Taken from …   The Yorkshire Evening Post 1892

       DEATH FROM SNUFF POISONING

Mr. A. Braxton Hicks on Wednesday resumed and concluded his enquiry at Kensington Town Hall into the circumstances of the death of John Fitzgibbons , aged 43 years, a general labourer, lately residing at 38, Crescent Street, Notting Dale, Kensington, who died under suspicious circumstances.

Dr. Thomas Stevenson. analyst to the Home Office, now stated that he had analysed the contents of the stomach,and found  the cause of death to be snuff poisoning.

The Coroner said it was to be regretted that they could not find the man that had put the snuff in the deceased’s beer.

It might have been done in a joke; but persons administering a noxious drug, as this was, to another would be guilty of either murder or manslaughter.

The jury returned a verdict of “Manslaughter” against some person or persons unknown.

    …

Tekno asked for some stories of deaths and accidents at snuff mills etc…  It would seem that snuff mills are very safe places to work as so far I haven’t found any suitable stories.        So snuff related deaths are the next best thing , but I will continue searching.

ahahaha sorry that is a little funny. How do you not notice your beer filled up with snuff, no matter how drunk you are. You would need to drink a fair bit of it and somehow not throw up when the nausea kicks in.

Great piece of information ArtChoo

Good find, ArtChoo! First time I have heard of someone being poisoned by snuff. Poor guy.

So did someone put poisoned snuff in his beer? You cant die of nicotine poisoning from eating snuff, dip is way stronger than snuff and people swallow the juice all the time and dont die of poisoning. And most of the snuff you take works its way down your throat and into your stomach ( its how your body keeps your nasal passages clean) and we arent dead.

I thought along the same lines.   Nicotine is definitely a poison. 

 I don’t know about nowadays but when I was younger a nicotine wash was applied to fruit trees as an insecticide.   I have also read of it being used on sheep to clear insect eggs from their noses.  It must be a question of the size of the dose. When I take tobacco snuff these days not much goes down my throat and then only with the finer snuffs. The bulk of the waste snuff goes into a tissue the same way it went in.

Pewter tankards still existed in public houses in those days and strong dark brown/black porter was still in its heyday.

The 1st world war and resulting grain shortage in the UK  had not yet happened, when it did beer strength would be reduced because of the grain shortages. The UK brewers did and still do import grain for flour and brewing in huge quantities from the USA, Australia and the Continent. German U boats upset things quite a bit.

So strong ales, pewter pots and possibly a few pints under his belt already, may have masked the snuff in his ale.

^While all those thing might contribute to masking the snuff, I would guess the amount needed would make the beer into a slurry. I wonder if he was poisoned some other way and just happened to be a snuff taker. They didn’t have the same CSI abilities we have today and would look to physical evidence vice chemical analysis for the most part. I sniff back enough snuff every day that I’m sure it’s a good percentage of my stomach contents.

Nicotine is water soluble, and it is conceivable, even if it is unlikely, that someone who is pissed as a lord might not notice a bloody great dollop of snuff in their beer. Nicotine poisoning is also entirely possible. Add the two together, and it does sound feasible - although you would imagine they would notice. Now let’s imagine that some poor innebriated soul goes to take a pinch and drops his snuff box in his tankard. He fishes out his now empty snuffbox, and decides that there’s no way that either his 10g of snuff, or his pint of ale is going to waste, and quaffs it anyway. All the while the full potency of the snuff is leaching out into the ale making a ready diluted potion yielding the full potency of several grams worth of snuff administered in a matter of minutes. To be that sounds quite believable!

I saw a documentary about twenty years ago about mass produced cigarettes.

In it they said that the nicotine was washed out of the tobacco and then put back into it at the chosen rate to give the strength of nicotine required for that particular product. Thereby producing brand cigarettes of a uniform strength.  Smokers will be familiar with the various brands being consistently strong, medium or week in strength.

Could it be that in the good old days snuff was made from full strength tobacco and nowadays the nicotine is removed and reinstated at the required strength for the particular snuff?

We may now be taking a milder product than was made years ago.  Just like beer.

