THE TURF AND TRADE CONTRASTED. 293 



stockbrokers, solicitors, and tradesmen, whose culpability 

 will outvie any charge ever whispered against the owaier 

 of a racehorse, or his trainer or jockey. Without giving 

 cases in number, I may shortly refer to the Glasgow Bank 

 as an example of what men of commercial position will 

 descend to do for their own ends ; and to the frequent cases 

 of adulterations on the part of the retail trader : and ask, 

 if the annals of the turf can show anything to equal these 

 frauds in systematic dishonesty,^ 



The abuses of the turf, and the errors of the trainer and 

 jockey may well be left, the one to the vigilance of the 



^ The Evening Standard of 22ik1 October, 1S78, in speaking of the Glasgow 

 Bank, says : — " The report relates a tissue of dishonesty, fraud, concealment, and 

 malversation wholly without parallel. Advances of enormous extent have been 

 made to prop up rotten houses : bad debts have been made to an amount many 

 times exceeding the whole capital of the bank ; false balance sheets have been 

 drawn up to deceive the shareholders and the public ; lying returns have been made 

 of the amount of gold in the coffers of the bank ; and an immense over-issue of 

 notes has been sent out ; large dividends have been declared when the bank was 

 in a hopeless state of bankruptcy : and in fact it is difficult to mention a single 

 description of monetary fraud that has not been perpetrated at the bank." 



With respect to food adulteration, the same authority says: — "According to Dr. 

 Harper, and other chemists and analysts, tea is adulterated with no less than 

 seventeen different substances, milk with eight, sugar with four, the staff of life 

 is tampered with to an enormous extent with four spurious ingredients, butter with 

 three, cuiTy powder with ten, pickles with five amongst which figure sulphuric acid 

 and corrosive sublimate, besides other things." It further goes on to relate how 

 spurious are the drinks we must consume, if we do not confine ourselves to water. 

 " Beer," it says, " is adulterated in several different ways, and it may be startling 

 to the reader to hear some of the effective ingredients, such as strychnine, and 

 sulphate of iron, and wormwood. Soda water, commonly so called, in nine cases 

 out of ten, contains no soda at all, but is simply water into which carbonic acid 

 gas has been pumped. Brandy is mixed with nine different substances, and 

 sherry, champagne, and port are more or less shamefully adulterated." The frauds 

 of Sir John Dean Paul, of Redpath, and others, and recently of the solicitor 

 Froggatt, show that no profession can claim immunity fi-om scoundrelism, whilst 

 one of the most harmful of all offenders, the purveyor of diseased meat, often 

 escapes the just punishment of his gross misdeeds on payment of a nominal fine. 



