon learn’d
About mixing, and brewing, and pressing;
But the sloe-juice and rat’s bane, and all that fine joke,
Was soon in my stomach a-rising,
Why, dang it! cried I, would you kill the poor folk?
I thought you sold wine, and not poison!”
But the particular histories of the corruptions of wines and spirits will be more acceptable to those who are desirous of preserving their health and enjoying their existence comfortably, than quotation; for, were wine and spirit bibbers aware of the abominable and fraudulent processes of adulteration in use among wine and spirit dealers and gin-shop keepers, they would not only heartily join in the exclamation of the “poet of Nature,” “Oh! that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!” but they would be convinced that it is not only high time that the fraud and villany of their selfish and secret poisoners should be unmasked, but also punished and suppressed. For this purpose I shall detail some of the noxious compositions of the wine and spirit dealers of newspaper notoriety, and of the placarding gin-shop keepers, whose gaudy premises, as well as those of other puffers at cheap prices, are designed to catch the eye and arrest the attention of the heedless and unwary. And thus I am inclined to believe that my readers will heartily agree with one who has materially and honourably contributed to expose the villany of adulterators of all kinds, that, in the deterioration and pernicious sophistication of the necessaries and comforts of existence, it may with truth be said, in a civil as well as in a religious sense, that “in the midst of life we are in death.”
Factitious wines are generally, in the slang phraseology of the adulteration trade, “doctored” or “cooked,” in order to give them particular flavours, and render them similar to the wines they are intended to represent. Thus bitter almonds (or the leaves of cherry laurel, which are cheaper) are added to give a nutty flavour; sweet briar, orris-root, clary, cherry-laurel-water, and elder-flowers to form the bouquet of high-flavoured wines; alum to render young and meagre red wines bright; cake of pressed elderberries and bilberries to render pale faint coloured port [or red sumach, &c. to tinge spoiled white wines red] of a deep rich purple colour;A oak saw-dust, [sloes,] and the husks of filberts, to give additional astringency to unripe red wines; and a tincture of the seeds of raisins to flavour factitious port wine; [with a variety of other ingredients, such as spice, &c. to render wine pungent]. (The Vintners and Licensed Victuallers’ Guide, p. 259.) And in the same work, p. 225, among other deleterious ingredients, “sugar of lead”B is directed to be used for fining or clearing cloudy white wines. That book and works of a similar kind are the accredited repositories of the arcana of sophistication for the publican and small wine and spirit dealer, and gin-shop keeper; but, as Mr. Accum (Culinary Poisons, p. 87) says, the more wholesale adulterators and “large capitalists,” whether wine and spirit brewer or ale and beer brewer, obtain, on payment of a considerable fee, a manuscript from the brewers’ and spirit-dealers’ druggist, containing the whole mystery of managing and drugging wines, spirits, beer, or ale; or they may be initiated in the respective crafts and mysteries, by oral instruction, and practical demonstration, on payment of a handsome douceur.
The above is the general method of doctoring or “cooking” wine and spirits. The following are the particular and more ingenious methods of sophistication in use among the advertising and placarding venders of “genuine old Port” and “amber-coloured” or “fine pale Amontillado Sherry.” Both sorts are generally compounded of a small quantity of the real article either in a good or a deteriorated state, according to the taste or conscience of the compounder, with the necessary proportions of Cape wine, cider, sal tartar, colouring matter, brandy or rum cowe, or other adulterating slops, which are calculated to form a tolerable basis, and to bear a resemblance in colour and flavour to the wine desired to be imitated. As the communication of the particular ingredients of which these factitious wines are composed cannot but be acceptable to my readers, I shall give a particular account of each of the processes.
