What percentage of a pork sausage should be made up of meat? It’s a good question now and it was a good question in 1882 when Henry Newman was dragged before the magistrate at Southwark by the sanitary officer of the Bermondsey vestry.

The officer, a Mr Thomas, testified that he had bought a pound of sausages from Newman’s shop on Southwark Park Road for nine pence. He told the butcher he was ‘going to have them analyzed’ (which seems a waste for a packet of well made bangers). He took them to a Dr Muter who issued a certificate  that declared they were made from 82 per cent meat and fat and 12 per cent bread. The doctor confirmed however, that while the sausages contained bread they were not in any way ‘injurious to health’.

In court the vestry’s legal team contended that the bread was used ‘so that inferior parts of meat could be used’ to manufacture the sausages. Newman’s  brief challenged that and brought along two other sausage makers to explain to Mr Slade (the justice) that it was impossible to make proper sausages without adding bread to the mix.

The magistrate agreed that bread was an essential part of the process and said the question turned on whether 18 per cent constituted adulteration under the act. In his opinion it didn’t and so he dismissed the summons and two further similar cases that the overeager vestry had brought against other butchers. In the end the vestry were required to pay costs of £2 2sand Mr Thomas probably chose to buy his supper somewhere else in future.

So is 18 per cent too much bread in a sausage? I don’t know. Why don’t you have a look at the next packet you buy from a supermarket or ask your local butcher (if you still have one).

[from The Standard, Thursday, March 23, 1882]