Post by Catsmate on Dec 9, 2023 18:41:04 GMT
The forum software ate both my previous attempts to post this, irrecoverably on both occasions. Hence the lateness. But then sweets are appropriate for the season of Generic Midwinter Festival.
Humbug Billy.
Ah, Halloween (or Samhain if you prefer). That time of the year when dressing up and acting weird is temporarily normalised. The perfect setting for a tale of alien weirdness and horror.
So I'm going to tell a different story, one without alien weirdness, but with a fir bit of horror, and death.
The story is set in Bradford, in what is now the Arndale Centre, part of the Greenmarket area, and mainly concerns us with a man named William Hardaker (or Hardacre, no relation to Bradley I hope) though better known to the locals (especially children) as "Humbug Billy". Hardaker (I’ll stick with this spelling, it seems to be the most commonly used version) sold sweets from a stall in the area.
Now this story is set in 1858, when industrial production of sweets was limited, so most of Hardaker's stock was made by local producers operating on a small scale. One of his main suppliers for hard sweets (usually called "lozenges") was a man named Joseph Neal who had a small factory on Stone Street, a few hundred metres to the north.
The lozenges that play a role in this story were peppermint humbugs, basically sugar and gum flavoured with peppermint.
Now this was before the raft of food safety and adulteration laws of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and substituting a cheap filler for an expensive ingredient was commonplace, and entirely legal. In this case Neal planned to reduce the sugar content, padding in out with plaster dust (gypsum), at about one-twelfth the price.
The story turns to tragedy with the mistake made by one William Goddard, who was an untrained assistant to a pharmacist named Charles Hodgson, from whom Neal often purchased supplies. A man named William Archer (who lodged with Neal and seems to have assisted him) was sent to buy twelve pounds of white gypsum powder. Unfortunately a mix-up led to Goddard selling Archer some twelve pounds of white arsenic instead of the inert plaster.
Neal delegated the production of the humbugs to an employee named James Appleton (later described as an “experienced sweet-maker” who blended together the four pounds of gum, forty pounds of sugar, peppermint oil, colouring and twelve pounds of arsenic. Appleton became unwell during the process, probably from inhaling arsenic powder, and became nauseous and suffered peripheral pains (classic symptoms of arsenical poisoning).
A half-hundredweight (56 pounds or about 25 kilogrammes) of mixture was cut into about ten thousands lozenges. When they were made Neal sold them to the Humbug Billy, at a slight discount due to their slightly odd colouring.
That afternoon was a pay-day (Thursday) for thousands of workers and by the time he closed his stall Hardacre had sold about a hundred bags of sweets, and not just to locals, the zebra-striped humbugs went far afield as Leeds and Bolton.
And by midnight two boys, aged eight and eleven, were dead. The were not the last.
This was unfortunately a time when child mortality was high and cholera was running rampant, leading the doctors and police to initially put their deaths down to natural causes. But by the following evening (Friday 31OCT) it was said in the Bradford Observer that “sudden deaths were rapidly multiplying on every side”.
It seems to have been a man named Mark Burran who first pointed to the humbugs. Police arrived at his house, 30 Jowett Street, to find his sons, aged two and five, lying dead. A young man lodging with him insisted on testing the lozenges and was rapidly sick.
The police, led by the chief constable William Leveratt, began investigations and a bright detective named William Burniston traced the arsenic. Alerts were issued, with police officers (and town criers) ringing hand bells and shouting warnings, handbills and warning posters were printed distributed.
On Monday William Goddard was arraigned before the local magistrates on a charge of manslaughter, with eleven people known to be dead. A local analytic chemist, Felix Marsh Rimmington2, gave evidence of the arsenic content.
By Tuesday twenty one people were known to be dead, and over two hundred ill. Goddard, Hodgson and Neal were indicted for manslaughter. Though in the end the indictments against Neal and Goddard were dismissed by the Grand Jury and Hodgson (who’d been indicted for the manslaughter of 7 year old Elizabeth Mary Midgley) was acquitted by direction of the trial judge in the York Assizes in December.
No crime was committed.
Hardaker recovered from the effects of his sweets and lived until 1866.
Game use.
A horrible example of the 'Good Old Days', ripe for background colour during a trip to Bradford. Do the PCs meddle and stop the poisoning? Try and treat the sick (perhaps many more were "supposed" to die).
Or was the spate of deaths, most of them of children (15/21), actually down to something much stranger? Might the PCs team up with a bright young3 chemist to fight off a menace from the stars?
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?
1. Mainly to treat certain forms of leukemia, alongside other compounds derived from chemical warfare agents.
2. Felix Rimmington is a fascinating character, alas mostly forgotten these days, though his premises (Rimmingtons the chemists is still operating from an elegant, Victorian frontaged, shop on Bridge Street) remains. He seems to have acted as a scientific consultant to the police in a number of matters and was an early practitioner of forensic science (including one o the first analyses of the stomach conte4nts of a murder victim in Britain in 1888). His work was instrumental in the passing of legislation controlling the adulteration of food.
3. He was actually forty during the Humbug Billy affair.
Humbug Billy.
Ah, Halloween (or Samhain if you prefer). That time of the year when dressing up and acting weird is temporarily normalised. The perfect setting for a tale of alien weirdness and horror.
So I'm going to tell a different story, one without alien weirdness, but with a fir bit of horror, and death.