Factitious, or fabricated port wine is usually made by mingling or blending together in large vats Benecarlo, or black strap, which is a strong coarse Spanish wine of inferior quality; Red Cape; a sufficient quantity of Mountain to soften the mixture and give it the appearance of richness; a portion of sal tartar and gum dragon (the object of the first ingredient is to cause the wine to crust soon when bottled; of the second, to impart a fullness and roundness of flavour and consistence of body); colouring matter, or berry-dye, which is an extract of German bilberries; brandy or rum cowe, which is the rinsings of casks containing those liquors, obtained by throwing in a few gallons of water into them after the liquor is drawn off, and leaving it closely bunged up till the cask has imparted the flavour of the liquor to the water; and a quantity of spoiled cider, of which many thousand pipes are annually brought to the metropolis for this purpose. Sometimes a small quantity of port is made use of, with rectified spirits and coarse brandy, and, instead of the colouring articles above mentioned, red saunders wood, or the juice of elderberries or of sloes is employed. According to the Mechanics’ Magazine, the chemical analysis of a bottle of cheap port wine was as follows: spirits of wine, three ounces; cider, fourteen ounces; sugar, one and half ounce; alum, two scruples; tartaric acid, one scruple; strong decoction of logwood, four ounces. And this is the “genuine old port,” of unrivalled flavour and quality, of the London fabricators and compounders. “Amber-coloured Sherry,” or “the fine pale Amontillado Sherry,” of the advertising wine-factor and placarding gin-shop keepers is manufactured of coarse highly-brandied brown Sherry, Cape wine, and brandy cowe; to which are added extract of almond-cake or gum benzoin, to impart a nutty flavour; cherry-laurel-water, to give a roundness of flavour; lamb’s blood, to fine the mixture and clear or decompose its colour; and oyster-shells and chalk, for the purpose of binding and concentrating the whole; and this delectable composition the knavish adept in the art of deleterious combination palms on the credulity of the public under the inviting title of “fine pale Sherry, of peculiar delicacy and flavour.” Had the late Dr. Kitchiner been aware of these sophistications he would not have said “that, of the white wines, Sherry is the most easy to obtain genuine, and is the least adulterated.”
The “fine old East-India Madeira, at unprecedented cheap prices, for ready money only,” of these worthies is a commixture of a portion of East-India Madeira with Teneriffe, Vidonia, or Direct Madeira,C and East-India Cape.D The “fine old soft-flavoured West-India Madeira, of capital quality,” and, of course, at exceedingly low prices, is manufactured from a portion of genuine West-India Madeira and a sufficient modicum of old thin Direct Madeira; and should the precious commixture be approaching to acidity the kindness of the sophisticating compounder obliges the palate of his poor gulled customer with the insertion of a few ounces of carbonate of soda. The genuine colour of pure Madeira (one of the best off-hand methods of forming an opinion of the goodness of Madeira is, as the author of The Private Gentleman and Importing Merchants’ Wine and Spirit Cellar-Directory judiciously says, by its colour) is much paler than that of Sherry. When it has a pinkish hue it is a sign of its having been adulterated with Teneriffe.
“The Old London Particular,” or any other imposing and dainty appellation extracted from the adulterating vocabulary of the artful sophisticator, is generally composed of a combination of cheap Vidonia, common dry Port, Mountain, and Cape wine, properly fined and reduced to the requisite colour by means of lamb’s blood.
The Cape wine generally sold to the public is composed of the drippings of the cocks from the various casks, the filterings of the lees of the different wines in the adulterators’ cellars, or from any description of bad or spoiled white wines, with the addition of brandy or rum cowe and spoiled cider. “The delicately pale Cape Sherry, or Cape Madeira, at astonishingly low prices,” and, of course, for ready money, is composed of the same delicious ingredients, with the addition of extract of almond cake, and a little of that delectable liquor, lamb’s blood, to decompose its colour, or, in the cant phraseology, to give it “complexion.”
