Genre:

Letter, Spoof

Subjects:

Crime, Medical Treatment, Adulteration, Government

    Noting the apparent link between the reduced frequency of garotting and the 'assignment of flogging to those crimes', suggests that the same punishment should be used for those who supply adulterated lime-juice to the Royal Navy. Notes that in a letter to The Times, Henry Leach, the 'resident medical officer to the Dreadnought hospital-ship', explains how lime-juice supplied to the navy is made from 'tartaric and other acid'. The author regards this adulterated substance as 'good-for-nothing rubbish' and the act of producing and supplying it 'a heartless fraud'. While he tolerates the lenient punishments given for 'ordinary acts of cheating and swindling', believes the manufacture of 'sham lime juice', which allows 'multitudes' to 'rot and die' of a 'dreadful disease', should be punished by whipping. Concludes by contemplating with abhorrence the prospect of flogging the 'chief proprietor of those extensive works, a sleek, smooth, gentleman in a suit of black', and suggests that neither Mr Punch nor anybody else could tolerate this eventuality. He adds that he could not stand this, as his 'hatred of a rascal is less intense than his veneration for a person whose deportment and exterior are those of a respectable man'.