Tea, that is.
Personally, it is only in recent years that I have started drinking it – and even then Earl Grey is my preferred blend. None of this “builder’s brew” for me! However, coffee on the other hand…
Once again, I digress.
Until the middle of the 19th century, the only way to buy tea was loose leaf and some unscrupulous dealers would add hedge trimmings, sawdust and other unsavoury bits and pieces in order to bulk it out.Up steps John Horniman, who was born today 4th December back in 1803.
John had founded the “Horniman’s Tea Company” in Newport on the Isle of Wight, but realised that he needed to be close to the bonded warehouses at London Docks, then the biggest tea trading port in the world. John was a Quaker and, following their tenets of honesty and integrity, developed a mechanical method of filling tea packets, which could then be sealed. The editor of the medical journal The Lancet arranged for various tea samples to be tested for purity, of which John’s tea was one. Needless to say, Horniman’s Tea came out on top. This ultimately led to the 1860 Adulteration of Food and Drink Act, which made it an offence to knowingly sell food that endangered health or that was adulterated in any way.
How do you take yours?
Blog entry posted in 'How do you take yours?', Dec 4, 2023.
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