An extensive trade, but less extensive, I am informed, than it was a
few years ago, is carried on in tea-leaves, or in the leaves of the
herb after their having been subjected, in the usual way, to decoction.
These leaves are, so to speak, re-manufactured, in spite of great risk
and frequent exposure, and in defiance of the law. The 17th Geo. III.,
c. 29, is positive and stringent on the subject:--
“Every person, whether a dealer in or seller of tea, or not, who shall
dye or fabricate any sloe-leaves, liquorice-leaves _or the leaves of
tea that have been used_, or the leaves of the ash, elder or other
tree, shrub or plant, in imitation of tea, or who shall mix or colour
such leaves with terra Japonica, copperas, sugar, molasses, clay,
logwood or other ingredient, or who shall sell or expose to sale, or
have in custody, any such adulterations in imitation of tea, shall for
every pound forfeit, on conviction, by the oath of one witness, before
one justice, 5_l._; or, on non-payment, be committed to the House of
Correction for not more than twelve or less than six months.”
The same act also authorizes a magistrate, on the oath of an excise
officer, or any one, by whom he suspects this illicit trade to be
carried on, to seize the herbs, or spurious teas, and the whole
apparatus that may be found on the premises, the herbs to be burnt and
the other articles sold, the proceeds of such a sale, after the payment
of expenses, going half to the informer and half to the poor of the
parish.
It appears evident, from the words of this act which I have
_italicised_, that the use of tea-leaves for the robbery of the public
and the defrauding of the revenue has been long in practice. The
extract also shows what other cheats were formerly resorted to--the
substitutes most popular with the tea-manufacturers at one time being
sloe-leaves. If, however, one-tenth of the statements touching the
applications of the leaves of the sloe-tree, and of the juice of its
sour, astringent fruit, during the war-time, had any foundation in
truth, the sloe must have been regarded commercially as one of the most
valuable of our native productions, supplying our ladies with their
tea, and our gentlemen with their port-wine.
Women and men, three-fourths of the number being women, go about
buying tea-leaves of the female servants in the larger, and of the
shopkeepers’ wives in the smaller, houses. But the great purveyors
of these things are the charwomen. In the houses where they char the
tea-leaves are often reserved for them to be thrown on the carpets when
swept, as a means of allaying the dust, or else they form a part of
their perquisites, and are often asked for if not offered. The mistress
of a coffee-shop told me that her charwoman, employed in cleaning every
other morning, had the tea-leaves as a part of her remuneration, or
as a matter of course. What the charwoman did with them her employer
never inquired, although she was always anxious to obtain them, and
she referred me to the poor woman in question. I found her in a very
clean apartment on the second floor of a decent house in Somers-town; a
strong hale woman, with what may be called an industrious look. She was
middle-aged, and a widow, with one daughter, then a nursemaid in the
neighbourhood, and had regular employment.
“Yes,” she said, “I get the tea-leaves whenever I can, and the most
at two coffee-shops that I work at, but neither of them have so many
as they used to have. I think it’s because cocoa’s come so much to be
asked for in them, and so they sell less tea. I buy tea-leaves only
at one place. It’s a very large family, and I give the servant 4_d._
and sometimes 3_d._ or 2_d._ a fortnight for them, but I’m nothing in
pocket, for the young girl is a bit of a relation of mine, and it’s
like a trifle of pocket-money for her. She gives a penny every time
she goes to her chapel, and so do I; there’s a box for it fixed near
the door. O yes, her mistress knows I buy them, for her mistress knew
me before she was married, and that’s about 15 or 16 years since.
When I’ve got this basin (producing it) full I sell it, generally
for 4_d._ I don’t know what the leaves in it will weigh, and I have
never sold them by weight, but I believe some have. Perhaps they might
weigh, as damp as some of them are, about a pound. I sell them to a
chandler now. I have sold them to a rag-and-bottle-shop. I’ve had men
and women call upon me and offer to buy them, but not lately, and I
never liked the looks of them, and never sold them any. I don’t know
what they’re wanted for, but I’ve heard that they’re mixed with new
tea. I have nothing to do with that. I get them honestly and sell them
honestly, and that’s all I can say about it. Every little helps, and if
rich people won’t pay poor people properly, then poor people can’t be
expected to be very nice. But I don’t complain, and that’s all I know
about it.”
The chandler in question knew nothing of the trade in tea-leaves, he
said; he bought none, and he did not know that any of the shopkeepers
did, and he could not form a notion what they could be wanted for, if
it wasn’t to sweep carpets!
