Report addressed to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, relative to the grievances complained of by the journeymen bakers : with appendix of evidence / presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty.

Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report addressed to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, relative to the grievances complained of by the journeymen bakers : with appendix of evidence / presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    is called “ setting the sponge/’* the modus operandi cannot but suggest frequent impurities. But in the subsequent process of “making the dough,” by the foreman and the men, it is highly probable that those impurities would be seen to be mixed with the dough on the very first opportunity that any one might have of being a spectator of the pro- ceeding. Very shortly after I entered upon this inquiry, two circumstances, among others, were stated to me by several of the witnesses, as calling for my attention : First, the fact that, in the process of making the dough in particular,—the Avork being so severe, the posture so disadvantageous, and the heat of the bakehouses so considerable,—it almost un- avoidably happened that the perspiration dropped from the men’s faces into the dough, and that their arms, immersed in the dough, were necessarily at the same time covered with perspiration. The second fact was, that during the process of making the dough, which usually lasts from half-an-hour to three-quarters of an hour, the men are inhaling the flour-dust, and the carbonic acid gas gene - rated by the fermentation, and that this is a prolific Mr. Stevens’s cause of their being so liable to lung-disease. It was dough-making further stated to me, that by Mr. Stevens’s dough-making machine- machine, the only one in use in London, for bread-making in the ordinary way, both those disagreeable and injurious adjuncts to the making of bread were entirely obviated. It was urged to me, on the other hand, that Mr. Stevens’s machine, although very ingenious, Avas difficult to work, that the men Avho had used it found the work more laborious than the old mode of dough-making, and that it did not produce good bread. If the contrary was the case,—if it Avas practically suc- cessful in its mode of work and its results, — it was clear that the invention was one which would be of the greatest importance to the health of the men, and Avoukl * The terms “ ferment,” “ sponge,” and several others used in the baking trade, have come down from the Roman times. Pliny speaks of the “ spongeosa inanitas ” of light bread. (Nat. Hist. Lib. XVIH. c. 27.) He describes the process of making the “ ferment.” “ Nunc fermentum fit ex ipsa farina, quoc “ subigitur prius quam addatur sal, ad pultis modum decocta, et relicta donee “ acescat. Vulgo vero * * tantum pridie asservata materia “ utuntur.” (c. 27.) He also estimated the value of wheaten flour according to its capacity for water. “ Optimum frumentum esse quod in subactu congium “ aqua; capiat,” to the “modius.” (c. 12.) Yeast made of “ sweet wort” is also thus described : “ Gallia; et Ilispania; frumento in potum resoluto * * “ spuma ita concreta pro fermento utuntur ; qua de causa levior illis quam “ casteris panis est.” (c. 12.) The term “ seconds ” is used by Pliny in speak- ing of coarse meal (cibarii) “quod secundarium vocant.” (Lib. XVHI. C. 20.)