In fact, the impositions practised in regard to this species of wine fully justifies the reprobation of the writer in the 43d number of the Quarterly Review. “The manufactured trash,” says the judicious critic, “which is selling in London under the names of Cape Champagne, Burgundy, Barsac, Sauterne, &c. are so many specious poisons, which the cheapness of the common and inferior wines of the Cape allows the venders of them to use as the bases of the several compositions, at the expense of the stomach and bowels of their customers.” By mixing these wines with the lees of other kinds, and fining and compounding them with various drugs, they endeavour to counterfeit the more costly vintages of Spain and Portugal, and even France.
It is unnecessary to state that the “Old Vidonia Wines,” the “Fine old delicately-pale Bucellas,” and the “Unequalled and beneficial Tent,” for the sick and infirm, and the offices of our holy religion, “sold remarkably cheap, for ready money,” by those honest and tender-conscienced gentry, are base substitutes for the genuine articles. To say nothing worse, Tent, Mountain, Calcavella, &c. is Port wine, transmuted by the addition of capillaire, &c. And, from the report of a late case which came on before the Court of King’s Bench, it appears that the scarce and costly Tokay, the Lachryma Christi, and La Crême Divine, are seldom any other than identical Sicilian wines of an inferior description; the current price of which in the market is about twelve pounds sterling per hhd. Oh! friend Bull, how the sophisticating rogues trifle with thy dainty palate! Hadst thou not better rest contented with thy soul-stirring, heart-cheering, vinum Britannicum,—thy home-brewed ale, and Sir John Barleycorn, instead of filling thy dear stomach with a medley of foreign slops. Oh, John, when wilt thou learn wisdom and find a loyal pleasure in paying thy quota of tax on articles of home manufacture! Alas! Johnny, thou art a sadly wayward fellow! there is more hope of “the wild ass’s colt” than of thee, when thy longings after foreign luxuries seduce thy palate and blind thy understanding!
Nor are the costly French wines less exempt from the devices and sophistications of the imps of the “Father of Deceit.” The “super-excellent” or “genuine Claret of exceedingly fine description and of the choicest quality” of the advertising and placarding dealers, is a composition of inferior claret and a quantum sufficit of Spanish red wine and rough cider, with the colouring berry-dye. The colouring process is sometimes performed by the agency of “black sloes,” “a dozen new pippins,” or a “handful of the oak of Jerusalem,” are often kindly introduced to improve its quality; and to tickle the taste of the consumer of this wine, or of Port, “an ounce of cochineal” is considerately thrown into a hogshead of liquor “to make it taste rough.”
When one views this goodly enumeration of items, it must be admitted that the burthen of the old song does not appear overcharged:
“One glass of drink, I got by chance,
’Twas claret when it was in France,
But now from it moche wider;
I think a man might make as good
With green crabbes, boil’d in Brazil-wood,
And half a pinte of cyder.”
And it gives us cause to be satisfied of the truth of Milton’s remark:—
“Of deaths, many are the ways that lead
To his grim cave—all dismal.”
O ye gulled Jacky Bulls, who revel in bibbing “costly French wines,” how angry you will be with me when I tell you that while you think you are sipping “Genuine Sparkling Champagne,” you are titillating your exquisite gullets with merely plain home-made English gooseberry wine; or, what may be more alarming to you, with worthless Champagne wine of very dangerous and deleterious quality and tendency; whose effervescence or sparkling is produced by disengaging the carbonic acid of the wine by the agency of sugar. To gain this end, the solid sugar is corked up in the bottle, so that the disengaged gas is retained under the pressure of the cork, ready to fly out whenever it is removed. The agency of litharge of lead, in its worst form, is often invoked in the manufacture of Champagne, as well as of other white wines, in order to correct and render bright such wines as have turned vapid, foul, or ropy, or to prevent the progress of any ascescent quality that they may have acquired. The least pernicious mode of manufacture of this wine is by adding to the spoiled Champagnes, a portion of the low, or “third quality” wines from the indifferent vineyards, and occasioning the admixture to undergo a fresh fermentation, by the action of strong chemical agents; and then it is vended as “prime still Champagne.”