I think part of the new EEC regulations mention stating the strength of nicotine content. I could be wrong on that.  But if a standard has to be met for modern snuffs, what could be easier than washing out and reinstating the nicotine to the required level.

I think we need input to this post from one of the major snuff manufacturers to know if washing takes place with snuff tobacco.   Or would they possibly shy away from discussing their techniques?

The only case I know of where anything like this happens with snuff, is one of Johnny’s (SWS) blends, where he boils some leaves down to produce a sauce to fortify the leaves used in the snuff.

@ArtChoo I would be quite suprised if any of the snuff manufacturors do anything beyond pulverizing, fermenting and scenting their tobacco. This industry is so small that the ‘big’ manufacturors are very traditional and are not far removed from more artisan manufacturors. There is a respect for tobacco as it is in this small field, it isn’t simply a nicotine delivery system like ready roll cigarettes are. As for beer which is my other passion and vice, the beer I buy and the beer I brew are actually significantly stronger than traditional english ales that usually clocked in somewhere between 3-5% abv depending on style. Hardly knee knockers.

SandwichIsles    

Nice to meet a fellow brewer.  

  I am only small scale at about four and a half gallons at a time and all grain brewing, with the very occasional kit.

Three or four years ago I brewed a Russian Stout with an original gravity (O.G.) of  1.092 and this finished fermenting at 1.022 giving about 9% alcohol by volume for the final beer.

From old recipes and peoples modern takes on them, original gravities averaging 1.080 for ordinary beers were the norm. 

 Our modern 3-5% beers with O.G.s of 1.030-1.040 were just table beers for use instead of dodgy well and pump water.

Beers of around 1.050  O.G. had a market but a lot were up at 1.090 plus.

Grain supply was not a problem, so gravities could be high. As I pointed out earlier war time restrictions led to less grain being available and weaker beers being made.  Alcohol levels steadily declined to the stuff we drink in the UK now.  They never went back up.

A few examples of old recipes …140/- Ale  1810    Brakspear’s    O.G. 1.100

XXXXX Ale  1903  Hammond’s United Breweries, Bradford      O.G.1.102

Dorchester Ale  circa 1800     O.G. 1.100

Old Burton Ale   1824    The Young Brewers Monitor    O.G.1.145

Yorkshire keeping beer  1763  Chatham Brewery   O.G. 1.134

I hope the non brewers are still with me and just a brief explanation for them.

In beer brewing the grain is processed to release the sugars. The yeast is added to the resulting liquid and ferments the sugars into alcohol.  The More sugars in the liquid at the start of fermentation, the more can be converted to alcohol.   So a high original specific gravity(O.G.) means more sugar, more sugar equals more alcohol fermented out. and so stronger beer.

As for Yorkshire Keeping Beer…  Keeping Beers were brewed  in winter and kept in store for use in the hot summer months in the UK.  Beer needs to be fermented at controlled temperatures, too hot and off flavours develop, in the good old days we had no refrigeration plants to cool the fermentation in hot summer weathers.   High alcohol beers inhibited infection in the product. So beer was brewed in winter and stored for summer distribution. Some porters were matured in huge vats for three to four years. Costly storage had to be provided. Low alcohol quick turnaround beers were a boon to brewers and cheaper to the public.

The old recipes had incredible high gravities compared to todays commercial beers. So beers of old were a lot stronger than todays. 

My Russian Porter at 1.092 O.G. and alcohol level by volume of 9% gives you an idea of how strong beers were in those days.

If  SandwichIsles is looking for a good book of old, strong recipes you couldn’t do better than  a booklet published by a British Brewing Circle as follows.

Old British Beers and How To Make them

by Dr. John Harrison and Members of    The Durden Park Beer Circle.

It also has a good amount of history for such a small book.

Well worth a look at their website,  they had a couple of their recipes on it the last time I looked and their booklet was a very good buy with about 130 recipes for named old beers.

A word of warning, some need maturing for over a year.

Another book I have is The Home Brewers Guide to Vintage  Beer. by  Ron Pattinson.

Lots of strong named ale recipes balanced with an equal amount of history.

In conclusion…  I think the beer was pretty strong in those days.