The story is set in Bradford, in what is now the Arndale Centre, part of the Greenmarket area, and mainly concerns us with a man named William Hardaker (or Hardacre, no relation to Bradley I hope) though better known to the locals (especially children) as "Humbug Billy". Hardaker (I’ll stick with this spelling, it seems to be the most commonly used version) sold sweets from a stall in the area.
Now this story is set in 1858, when industrial production of sweets was limited, so most of Hardaker's stock was made by local producers operating on a small scale. One of his main suppliers for hard sweets (usually called "lozenges") was a man named Joseph Neal who had a small factory on Stone Street, a few hundred metres to the north.
- Today 'lozenge' is an almost dead term, encountered only medicinally, in Yorkshire and Last of the Summer Wine repeats.
The lozenges that play a role in this story were peppermint humbugs, basically sugar and gum flavoured with peppermint.
Now this was before the raft of food safety and adulteration laws of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and substituting a cheap filler for an expensive ingredient was commonplace, and entirely legal. In this case Neal planned to reduce the sugar content, padding in out with plaster dust (gypsum), at about one-twelfth the price.
- This was, as I've said, commonplace, unfortunately, and entirely legal. The plaster was referred to as daff, flash or daft.
The story turns to tragedy with the mistake made by one William Goddard, who was an untrained assistant to a pharmacist named Charles Hodgson, from whom Neal often purchased supplies. A man named William Archer (who lodged with Neal and seems to have assisted him) was sent to buy twelve pounds of white gypsum powder. Unfortunately a mix-up led to Goddard selling Archer some twelve pounds of white arsenic instead of the inert plaster.
- White arsenic is a brilliant white crystalline powder, chemically arsenious oxide or arsenic (III) oxide in IPUAC terminology. Historically it’s been used in cosmetics, to preserve wood and many other applications. It has no odour or taste (according to people who’ve tasted it). Today it still has medical uses1, and indeed is one of the WHO basic medicines.
- White arsenic was also known as ‘inheritance powder’ and used to kill off elderly relatives who inconveniently wouldn't die unaided.
- The fatal dose of arsenic is quite variable, depending on the person and their circumstances, but one-tenth of a gramme is a reasonable estimate. Thus Neal has inadvertantly aquired sufficient poison to kill half the population of Bradford, or around fifty thousand people.
Neal delegated the production of the humbugs to an employee named James Appleton (later described as an “experienced sweet-maker” who blended together the four pounds of gum, forty pounds of sugar, peppermint oil, colouring and twelve pounds of arsenic. Appleton became unwell during the process, probably from inhaling arsenic powder, and became nauseous and suffered peripheral pains (classic symptoms of arsenical poisoning).
A half-hundredweight (56 pounds or about 25 kilogrammes) of mixture was cut into about ten thousands lozenges. When they were made Neal sold them to the Humbug Billy, at a slight discount due to their slightly odd colouring.
That afternoon was a pay-day (Thursday) for thousands of workers and by the time he closed his stall Hardacre had sold about a hundred bags of sweets, and not just to locals, the zebra-striped humbugs went far afield as Leeds and Bolton.
And by midnight two boys, aged eight and eleven, were dead. The were not the last.
This was unfortunately a time when child mortality was high and cholera was running rampant, leading the doctors and police to initially put their deaths down to natural causes. But by the following evening (Friday 31OCT) it was said in the Bradford Observer that “sudden deaths were rapidly multiplying on every side”.
It seems to have been a man named Mark Burran who first pointed to the humbugs. Police arrived at his house, 30 Jowett Street, to find his sons, aged two and five, lying dead. A young man lodging with him insisted on testing the lozenges and was rapidly sick.
The police, led by the chief constable William Leveratt, began investigations and a bright detective named William Burniston traced the arsenic. Alerts were issued, with police officers (and town criers) ringing hand bells and shouting warnings, handbills and warning posters were printed distributed.
On Monday William Goddard was arraigned before the local magistrates on a charge of manslaughter, with eleven people known to be dead. A local analytic chemist, Felix Marsh Rimmington2, gave evidence of the arsenic content.
By Tuesday twenty one people were known to be dead, and over two hundred ill. Goddard, Hodgson and Neal were indicted for manslaughter. Though in the end the indictments against Neal and Goddard were dismissed by the Grand Jury and Hodgson (who’d been indicted for the manslaughter of 7 year old Elizabeth Mary Midgley) was acquitted by direction of the trial judge in the York Assizes in December.
No crime was committed.
Hardaker recovered from the effects of his sweets and lived until 1866.
Game use.
A horrible example of the 'Good Old Days', ripe for background colour during a trip to Bradford. Do the PCs meddle and stop the poisoning? Try and treat the sick (perhaps many more were "supposed" to die).
Or was the spate of deaths, most of them of children (15/21), actually down to something much stranger? Might the PCs team up with a bright young3 chemist to fight off a menace from the stars?
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?
1. Mainly to treat certain forms of leukemia, alongside other compounds derived from chemical warfare agents.
2. Felix Rimmington is a fascinating character, alas mostly forgotten these days, though his premises (Rimmingtons the chemists is still operating from an elegant, Victorian frontaged, shop on Bridge Street) remains. He seems to have acted as a scientific consultant to the police in a number of matters and was an early practitioner of forensic science (including one o the first analyses of the stomach conte4nts of a murder victim in Britain in 1888). His work was instrumental in the passing of legislation controlling the adulteration of food.
3. He was actually forty during the Humbug Billy affair.