This mode of buying or collecting is, I am told the commonest mode of
any, and it certainly presents some peculiarities. The leaves which are
to form the spurious tea are collected, in great measure, by a class
who are perhaps more likely than any other to have themselves to buy
and drink the stuff which they have helped to produce! By charwomen and
washer-women a “nice cup of tea” in the afternoon during their work is
generally classed among the comforts of existence, yet they are the
very persons who sell the tea-leaves which are to make their “much
prized beverage.” It is curious to reflect also, that as tea-leaves
are used indiscriminately for being re-made into what is considered
new tea, what must be the strength of our tea in a few years. Now all
housewives complain that twice the quantity of tea is required to make
the infusion of the same strength as formerly, and if the collection
of old tea-leaves continues, and the refuse leaves are to be dried and
re-dried perpetually, surely we must get to use pounds where we now do
ounces.
A man formerly in the tea-leaf business, and very anxious not to be
known--but upon whose information, I am assured from a respectable
source, full reliance may be placed--gave me the following account:--
“My father kept a little shop in the general line, and I helped him; so
I was partly brought up to the small way. But I was adrift by myself
when I was quite young--18 or so perhaps. I can read and write well
enough, but I was rather of too gay a turn to be steady. Besides,
father was very poor at times, and could seldom pay me anything, if
I worked ever so. He was very fond of his belly too, and I’ve known
him, when he’s had a bit of luck, or a run of business, go and stuff
hisself with fat roast pork at a cook-shop till he could hardly waddle,
and then come home and lock hisself upstairs in his bed-room and sleep
three parts of the afternoon. (My mother was dead.) But father was a
kind-hearted man for all that, and for all his roast pork, was as thin
as a whipping-post. I kept myself when I left him, just off and on
like, by collecting grease, and all that; it can’t be done so easy now,
I fancy; so I got into the tea-leaf business, but father had nothing to
do with it. An elderly sort of a woman who I met with in my collecting,
and who seemed to take a sort of fancy to me, put me up to the leaves.
She was an out-and-out hand at anything that way herself. Then I bought
tea-leaves with other things, for I suppose for four or five years. How
long ago is it? O, never mind, sir, a few years. I bought them at many
sorts of houses, and carried a box of needles, and odds and ends, as a
sort of introduction. There wasn’t much of that wanted though, for I
called, when I could, soon in the mornings before the family was up,
and some ladies don’t get up till 10 or 11 you know. The masters wasn’t
much; it was the mistresses I cared about, because they are often such
Tartars to the maids and always a-poking in the way.
“I’ve tried to do business in the great lords’ houses in the squares
and about the parks, but there was mostly somebody about there to
hinder you. Besides, the servants in such places are often on board
wages, and often, when they’re not on board wages, find their own tea
and sugar, and little of the tea-leaves is saved when every one has a
separate pot of tea; so there’s no good to be done there. Large houses
in trade where a number of young men is boarded, drapers or grocers, is
among the best places, as there is often a housekeeper there to deal
with, and no mistress to bother. I always bought by the lot. If you
offered to weigh you would not be able to clear anything, as they’d be
sure to give the leaves a extra wetting. I put handfulls of the leaves
to my nose, and could tell from the smell whether they were hard drawn
or not. When they isn’t hard drawn they answer best, and them I put to
one side. I had a bag like a lawyer’s blue bag, with three divisions in
it, to put my leaves into, and so keep them ’sunder. Yes, I’ve bought
of charwomen, but somehow I think they did’nt much admire selling to
me. I hardly know how I made them out, but one told me of another. They
like the shops better for their leaves, I think; because they can get
a bit of cheese, or snuff, or candles for them there; though I don’t
know much about the shop-work in this line. I’ve often been tried to
be took in by the servants. I’ve found leaves in the lot offered to
me to buy what was all dusty, and had been used for sweeping; and if
I’d sold them with my stock they’d have been stopped out of the next
money. I’ve had tea-leaves given me by servants oft enough, for I used
to sweetheart them a bit, just to get over them; and they’ve laughed,
and asked me whatever I could want with them. As for price, why, I
judged what a lot was worth, and gave accordingly--from 1_d._ to 1_s._
I never gave more than 1_s._ for any one lot at a time, and that had
been put to one side for me in a large concern, for about a fortnight I
suppose. I can’t say how many people had been tea’d on them. If it was
a housekeeper, or anybody that way, that I bought of, there was never
anything said about what they was wanted for. What _did_ I want them
for? Why, to sell again; and though him as I sold them to never said
so, I knew they was to dry over again. I know nothing about who he was,
or where he lived. The woman I told you of sent him to me. I suppose I
cleared about 10_s._ a week on them, and did a little in other things
beside; perhaps I cleared rather more than 10_s._ on leaves some weeks,
and 5_s._ at others. The party as called upon me once a week to buy my
leaves was a very polite man, and seemed quite the gentleman. There was
no weighing. He examined the lot, and said ‘so much.’ He wouldn’t stand
’bating, or be kept haggling; and his money was down, and no nonsense.