       I rest my case M’lud.

It seems I over-simplified…

=))

I’ve chopped (harvested) tobacco as a child and also as a young man.  It never made me ill as a young man (I was a cigarette smoker way back then), but as a kid I got “Green Tobacco Sickness” a couple times when they had us out there too early in the morning and the dew was on the plants. 

SandwichIsles

I am like an old woman, when I start talking I can’t stop.

I got a bit carried away with the subject.  What’s more  I am a two finger typist and its a bit of a slog putting all that down on paper.   I think I should get to the point sooner next time.

As for Durden Park Beer Circle their club is still going and they still have that booklet for sale.

If you should buy it, a small warning.   It is not obvious but their recipes are for one gallon brews.

When you see how much grain goes into one gallon you will realise just how strong their beers are.

www.durdenpark.org.uk  is where you will find them.

Cheers.

50ft_trad

I cant make out if your smiley is someone dying of snuff poisoning or dying from boredom with my last, long winded,  beer strength post.

Cheers.

I brew RIS, Barleywine and Strong Dark ale in 1 gallon batches sometimes, it is truly amazing how much grain per gallon for HG beer.

SandwichIsles

Looks like I am trying to teach my granny how to suck eggs.

Brewing, fishing and snuffing , can’t beat em.

Part of the report from

Worcestershire Chronicle 1892

Dr. Stevenson, analyst to the Home Office, said he analysed the contents of the stomach and found traces of snuff.  The tongue, larynx and adjacent parts were intensely reddened and there were fragments of the same powder adherent to the parts. The contents of the bladder also yielded traces of tobacco. The cause of death was snuff poisoning.

Interesting history. And a good caution to keep your snuff tins away from pets, small children and your beer. On the flip side, if you like beer, then do put a fresh hop flower in your tin overnight if you have access to fresh hops (I grow them in my garden).

@ArtChoo I have a theory of how he died. Possibly back in 1892 they were using snuffs that could go rancid quite quickly, having snuffed a bit would make you quite sick though ingesting a larger amount most probably would kill you. This was before toxicology testing and cause of death was ruled through observation. Snuff poisoning may not be poisoning from the Nicotine in the snuff which we all initially assumed though, Snuff poisoning from a rancid snuff. Even if they coroner knew that it was rancid snuff causing the death, the cause of death would still be listed as snuff poisoning.

Let’s not rule out the possibility that the coroner didn’t have the foggiest and was making a wild guess.

^^^ youre right, also possibly methanol or ethanol poisoning.

ANOTHER SNUFF POISONING.

Taken from               The Bolton Evening News.      August 1877

             ROBBERY IN HOUSE OF ILL-FAME

At Liverpool, yesterday, two women named Mary Brogan and Mary Murphy were brought up on remand, charged with administering a noxious drug to Mathew Dunn, and robbing him of a purse and eight pounds.

It appears that Murphy kept a disreputable house in Springfield-Place, Liverpool, and the other prisoner is an improper person.  On the night of the 9th. inst., while in Murphy’s  house, Brogan gave Dunn some beer to drink, soon after he drank it he became dizzy and stupid, and cried out that he was poisoned.  He called out for the police, and then missed the eight pound.  Brogan denied the robbery and that she put anything into the beer; but on the way to the bridewell she said that Murphy sent for a pennyworth of snuff, which she (Brogan) put into the pint of beer after a glass of it was taken out for Murphy’s husband.  Brogan then gave the beer to prosecutor.  Murphy denied all knowledge of the snuff being put into the liquor. Dr,Brady, of the Southern Dispensary, who analysed a portion of the liquor that had been given to Dunn, said that he found in the beer submitted to him sufficient snuff to poison a man.  The prisoners were remanded for seven days.

Found Guilty.

Taken from                       Derby Mercury     October 1877

                                          ACCIDENTS AND OFFENCES.

Sentence of five years’ penal servitude was passed at the Liverpool sessions on Mary Brogan, convicted of having administered snuff in beer to Mathew Dunn, with the object of robbery.

Wlll thats that then. You can be poisoned by snuff. It was probably Guinness so they didnt notice then excess sediment :P