[249] The comparative nutritive and pecuniary value of various kinds of cooked food, by John Aldridge, M.D., M.R.I.A., read at a meeting of the Royal Dublin Society on the 6th of April, 1847.

[250] Freeman’s Journal, April 6th.

[251] Evening Packet.

[252] He did not even escape the shafts of ridicule.  A writer in the Dublin Nation, imitating the Witches’ scene in Macbeth, thus attacked him:—­

1st Cook—­Round about the boiler go,
In twice fifty gallons throw—­
Water that in noisome tank
Mossed with verdure rich and rank.

2nd Cook—­Shin of beef from skinny cow
In the boiler then you’ll throw;
Onion sliced and turnip top,
Crumb of bread and cabbage chop.

3rd Cook—­Scale of cod fish, spiders’ tongues,
Tomtits’ gizzards, head and lungs
Of a famished, French-fed frog,
Root of phaytee digged in bog, etc.

It is only just to M. Soyer to say that his soup kitchen was regarded by good judges as a clever and convenient contrivance for its purpose.  The building in which it was placed was constructed of wood, and was about forty feet by twenty.  It consisted of one apartment.  In the centre was a large steam boiler mounted on wheels, and arranged around were a number of metallic box-shaped vessels, also mounted on wheels, in which the materials for the soup were placed.  These were heated by steam conveyed by iron pipes from the central boiler, and by a slow digestive process the entire of the nutriment contained in the materials were supposed to be extracted without having its properties deteriorated.  When the soup was ready, the recipients were admitted by a narrow entrance at one side of the house, one by one, each receiving a large bowl of soup, and, having drank it, [five minutes was the time allowed for drinking it,] they received an allowance of bread or a biscuit, and were dismissed by another door in the rere of the building.  In this manner M. Soyer calculated he would be able to give one meal every day to at least five thousand persons, from an establishment the size of the one at the Royal Barracks.  At the entrance, in the centre, was the weighing machine.  There was what was called a glaze-pan over the steam boiler capable of holding three hundred gallons, and, at the end, an oven to bake one hundred weight of bread at a time, and all heated by the same fire.  Round the two supports of the roof were circular tin boxes for the condiments.  Seven feet from the ground at each corner was placed a safe five feet square and seven feet high, with sides of wire for ventilation, which contained respectively meat, vegetables, grain, and condiments.  At the same elevation as the safes were sixteen butts, containing seventeen hundred and ninety-two gallons of water.

[253] The Commission of 1809 on the reclamation of the bogs of Ireland returned as improvable: