Not more caviar!

Mat Coward asks if there is any evidence of anyone going on strike for the right not to eat oysters or similar [ FT324:23]. I have come across something along these lines in the Adventures and Inventions of Stewart Blacker by Barnaby Blacker. Blacker was an inventor and aviation pioneer who had some involvement in the British Occupation of the Caucasus during the Russian Civil War of 1919, and he records a complaint from British troops in Ashkhabad about being fed too much of “that ‘ere fish jam” – caviar. While they didn’t mutiny or go on strike they certainly weren’t happy about it. Blacker agreed that caviar really wasn’t all that nice without butter, and set off to track some down for them. Ian Simmons Newcastle upon Tyne

Editor’s note: reader Erwin Snelders directs us to an article by Nolar Moore on Knowledgenuts.com, which points out that lobsters were so plentiful on the US east coast in the 17th and 18th centuries that “the crustaceans eventually acquired a stigma, and – according to American observer John Rowan – became ‘signs of poverty and degradation’. They were only served to prisoners and indentured servants, but even these slaves and crooks had rights. Indentured servants from Massachusetts got so fed up with eating lobster every day that they took their masters to court, and the judge ruled in their favour, ruling the servants would only have to eat lobster three times a week.” http://knowledgenuts. com/2013/11/05/lobster-wasonce-a-poor-mans-food/