Twenty-ninth annual report of the Inspector of Milk and Vinegar : from January 1, 1887, to December 31, 1887.

  • Boston. Inspector of Milk and Vinegar.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Twenty-ninth annual report of the Inspector of Milk and Vinegar : from January 1, 1887, to December 31, 1887. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    1. A person may be convicted of selling adulterated milk, under Pub. Stats., Chap. 57, Sect. 5 (Gen. Stats., Chap. 49, Sect. 151), although he did not know it to be adulterated ; and an averment in the indictment that he had such knowledge may be rejected as surplusage. 2. It is not necessai^, in such indictment, to aver that the milk was cow’s milk. 3. An indictment alleging a sale of adulterated milk to a woman is not defeated by proof that she was married and was act- ing as agent for her husband, if the seller had no notice, express or implied, of these facts. 4. An indictment, under Pub. Stats., Chap. 57, Sect. 5 (Gen. Stats., Chap. 49, Sect. 151), which charges that the defendant sold a certain quantity of “ adulterated milk, to which a large quantity, that is to say, four quarts, of water had been added,” is not bad for duplicity. Commonwealth v. Farren, 9 Allen, 489. 1. An indictment which alleges that the defendant “ did unlaw- fully keep, offer for sale and sell,” adulterated milk, charges but one offence. 2. In support of such indictment, one who in a great many in- stances has used a lactometer for the purpose of testing the quality and the purity of milk, may testify to the result of an experi- ment made by him with the same lactometer upon the milk in question, although no evidence is offered as to the character of the instrument. Commonwealth v. Nichols, 10 Allen, 199. 1. At the trial of an indictment on Pub. Stats., Chap. 57, Sect. 5 (Statute of 1868, Chap. 263), for selling “adulterated milk, there was evidence that the defendant [who was a sou of the owner of a milk-route], with a companion who was in the same em- ployment with himself, knowingly adulterated milk on its way for distribution to his father’s customers, and then, having charge, with his companion, of its distribution from the wagon on which it was conveyed upon the route, caused a can of it to be delivered to one of the customers by the hand of his companion. Held, that he had no ground of exception to instructions to the jury, that, in the absence of proof of any previous contract to supply milk to the customer, the delivery might be deemed an act of sale; nor to an instruction framed on a supposition that the jury might find that he was in the employment of his father, although there was no averment in the indictment to that effect.” Commonwealth v. IIa3’nes, 107 Mass., 194. A person may be convicted of selling adulterated milk, upon a complaint under Pub. Stats., Chap. 57, Sect. 5 (Statute of 1880, Chap. 209, Sect. 3), without allegation or proof that he knew it to be adulterated.