that the poor man got a better article for less money than the rich and well-to-do classes; but a little inquiry into the method by which these cutting bakers “make things pleasant” soon dissipates this seeming anomaly. The size of the loaf, for instance, is by no means commensurate with the amount of nutriment it contains, for the simple reason that it may be made with more or less water. The cheap baker, for the sake of plumping up his loaf to the biggest size, mixes his dough very thin, and by only three parts baking it, makes the steam swell it enormously. Consequently the poor man who buys new bread pays, say sevenpence or sevenpence halfpenny a pound, for so much steam. These puffy loaves again are generally made with damaged flour, which will not by itself make a white loaf; to correct this, alum is added, which so whitens the bread that it looks even fairer than that made from the best wheat; indeed, great whiteness in the household loaf must always be looked upon with suspicion. This process of mixing the thin dough, and then imperfectly baking the loaf, not only takes in the poor man, but enables the baker to make more loaves out of a sack of flour. The conscientious baker makes, on an average, ninety loaves out of a sack; the under seller, however, manages to turn out from ninety-four to ninety-six. If he makes ten sacks a week (a low average), he thus fraudulently obtains some fifty four-pound loaves over and above the respectable baker. This will account for the fair appearance of the bread in the windows of the “cutting baker,” and also for the sensation announcements posted in their windows: “Down again,” “Bread a penny cheaper,” which in many cases may be read “more water in it.” The process of adulteration by means of alum is not only a fraud upon the purchaser, but also positively injurious to all delicate adults and young children; indeed it is the sole cause of nearly half the troubles of babies fed upon bread and milk, since the astringent nature of the alum entirely deranges the digestion of their delicate stomachs. Further, as a rule, the cheaper the bread, the more of this deleterious substance is to be found in it.
Yet now and then it is to be discovered in the bread of the most respectable bakers. When Dr. Hassall’s analysis of bread appeared in the “Lancet,” some of the most respectable men in the trade were surprised to find that he had detected alum in their loaves. Knowing they were innocent of putting it in during the process of baking, it occurred to some of them to have the flour analysed; and lo, the delinquent turned out to be the miller, a well-abused individual from the earliest ages.
But even these impurities are found to form only a small part of the charges laid at the door of the master baker. The journeyman has for years groaned under a system of extreme labour, calculated to break down the strongest constitution. As a general rule he labours, with slight intermissions of sleep, from eighteen to twenty hours a day, but on Fridays he often works for a day and a night together. This slavery, combined with the unwholesome nature of the occupation, which renders the baker’s trade one of the most unhealthy trades in existence, led some short time since to the men’s grievances being laid before Parliament, and to the appointment of a commission: to inquire into the condition of journeymen bakers and bakehouses generally. The report of the commissioner, Mr. Tremenheere, has been laid before Parliament, and now, in the form of a blue book, has given us such a sickening as we never experienced in crossing the Channel in the roughest weather.
The manufacture of bread is carried on, as most of us know, in the cellars and kitchens of our London houses. What goes on in these confined spaces is not very pleasant to tell; but as the remedy lies in our own hands, it would be folly to allow a false delicacy to interfere with a thorough reformation of the whole method of bread-making as at present practised.
In the report now before us, Mr. Tremenheere gives us the result of the inspection of upwards of fifty bakehouses, and it certainly is not calculated to make us relish our breakfast. It is not enticing, for instance, to know that—paraphrasing a well-known expression—we eat our bread “in the sweat of the maker’s brow,” and the disgusting fact is not one of rare occurrence either, but seems to be inseparable from the present mode of making bread by hand. The process of “making the dough,” as it is termed, occupies generally from half an hour to three-quarters of an hour; it is carried on in these underground kitchens as before mentioned, and in an atmosphere ranging from 76 to 90°, but more generally nearer the higher than the lower end of the scale. The process of “making the dough” is carried on by the journeyman baker in this wise. The flour and water are placed in a long deep trough, over which the man has to bend his body, whilst he kneads and turns over the heavy mass—a most laborious occupation—which, continued for the length of time it is, without intermission, in the hot bakehouse, of course suffuses the baker with a profuse perspiration, which drips from his face and arms, and becomes incorporated in the dough.
Mr. Tremenheere states that even in a bakehouse of comparatively low temperature, he has seen this perspiration dropping into our daily bread. And this is not all: the foreman who “sets” the ferment does it with bare arms, and the bakers, after they have done kneading, wash their arms in water, which water the master in some cases compels them to mix with the next dough they mix. Why such a purely mechanical operation as dough-mixing should be carried on by bare arms and hands is a puzzle to us, and certainly says little for the invention of the age, or rather for that of past ages; but we are happy to say that mechanical aid is at last called in, and it will remain with the public themselves to enforce its adoption, as we shall presently show.
But these exudations of the human body are by no means all the impurities the dough contracts whilst in the process of being made into bread. After speaking of the heavy festoons of cobwebs which hang from the roofs of many bakehouses, and which become detached by a heavy blow on the floor above, and fall into the mixing trough, the commissioner goes on to say, “Animals, such as beetles, ants, and cockroaches, in considerable numbers