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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1858 Bradford sweets poisoning | 3/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1858_Bradford_sweets_poisoning | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T16:18:58.649903+00:00 | kb-cron |
The chief constable, William Leveratt, had been kept abreast of developments, and deployed men to local inns and alehouses to spread warnings about the lozenges. He sent out bellmen to announce the warnings across the town and, at 11 pm, he had warning notices printed up and posted overnight for people to see in the morning. A local doctor, John Henry Bell, hypothesised the poisonings of his patients were caused by arsenic; he gave the lozenges from one patient to an analytical chemist, who confirmed his theory. Bell treated sixty patients for the poisoning. By midday on the Monday—1 November—the number of dead had risen to twelve, with seventy-eight people seriously ill. Police visited Neal for a second time and searched his premises more thoroughly, finding hundreds of fragments still on the drying boards used when preparing the lozenges. Neal's wife also admitted that she had found other fragments and thrown them onto the fire; she had also been to their own sweetshop and brought back some bags of mixed sweets that contained lozenges or lozenge fragments. While the police were there, Neal ran off and was pursued; he was found sitting in his kitchen at home. Goddard was brought in front of the magistrates on the Monday; he was remanded in custody. An inquest was opened the following day. The magistrates also met and decided that Hodgson should also be arrested and remanded. On Wednesday the magistrates also decided that Neal should also be arrested, although he was released on bail. They heard from an analytical chemist, Felix Rimmington, who estimated that each sweet contained nine grains (580 mg) of arsenic; he added that four and a half grains were sufficient to kill an adult male. Rimmington later made an analysis of the lozenges which showed each contained between eleven and sixteen grains (710 and 1,040 mg). By the end of Wednesday, fifteen people had been reported dead, eleven of whom were children; thirteen more were listed as "dangerously ill", and another hundred and fifty were ill but not in danger. The magistrates met again on the Friday and determined that the three men in custody should be sent to the next York assizes for trial on a charge of manslaughter by negligence. Bail for Hodgson and Neal was set at £200; that for Goddard was set at £100. The number of dead had risen to seventeen, with 196 people ill. Eventually up to twenty-one people died and over two hundred were sick; figures on the number of deaths vary, with either twenty or twenty-one people dead. The assizes opened on 9 December 1858; the judge was Mr Baron Warren. In his opening remarks he said that there was no case for Neal to answer as he was not present when the arsenic was purchased or when the lozenges were made, and dismissed the case against him. Goddard, Warren said, was only following the instructions of his master and so also had no case to answer; his case was also dismissed. Warren said the case against Hodgson should stand and that he would be tried later in the month. Hodgson's trial opened on 21 December 1858 for the manslaughter of Elizabeth Mary Midgley, a seven-year-old girl. If he was found guilty of the charge, others would follow. After hearing some of the evidence, the judge stopped the proceedings and said there was no case for Hodgson to answer; he instructed the jury to record a verdict of not guilty, which they did.
== Legacy == The deaths led to calls for legislation to stop similar events occurring, and the Adulteration of Food or Drink Act 1860 was passed into law, "on a wave of public revulsion" against the event at Bradford, according to the microbiologist John Postgate. According to the legal scholar Jillian London, "Although the Bradford incident was far from solely responsible for the passage of the 1860 Act, it was instrumental in heightening public awareness of and outrage towards adulteration". The Act stated that penalties would be applied to:
Every person who shall sell any article of food or drink with which, to the knowledge of such person, any ingredient or material injurious to the health of persons eating or drinking such article has been mixed, and every person who shall sell as pure or unadulterated any article of food or drink which is adulterated or not pure ... The political economist Sébastien Rioux observes that the law only applied when adulterated food was being passed off as pure, so the protection was only on misrepresenting what was being sold, rather than ensuring the purity of all food. The medical historian James C. Whorton considers the Act "was next to useless" as its provisions were too ambiguous and the penalties for breaching it—at £5—were too low to act as a deterrent. The events at Bradford were still felt ten years later when the Pharmacy Act 1868 was passed. Legislation on pharmacies was considered from 1859 onwards, although the Royal Pharmaceutical Society opposed a Poison Bill in 1859.
== See also == 1900 English beer poisoning
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