304 ATTACKS ON THE TURF. 
stockbrokers, solicitors, and tradesmen, whose culpability 
will outvie any charge ever whispered against the owner 
of a racehorse, or his trainer or jockey. Without giving 
instances 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 adulteration 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 
1 The Evening Standard of 22nd October, 1878, 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, curry 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 from 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. 