Some estimate may be formed of the extent of the adulteration of this costly wine by the following notice in Dr. Reece’s Monthly Gazette of Health for 1829.—“A company of Frenchmen,” says that honest abominator of roguery and quackery of all kinds, “have contracted with some farmers in Herefordshire for a considerable quantity of the fresh juice of certain pears, which is to be sent to them in London, immediately after it has been expressed, or before fermentation has commenced. With the recently expressed juice they made last year an excellent brisk wine resembling the finest sparkling Champagne; and we are told that the speculation was so productive, that they have resolved to extend their manufactory.” To this account I can, from a knowledge of the concern, perfectly assent, except that the Anglo-French manufacture does not exactly represent the first quality of Champagne wine, as it is quite impossible for any imitative preparation to represent that quality of wine.
Many thousand dozens of wines are sold in the course of the year in London as old wines, under names which have scarcely any other title to the appellation of wine than similarity of colour. “A particular friend of mine,” says a correspondent to the Monthly Gazette of Health, “purchased at a public sale by the hammer, a quantity of ’super-excellent’ claret, at the rate of 50s. per dozen, which, on delivery, his butler discovered to be the same wine he had exchanged with a wine merchant at the rate of 20s. per dozen, being what is termed pricked. The worthy Baronet complained of the imposition, but the auctioneer would not listen to him. He had tasted it previously to bidding for it, and that was enough for him.”
Another source of great profit to the cheap dealers, the gin-shop keepers, and the advertizing wine-men, arises from the size of the bottles in which they vend their compounds and mixtures, ycleped “wine.”
In the bottle-trade six various sizes are sold, namely:
The full quart, of which twelve contain three gallons of liquid, old measure.
The thirteens, of which there must be thirteen to contain three gallons of liquid, old measure.
The fourteens, of which there must be fourteen to contain three gallons of liquid, old measure.
The small fourteens, of which there must be fourteen and a half, to contain three gallons of liquid, old measure.
The fifteens, of which there must be fifteen, to contain three gallons of liquid, old measure.
The sixteens, of which there must be sixteen, to contain three gallons of liquid, old measure.
The two last sizes are those sold to the gin-shops and cheap wine venders.
The above are the frauds practised by wine-dealers, by vending bottles of inferior dimensions to the legal wine quart, which contains thirty-two ounces; but many of the bottles imposed on unwary purchasers do not contain more than twenty-four ounces, and few more than twenty-six ounces.
The readiest way of detecting the fraud is by measuring the suspected wine-bottle by Lyne’s graduated glass measure, which holds half a pint, and is divided into ounces, &c. Or, if you have not a measure of the kind by you, weigh the contents of the suspected bottle and compare the weight ascertained with the following corresponding weights:
1 legal wine quart = 32 ounces; or, 256 drachms.
By subtracting the weight of the contents of the suspected bottle from this weight, you may precisely ascertain the deficiency.
