SOURCE: Long, William F. “Dickens and the Adulteration of Food.” The Dickensian, 84, no. 3 (autumn 1988): 160-70.

In the following essay, Long discusses Dickens's participation in the national debate on the common nineteenth-century practice of adulterating food and drink.

Much tension in Dickens's early work derives from the juxtaposition of scenes in which food and drink are consumed—sometimes seemingly continuously—with others of near or actual starvation. In later work, descriptions of meals increasingly serve to illustrate character traits and advance plots. A third aspect of Dickens's writing about food is his frequent reference to its poor quality. This article describes some of these references, and traces the background against which they were made.

In 1850, in an atmosphere of national debate and parliamentary legislation concerning many aspects of public health reform, Thomas Wakley initiated an investigation in The Lancet of the then prevalent practice of adulterating food and drink...