History of tea.qxp_Layout 1 24/05/2017 15:42 Page 2
TEA | TIME
Above, The Public Breakfast by Thomas Rowlandson, 1798, © Victoria Art Gallery / BANES Council, and overglaze enamel tea caddy, c1683 – 1700, © Museum of East Asian Art Below, Tea bowl and saucer, Chelsea Porcelain Factory, 1752 – 1756; chocolate cup, cover and saucer, ChelseaDerby Porcelain Factory, about 1770; coffee cup and saucer, Chelsea Porcelain Factory, 1752 – 1756, © Holburne Museum
employers, they should also have an allowance for tea written in to their contracts. By the mid-18th century, Bath had become a popular resort for the wealthy to visit and tea played an essential part in the social scene. Tea rooms opened allowing the social elite somewhere respectable to go in the day time to socialise, and prominent visitors to the city would also host public breakfasts at the Assembly Rooms or one of the open gardens where visitors and residents were invited to take tea. To meet the sheer demand, 672 tea dealers were registered in Bath and Bristol in 1784, out of a possible 1,769 shopkeepers in the area.
MEDICINAL QUALITIES When it was first introduced to the British market in the 17th century tea was advertised as a tonic. It was thought to benefit a person’s health, as seen in a broadsheet commissioned by coffee house owner Thomas Garraway in the mid-17th century. It stated that tea was good at “persevering perfect health until extreme old age” and “good for clearing the sight.” Tea could also be used to treat “gripping of the guts, cold, dropsies, scurvys and it could make the body active and lusty.” Medical writers promoted the
benefits of drinking tea, including Cornelius Bontago who recommended people drink between 15 and a staggering 250 cups of tea a day in 1685. However, there is evidence that the East India Company may have been paying certain writers of the day to overexaggerate the health benefits of tea in order to increase sales.
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Tea could “make the body active and lusty . . .”
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TIME FOR TEA: Opposite, A Lady taking Tea, Charles Christian Rosenberg (1745 – 1844), painted on glass, after 1795, and tea kettle, lamp and stand, silver, fruitwood handle, William Shaw and William Preist, London, 1755/56, both © Holburne Museum
Despite the supposed medicinal qualities, there were others who were sceptical about the increase in tea consumption. 17th century physician Simon Paulli stated that tea “hastens the death of those that drink it, especially if they have passed the age of 40 years,” while philanthropist Jonas Hanway wrote in 1758 that working class women who drank tea were “neglecting their spinning, knitting etc, spending what their husbands are labouring hard for, their children are in rage, gnawing a brown crust, while these gossips are canvassing over the affairs of the whole town . . .” These fears surrounding the consumption of tea by the working classes continued into the late 18th and 19th centuries. With the rise of the Methodist movement and what some considered to be the “battle for temperance” over the supposed unruly working classes, Methodist John Wesley believed that tea and coffee could have the same effects as alcohol on the body and mind. In his book Primitive Physick (1747), he wrote that tea and coffee “are extremely hurtful to persons who
have weak nerves”, and suggested that people drink “small weak beer” instead.
MORALE BOOSTER Tea had become an integral part of British people’s lives, so when the First World War broke out in 1914 the government believed that tea was an incredibly important commodity that could boost morale, and therefore oversaw the importing of tea to make sure that everyone in society had access to it. Similarly in the Second World War, the government moved the tea warehouses from along the River Thames to somewhere considered safe from foreign attacks, as ministers realised how important this drink was to the state of the nation. There were even jokes made that if Hitler had been able to prevent the imports of tea to Britain during the war, then the British may have surrendered early on in the conflict. While teabags were created in the USA in the early 20th century and quickly became popular, it wasn’t until after the Second World War that they started to catch on in Britain. As technology developed, Brits turned their backs on cleaning out their teapots and began using the simplified teabag for their brews. Tetley became the first big brand to advertise teabags in the 1950s and other brands soon caught onto the craze. Nowadays teabags have their own dedicated spaces in our kitchens at home and work, and they make up around 96 per cent of the British tea market. Time to put the kettle on again methinks . . . n To find out about the best places for afternoon tea in and around Bath, turn to page 56.
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June 2017
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TheBATHMagazine 55