2. Spirits
In the adulteration of spirituous liquors, the advertising and placarding compounder exerts equal ingenuity and fraud, and obtains an equally lucrative traffic as from wines. The “Curious old soft flavoured Cogniac, ten years old,” of those nefarious dealers, is compounded of Spanish or Bourdeaux brandy, neutral flavoured rum, rectified spirits, British brandy, British brandy bitters, cherry-laurel-water, extract of almond cake, extract of capsicums, or of grains of paradise, burnt sugar or colouring matter. But more generally that “medicinal” compound British brandy is palmed on the public, for real Cogniac brandy. This diabolical farrago of mischievous ingredients, which was held forth to the public by interested individuals concerned in the undertaking, as calculated “entirely to supersede the use of Cogniac brandy,” and “likely to prove of great benefit to the health and comfort of the poorer and middling classes of society,” is compounded of oil of vitriol, vinegar, nitrum dulce, tincture of raisin stones, tinctura japonica, cherry-laurel-water, extracts of capsicums or of grains of paradise, orris-root, cassia-buds, bitter almond meal, colouring matter, &c. from which enumeration of “neat” articles it appears that this “almost superior brandy to Cogniac,” as its modest manufacturers term it, is a slow poison, and equally deleterious in its effects, if not more so, than that vile composition—“cheap gin.” That this is not an unfounded insinuation against “the pure and unadulterated” article, sold, no doubt, “at astonishingly low prices, and for ready money,” will appear from the clear statement of the process of each manufacture given by the author of The Wine and Spirit Adulterators Unmasked, pages 179 and 198. “British brandy,” says the honest Unmasker, “is composed of drugs, gin only flavoured by them. In the manufacture of gin, the ingredients are put into the still, with a spirit which has been previously rectified, and the condensed evaporation which is derived from the whole constitutes the article gin. In the preparation, however, of British brandy, the mixture is made without any process through a still, being compounded more like a quack doctor’s nostrum. The only part of the manufacture wherein distillation is concerned, consists merely in rectifying either rum or malt whiskey, to deprive them of their essential oils, so that they may be reduced to a state as tasteless as possible, and thereby more readily receive the spurious flavours intended to be imparted to them.
“The other articles are added in their raw state.—Should it be inquired why the same process as is adopted in the manufacture of gin, should not succeed in making British brandy, the answer is, because, in distilling the necessary drugs with the rectified spirit, the flavour would neither retain the sufficient predominancy, nor be sufficiently fixed to enable the article to sustain the desired likeness to brandy, besides that the effect of several of the ingredients, such as the oil of vitriol, and nitrum dulce, which are used to impart a resemblance of the vinosity possessed by genuine French brandy, would be completely destroyed.”
“Fine old Jamaica rums of peculiar softness and flavour” are manufactured of low-priced Leeward-island rum, ale, porter, or shrub, extract of orris-root, cherry-laurel-water, and extract of grains of paradise, or of capsicums. Sometimes the composition consists of low-priced Jamaica rums, rectified spirits of wine, and the Leeward-island rums, with the necessary acid vegetable substances, to give them false strength and pungency and the requisite flavour; and thus the purchaser is accommodated by the “caterers of comfort,” with a rum which “cannot” be adulterated, of exceedingly fine and superior flavour, remarkably cheap and for ready money only. The ripe taste which rum or brandy that has been long kept in oaken casks obtains, is imparted to new brandy and rum, by means of a spirituous tincture of raisin-stones and oak saw-dust. And the water distilled from cherry-laurel-leaves is frequently mixed with brandy and other spirituous liquors to impart to them the flavour of the cordial called Noyeau. Sugar of lead not unfrequently forms part of the flavouring ingredients of the retailers’ rums.
But the perfection of adulteration is in gin,—cheap gin—“the real comfort,”—patronized by the poor for its supposed genuineness! This infernal compound of combustibles is distinguished from the other slow poisons to which a large portion of the population of “the queen of cities,”—our “modern Carthage,” make themselves the willing victims, by the poisonous nature of the ingredients of which it is composed.E These are the oils of vitriol, turpentine, juniper, cassia, carraways, and almonds, sulphuric ether or phosphorus, extracts of orris-root, angelica-root, capsicums or grains of paradise, sugar, and heading. The aid of lime-water and of spirits of wine is also invoked in the course of the operation. The purposes of these mischievous ingredients are as follow: The oil of vitriol is to impart pungency and the appearance of strength, when the liquor is applied to the nose, while the extract of capsicums or of grains of paradise is designed to perform the same office for the taste. The extracts of orris and angelica roots give a fulness of body and the coveted flavour called cordial to the large proportion of the compound, which consists only of water. The remaining oils are to give strength, the sugar to sweeten the composition, and the lime to unite the oils with the spirit; while the sulphuric ether, phosphorus, and heading are intended to give the semblance of being highly spirituous from the fiery taste, and the appearance of the light bead which is caused to appear and remain for some time on the surface of the noxious compound. The introduction of the white arsenic is intended to promote an irritable and feverish thirst, so that the poor deluded consumer may be compelled to have recourse to fresh potations of the “liquid fire.” The Hollands of the gin-shop keepers and advertising dealers is a commixture of a small portion of the genuine article with rectified spirits, peppermint, cloves, &c. The cordial, called Shrub, says Mr. Accum, Culinary Poisons, p. 257, frequently exhibits vestiges of copper, which arise from the metallic vessels employed in the manufacture of the liquor. But, had that ingenious gentleman been thoroughly acquainted with the manufacture of shrub in the cellars of spirit dealers, he would not have been quite so moderate in his remarks respecting this seductive “cordial.”
