What was the Bradford sweets poisoning?
On 30 October 1858, William Hardaker – known as “Humbug Billy” – was selling peppermint lozenges at Bradford’s Saturday market. As usual, he had bought them from sweetmaker James Appleton, who was employed by Joseph Neal. When Hardaker fell ill after sampling one of the humbugs, though, he did not make the connection that something might be wrong with the sweets, so his stall stayed open all day and more than 1,000 humbugs were sold.
By Sunday morning, two local boys had died suddenly and dozens more people were gravely sick. Police quickly made the link between victims and the humbugs, and rushed around town warning people not to eat them. Each humbug, it later transpired, contained a potentially lethal amount of arsenic. The eventual death toll was 20 or
21, with 10 times as many sick.
The investigation found that Neal regularly used cheap powdered gypsum
– plaster of Paris – to replace some of the expensive sugar content. He bought it from Shipley pharmacist Charles Hodgson, but on this occasion, Hodgson’s assistant William Goddard mistakenly served Neal’s messenger an identical-looking white powder from the wrong cask. The fatal batch of peppermint humbugs was made with arsenic trioxide.
Hodgson, Neal and Goddard were charged with manslaughter, but Hodgson was acquitted and the other cases dropped.
The tragedy made national headlines: “Little pills of sugared death,” said
The Times, adding to growing anger among consumers who already knew much of their food was adulterated. The case was one of the triggers for the 1868 Pharmacy Act, regulating the sale and storage of poisons, and was invoked in arguments for later food purity laws.
Eugene Byrne, author and journalist specialising in history