Foods, their composition and analysis : a manual for the use of analytical chemists and others : with an introductory essay on the history of adulteration / by Alexander Wynter Blyth.

Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Foods, their composition and analysis : a manual for the use of analytical chemists and others : with an introductory essay on the history of adulteration / by Alexander Wynter Blyth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    parts coffee and 40 parts cliicory. On the hearing of the case before the magistrates, they convicted the vendor on tlie follow- ing grounds :— The fact that the purchaser asked for coffee and ■was sa])plied with an article consisting of only 60 per cent, coffee and 40 per cent, chicory, without having his attention called to the label; and without, in fact, seeing it until the purchase was completed, and also the fact that the price he paid for the said article was a usual and fair price for pure coffee, and much more than would have been given for coffee mixed with chicory to the above extent . . . and that, therefore, the appellant was not protected by the said eighth section. On appeal the case was decided in the Court of Queen's Bench, November 29, 1879, before Justices Lush and Manisty, who agreed with the magistrates, and the conviction was affirmed. There is also a similar decision in the case of Horder v. Meddings, 44 J. P. 234.* In Jones v. Jones, 58 J. P. 132, it was decided that it was not necessary to call the buyer's attention to the label, provided the label is distinct and that there is no fraudulent concealment as to the low quality of the article sold. The case was that the vendor sold a mixed cocoa, the packet being legibly labelled as a. mixture, and it was held that the seller was pi-otected by such label. Any verbal declaration is no protection unless it is uttered before the sale is completed. The sale, again, is evidently not completed until the goods are delivered into the purchasers hand, and the vendor has received the money. Should a person buy any substance in a shop, and (after having * This case probably overtlirows the case reported in the Time-i, June S, 1879, Gibson ?;. Leaper, a prosecution undertaken under the old Act, 35 and o6 Vic, c. 74, sections 2 and 3. On conviction the vendor appealed. The case was that of a Spalding grocer, who sold a packet of Epps's Cocoa with- out making auy verbal statement of its contents. The packet was labelled with the words prepared cocoa—for ingredients, see the other side,' and on the other side was a notilication to the effect that it was necessary in order to make tlie oil in the cocoa soluble and easy of digestion, to combine with it arrowroot and sugar. Tlie court quashed the conviction, holding that assura- iag the cocoa to be adulterated, it had not been sold as unadulterated. In the case of Pope v. Turle (43, Law Journal), May 28, 1S74, the Justices of Bed- ford dismissed a summons for selling adulterated mustard, and the purchaser appealed. It was stated in the case that at the time the respondent delivered the mustard to the appellant he said: I do not sell you this as pure mustard. The mustard was found to be the common mixture of flour and mustard. Lord Coleridge, Mr Justice Brett, and Mr Justice Grove, were undivided in their opinion that the seller was entitled to their judgment on the ground of his havmg declared to the purchaser that the mustard was mixed with some other ingredient, and that, even had he not done so, he could not come within the section to incur the penalty, because if 'the admixture was .such as to make it an adulterated article, still he had not sold it as an unadulterated article.
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