Such is a list of the detestable articles palmed on the public, by the avaricious and unprincipled dealers and cozeners in the factitious wines and spirits on constant and extensive sale throughout every quarter of the metropolis. The credulity and infatuation of the public in the consumption of the deadly draughts are truly astonishing, and are a verification of the sarcasm that were the vision of death to appear to the tippler in each glass of liquor that he puts to his lips, yet he would still persevere in habits which are inevitably destructive of health and comfort, and eventually productive of disease and death. “Oh blindness to the future!—” Surely old Jeremy Taylor’s observation respecting Apicius is equally applicable to the inveterate consumer of wines and spirits—“It would have been of no use,” says that orthodox old divine, “to talk to Apicius of the secrets of the other world, and of immortality; that the saints and angels eat not! The fat glutton would have stared awhile and fallen a-sleep. But if you had discoursed well and knowingly of a lamprey, a large mullet, or a boar, animal propter convivium, and had sent him a cook from Asia to make new sauces, he would have attended carefully, and taken in your discourses greedily.” The same feeling I expect will be displayed towards this book by the inveterate dram-drinker: he or she will curse the author, as a busy-body, for his intermeddling with, and abusing their “dear comfort.” People are apt to conclude that a practice sanctioned by time and numbers must be right; but there cannot be a conclusion more fallacious. The grossest possible absurdities have been sanctioned for the same reasons. No doubt some will defend their practice of dram-drinking and immoderate potations of wines, and of malt and spirituous liquors by the unsound plea that they find no ill effect from their self immolation from drinking the deadly draughts; but reasoners so deluded should recollect that, though there are persons who are insensible to the immediate effects from strong liquors, either spirituous or malt, yet to those who seldom or ever use them, they act as quick poisons; not waiting their tedious operation in the form of fever, gout, stone and gravel, dropsy, bile, rheumatism, head-ache, scurvy, cancer, asthma, consumption, palsy, brain fever, apoplexy, mania, and a long list of other frightful and loathsome diseases. In truth, as the author of “The Oracle of Health and Long Life” forcibly observes, “they paralyze the nervous system and the heart’s action; and the tremulous hand, the palsied limbs, the bloated and inflamed countenance, and the faltering tongue, super-induced by their immoderate use, indicate that premature death lays claim to his deluded and self-destroying victim!”
Nor is this the worst consequence of the immoral and unsocial act: for the unhappy wretch who is addicted to the habitual and vicious use of ardent spirits, besides subjecting himself to the attack of “the whole army of diseases” which assault the human frame from intoxication, often exhibits a more awful demonstration of the consequences of violating the laws of morality and social decency: I allude to the extraordinary fact of the spontaneous combustion of the body, which has often terminated the existence of old and inveterate drunkards.
This combustion is occasioned in such persons from the whole fabric of the body being so changed, by the constant practice of spirit-drinking, with inflammable matter (probably hydrogen); or, chemically speaking, it acquires so powerful an attraction for oxygen, that it suddenly takes fire, (in some instances spontaneously, in others from the flame of a candle or too powerful a heat of the fire,) and the body is reduced to a cinder.