What cost me 5_s._ I very likely got three half-crowns for. It was no
great trade, if you consider the trouble. I’ve sometimes carried the
leaves that he’d packed in papers, and put into a carpet-bag, where
there was others, to a coffee-shop; they always had ‘till called for’
marked on a card then. I asked no questions, but just left them.
There was two, and sometimes four boys, as used to bring me leaves on
Saturday nights. I think they was charwomen’s sons, but I don’t know
for a positive, and I don’t know how they made me out. I think I was
one of the tip-tops of the trade at one time; some weeks I’ve laid out
a sov. (sovereign) in leaves. I haven’t a notion how many’s in the
line, or what’s doing now; but much the same I’ve no doubt. I’m glad
_I’ve_ done with it.”
I am told by those who are as well-informed on the subject as is
perhaps possible, when a surreptitious and dishonest traffic is the
subject of inquiry, that although less spurious tea is sold, there are
more makers of it. Two of the principal manufacturers have of late,
however, been prevented carrying on the business by the intervention
of the excise officers. The spurious tea-men are also the buyers of
“wrecked tea,” that is, of tea which has been part of the salvage
of a wrecked vessel, and is damaged or spoiled entirely by the salt
water. This is re-dried and dyed, so as to appear fresh and new. It is
dyed with Prussian blue, which gives it what an extensive tea-dealer
described to me as an “intensely fine green.” It is then mixed with
the commonest Gunpowder teas and with the strongest Young Hysons, and
has always a kind of “metallic” smell, somewhat like that of a copper
vessel after friction in its cleaning. These teas are usually sold at
4_s._ the pound.
Sloe-leaves for spurious tea, as I have before stated, were in
extensive use, but this manufacture ceased to exist about 20 years ago.
Now the spurious material consists only of the old tea-leaves, at least
so far as experienced tradesmen know. The adulteration is, however,
I am assured, more skilfully conducted than it used to be, and its
staple is of far easier procuration. The law, though it makes the use
of old tea-leaves, as components of what is called tea, punishable,
is nevertheless silent as to their sale or purchase; they can be
collected, therefore, with a comparative impunity.
The tea-leaves are dried, dyed (or re-dyed), and shrivelled on plates
of hot metal, carefully tended. The dyes used are those I have
mentioned. These teas, when mixed, are hawked in the country, but not
in town, and are sold to the hawkers at 7 lbs. for 21_s._ The quarters
of pounds are retailed at 1_s._ A tea-dealer told me that he could
recognise this adulterated commodity, but it was only a person skilled
in teas who could do so, by its _coarse_ look. For green tea--the
mixture to which the prepared leaves are mostly devoted--the old tea is
blended with the commonest Gunpowders and Hysons. No dye, I am told, is
required when black tea is thus re-made; but I know that plumbago is
often used to simulate the bloom. The inferior shopkeepers sell this
adulterated tea, especially in neighbourhoods where the poor Irish
congregate, or any of the lowest class of the poor English.
To obtain the statistics of a trade which exists in spite not only
of the vigilance of the excise and police officers but of public
reprobation, and which is essentially a secret trade, is not possible.
I heard some, who were likely to be well-informed, conjecture--for it
cannot honestly be called more than a conjecture--that between 500 and
1000 lbs., perhaps 700 lbs., of old tea-leaves were made up weekly
in London; but of this he thought that about an eighth was spoilt by
burning in the process of drying.
Another gentleman, however, thought that, at the very least, double the
above quantity of old tea-leaves was weekly manufactured into new tea.
According to his estimate, and he was no mean authority, no less than
1500 lbs. weekly, or 78,000 lbs. per annum of this trash are yearly
poured into the London market. The average consumption of tea is about
1-1/4 lb. per annum for each man, woman, or child in the kingdom;
coffee being the _principal_ unfermented beverage of the poor. Those,
however, of the poorest who drink tea consume about two ounces per week
(half an ounce serving them twice), or one pound in the course of every
two months. This makes the annual consumption of the adult tea-drinking
poor amount to 6 lbs., and it is upon this class the spurious tea is
chiefly foisted.