Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Great Britain (12 page)

Spud-u-don’t-like?

In the early days of the Royal Society scientists like Robert Boyle advocated the potato’s cultivation while in his
Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith commented that the product was popular amongst ‘porters, coalheavers, prostitutes’ and the Irish. He suggested that this explained why these groups were ‘the strongest men and the most beautiful women in the British dominions’. The great economist also argued that if pasture and cornfields were turned over to the cultivation of potatoes then population would increase, profits would rise and prosperity would follow. Despite such champions the potato was slow to gain acceptance, one reason being the doctrine of signatures which prevailed in medical circles. This held that plants which resembled parts of the human body, especially when the body was diseased, were responsible for the illness itself. The tubers of the potato were compared with the deformed hands and feet of lepers and the English writer Lovell, in his book
The Complete Herbal
, wrote of potatoes that ‘if too frequently eaten they are thought to cause leprosie’. Not much of an endorsement there! During the World Wars the potato flourished as a year-round crop that was rich in nutrients and it was during World War II that a new strain was developed called Golden Wonder which later gave its name to a variety of potato crisp. £1.3 billion is now spent on crisps every year, far more than is spent on potatoes in their raw state.

T
ea reached Britain in the mid-17th century and is recorded as having been sold in a coffee house in Exchange Alley in London in 1657. Its proprietor, Thomas Garway, sold both liquid and dry tea, the latter at the extraordinary price of six pounds sterling per pound weight, claiming that it was ‘gathered by virgins’ and would ‘make the body active and lusty’, and ‘preserve perfect health until extreme old age’. It vanquished nightmares, dispensed with the need for sleep and was especially recommended for corpulent men. It is hardly surprising that by 1750 tea had become Britain’s favourite drink. An act of 1676 act taxed tea and required coffee house operators to apply for a licence to sell it. By the middle of the 18th century the duty on tea exceeded 100 per cent. When the East India Company was given a monopoly on the tea trade in 1832, to bring the tea harvest to Britain they employed ‘tea clippers’ – streamlined, tall-masted vessels which could reach 18 knots, almost as fast as a modern ocean liner. The most famous surviving example is the
Cutty Sark
, built in 1868 and preserved at Greenwich despite falling victim to a disastrous fire in 2007. Eighty per cent of Britons drink tea, each consuming on average 2.1 kg per year but coffee, at 2.8 kg a year, is now Britain’s favourite hot beverage.

I
t has been argued that the population of Great Britain was better fed during World War II than at any time before or since. Paradoxically this had a great deal to do with wartime shortages and rationing. Since much of Britain’s food had to be imported across the dangerous Atlantic sea lanes it was essential to make maximum use of every nutrient. In December 1940 a group of scientists cycled from Cambridge to the Lake District and spent nine days trekking up and down mountains, carrying rucksacks filled with bricks that weighed 15 to 20 kg. They consumed only the amounts prescribed by the proposed wartime diet and assessed its effects on their own wellbeing. Calorific intake and output were measured each day and the group concluded that the diet could be improved by such measures as adding calcium carbonate to bread and encouraging the consumption of wholemeal bread. The shortage of meat meant that the wartime diet was more vegetarian than normal but it delivered all the nutrients required and was later described by American commentators as ‘one of the greatest demonstrations in public health administration the world has ever seen’. One of the intrepid band was (later Sir) Andrew Huxley, winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine and grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’. Another was Sir Jack Drummond who was killed in mysterious circumstances after the war.

I
n the decade before World War II the National Birthday Trust Fund sought to improve the diets and consequently the health of pregnant women from poorer areas. It was the brainchild of the wealthy Marchioness of Londonderry whose Park Lane mansion (demolished in 1965 to make way for the Hilton hotel) was an unusual gathering place for an organization devoted to supporting malnourished pregnant women. The idea was to collect a shilling (5p) from all citizens on their birthdays, giving a total of over 40 million shillings, or £2 million, to feed the poor. Hardly any of the army of 3 million unemployed, or their families, could afford a shilling for anything but enough money was raised to distribute jars of vitamin-rich Marmite, beef drinks, Ovaltine and milk-based drinks to distressed and vulnerable folk in areas like South Wales, resulting in a marked fall in infant mortality. The spirit of this charitable venture was compromised by the event held to mark its success. On 28th March 1939 a lavish dinner was held at the Guildhall, London, attended by the Queen and many society ladies. Two hundred women who had benefited from the scheme were bussed in as exhibits but they were not amongst the dinner guests. Each was provided with a ninepenny (4p) luncheon box from Lyons while the celebratory feast proceeded out of their sight.