The persons in whom this dreadful visitation of apparently supernatural punishment for the violation of the laws of nature has occurred, have been chiefly women. In some cases the unhappy sufferers have been found burning, “sometimes with an open flame flickering over the body, sometimes with a smothered heat or fire, without any open flame whatever; whilst the application of water has occasionally seemed rather to quicken than impede the combustion.
“In no instance has the fire or flame thereby excited in the body been so powerful as essentially to injure the most combustible substances immediately adjoining it, as linen or woollen furniture.
“The event has usually taken place at night, when the sufferer has been alone, and has commonly been discovered by the fœtid penetrating scent of sooty films, which have spread to a considerable distance. The unhappy subject has in every instance been found dead, and more or less completely burnt up.”
The above awful account is quoted from Dr. Mason Good’s “Study of Medicine;” but relations of numerous cases of the above horrid termination of existence may be found in the Philosophical Transactions, Vols. 63 and 64, in Dr. Young’s “Medical Literature,” and in a variety of Foreign Journals, medical as well as general.
Let all those who are addicted to habitual intoxication and the consumption of the infernal compositions of nefarious dealers in spirits, read and re-read the above quotation, and may they take warning, and renounce that unhappy propensity.
It is true that wine and malt liquors, and even occasionally spirits, are far from prejudicial, when properly made, and used with discretion; but as it is almost impossible to find them in that state, except when home-made or home-brewed, there is certainly much risk in drinking them. Yet, strange to say, though the stoutest among us has no predilection for the “King of Terrors,” inclination and habit are so strong and seductive, that the greater part of mankind still persevere in habits with a perfect knowledge of their inevitable consequences,—that they are destructive of health and inductive of death. For the purpose of awakening the attention of those who are under this unhappy delusion, is the design of the present publication. The most grateful sensation to a well disposed heart is the salvation of a fellow creature from misery and perdition. I beseech heaven that I may be successful in my undertaking.
But the base and iniquitous adulterations of wines and spirits are not the whole of the “illicit doings” of the advertisers and placarders, and their worthy compeers, the commission-men, the wine-hawkers, and the dock wine-merchants. “Among the deceptions practised by this class of dealers,” says the author of Wine and Spirit Adulterators Unmasked, p. 157, and he is no indifferent authority on the subject, “may be reckoned the delivering of a less quantity of wine than is charged for in the invoice, the disposing of a wine with a false description of its being of some particularly fine and noted vintage; the sending of another wine, of an inferior quality, as the one which had been tasted and sold; together with a variety of other peculations. The gin-shop-keepers and advertising dealers in spirits not only give short measure of their adulterated ingredients, but if they sell any thing like the genuine article they dilute it much below (often one hundred per cent.) the legal strength, namely, seventeen per cent. below proof, according to Sykes’s hydrometer.”
For the following valuable information respecting the ingenious devices of the “gentlemen” wine-merchants, I am indebted to the pages of “The Private Gentleman and Importing Merchant’s Wine and Spirit Cellar Directory:”—A work replete with the most useful information on the subject, as containing the best and most practical instructions on the selection, purchase, management, medication, and preservation of foreign wines, of any work extant in any language. It has been well said by a judicious critic, “No book is more wanted than a good, practical, and complete one on this important subject: it would be worth its weight in gold, and its author would be a public benefactor to his country. More than nine-tenths of the wine imported into this country is either spoiled or impoverished by the ignorance or mismanagement of the wine-dealer or the purchaser; as at present conducted, the management of a wine-cellar is, in most cases, all random, hap-hazard, and guess-work. Ought we to be surprised at the result, the consequent loss or injury of the wine? It is, therefore, with considerable satisfaction we recommend this little work as a valuable addition to our domestic economy.”
