Rare. ESTC records BL, Cambridge and Senate House; California State - Sutro, Cornell, Harvard and Toronto.
A furious diatribe on the supposed wide-spread lethal adulteration of bread in England.
Manning claims that bread is regularly being offered for sale which includes chalk, whiting, slaked lime and, perhaps most worryingly, bone ashes (“The Bones us’d for the Occasion, are such as have been thrown from Servants Tables into the Dust-basket, and thence upon Dunghills, where they are gnawn by Dogs, after this they are boiled to get out the Fat…”
“In consequence of this, Bread, which has well been called the Staff of Life, becomes an Arrrow in the Hand of Death; Men pine with Diseases from it, or perish instantly; and Infants are an universal Sacrifice” (p.12)
Manning provides various methods for “discovering Bad Bread” based on identifying the quality and consistency of the crumb, taste, the colour of the loaf and the consistency of the loaf. Manning warns that this adulterated bread his highly dangerous to everyone but especially small children because “their food is principally Bread” (p.15) He also notes that this adulteration overwhelmingly affects the poorest people in society who have no choice but to eat the poorest quality bread.
This pamphlet is evidence of the growing suspicion and fear surrounding food which increased in the 18th-century as the population became distinctly more urbanised and food production was no longer as personal a process as it had once been when the majority of people lived in the countryside and produced the majority of their own food for their own consumption. By the end of 1757 the Making of Bread Act was introduced in England to protect the manufacturing of bread and ensure that it was not adulterated. Despite this, Manning’s pamphlet is still relevant today as fears continue that bread (even supposedly healthy “wholemeal” read) is now often processed and could lead to ill health and premature death.
A response to Manning’s pamphlet was published the following year by Humphrey Jackson: An essay on bread; Wherein the bakers and millers are vindicated from the aspersions contained in two pamphlets; one intitled Poison detected: and the other, The nature of bread honestly and dishonestly made. Proving the impossibility of mixing lime, chalk, whiting and burnt bones in bread, without immediate discovery (1758).