“As many people place reliance on the genuineness of wines purchased in the Docks, and think that such purchases are more exempt from fraud and imposition than if obtained from the dealer’s shop or vaults, and that they will have them ‘neat as imported,’ it is necessary to caution them to be on their guard in respect of the persons with whom they deal. Inferior articles, false descriptions, substitutions for the one selected, and various other peculations, take place there as frequently as is the case when wines are purchased at the dealer’s shop, &c. Other impositions of as flagrant a nature consist in transferring wines of a most inferior sort into pipes recently emptied, and originally filled with wine of the best vintages and flavour; and as the outside of the cask bears the marks of the foreign houses of character, from whose vintages the wines contained in the casks were furnished, this fraud is found to turn to very good account. By delusions of this kind, the most detestable trash ever vended under the name of wine is frequently foisted on purchasers. But if this statement is not sufficient to satisfy those who fondly suppose that by making their purchases in the ‘Docks’ that they will always have their expectations of obtaining unadulterated wine fulfilled, they should recollect that the owners of wines in the ‘Dock’ are at liberty to mix them in whatever manner and proportions they please, provided they come under one denomination as to colour and pay the same duty. These remarks will, I trust, satisfy my readers that ‘an extensive range of counting-houses,’ ‘numerous clerks employed’ and professions of ‘the high character of the house,’ should not supersede the necessity of making a little inquiry as to the fair dealing and integrity of the vender.”
The foregoing “exposé” of trickery and fraud, and the shameful latitude and extensive means afforded designing and iniquitous men, of practising their roguery on the credulity and folly of the public, as well as to the loss of the revenue, evidently shows that our present system of excise-laws is defective and absurd: indeed, it is disgraced by the most perfect anomalies; for, while the brewer and vender of spices, &c. are subjected to the strictest survey of the excise, and the frauds and adulterations used in those trades are punished, (when detected, though it must be acknowledged that that happy consummation of justice is rather of rare occurrence even with those sophisticators,) in the most prompt and efficient manner, the venders and compounders of “seductive poison,” in the form of drams, are allowed to manufacture and sell their deleterious inventions to an enormous extent, and with an effrontery disgraceful to civilized society. But, perhaps, the old artful plea of the “immense wealth,” and “the great value of the property,” of “the large capitalists” engaged in the nefarious trade, (the worst and most futile of all pretentions,) have entitled the “deputations” of wine and spirit dealers and compounders and distillers that have, from time to time, waited on the Chancellors of the Exchequer, to “undoubted consideration;”F and where the worthies have been detected (a chance which but seldom happens) in their iniquitous practices a prudent private compromise, or sum-total-fine, for the offence and the expenses of the Excise-solicitor, “have shrouded the offenders and their misdeeds in impenetrable secrecy from the public eye.”
Another lame and false doctrine that prevails in “government logic” is, that where extensive concerns, whether brewery, distillery, wine-factories, or quack-medicine-factories, yield an important contribution to the revenue, no strict scrutiny needs to be adopted in regard to the quality of the article from which such contribution is raised, provided the excise and customs do not suffer by the fraud. “But,” as that intrepid advocate of fair dealing, Mr. Accum, forcibly and justly observes, “the principles of the constitution afford no sanction to this preference, and the true interests of the country require that it should be abolished; for a tax dependent on fraud must be at best precarious, and must be, sooner or later, diminished by the irresistible diffusion of knowledge. Sound policy requires that the law should be impartially enforced in all cases; and if its penalties were extended to abuses of which it does not now take cognizance, there is no doubt that the revenue would be abundantly benefited.”
“O England! model to thy inward greatness,
Like little body with a mighty heart,
What would’st thou do that honour would thee do,
Were all thy children kind and natural?”
Were they all influenced by the same honest, bold, and disinterested motives as the ill-fated Accum, who has been offered a vindictive sacrifice on the altar of trading cupidity and fraud. Every honest man must allow that the expatriation of that gentleman is a disgrace to the country which he has adorned and benefited by his talents, and ought to be deplored as a loss to the real interests of science and humanity.