Cocoa and Chocolate | Page 6

ten to fifteen shillings per pound) a Frenchman opened the first chocolate-house in Queen's Head Alley, Bishopsgate Street. The rising popularity of chocolate led to the starting of more of these chocolate houses, at which one could sit and sip chocolate, or purchase the commodity for preparation at home. Pepys' entry in his diary for 24th November, 1664, contains: "To a coffee house to drink jocolatte, very good." It is an artless entry, and yet one can almost hear him smacking his lips. Silbermann says that "After the Restoration there were shops in London for the sale of chocolate at ten shillings or fifteen shillings per pound. Ozinda's chocolate house was full of aristocratic consumers. Comedies, satirical essays, memoirs and private letters of that age frequently mention it. The habit of using chocolate was deemed a token of elegant and fashionable taste, and while the charms of this beverage in the reigns of Queen Anne and George I. were so highly esteemed by courtiers, by lords and ladies and fine gentlemen in the polite world, the learned physicians extolled its medicinal virtues." From the coffee house and its more aristocratic relative the chocolate house, there developed a new feature in English social life--the Club. As the years passed the Chocolate House remained a rendezvous, but the character of its habitués changed from time to time. Thus one, famous in the days of Queen Anne, and well known by its sign of the "Cocoa Tree," was at first the headquarters of the Jacobite party, and the resort of Tories of the strictest school. It became later a noted gambling house ("The gamesters shook their elbows in White's and the chocolate houses round Covent Garden," National Review, 1878), and ultimately developed into a literary club, including amongst its members Gibbon, the historian, and Byron, the poet.

Tax on Cacao.
The growing consumption of chocolate did not escape the all-seeing eye of the Chancellors of England. As early as 1660 we find amongst various custom and excise duties granted to Charles II:
"For every gallon of chocolate, sherbet, and tea made and sold, to be paid by the maker thereof ..... 8d."
Later the raw material was also made a source of revenue. In The Humble Memorial of Joseph Fry, of Bristol, Maker of Chocolate, which was addressed to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury in 1776 (Messrs. Fry and Sons are the oldest English firm of chocolate makers, having been founded in 1728), we read that "Chocolate ... pays two shillings and threepence per pound excise, besides about ten shillings per hundredweight on the Cocoa Nuts from which it is made."
In 1784 a preferential customs rate was proposed in favour of our Colonies. This they enjoyed for many years before 1853, when the uniform rate, until recently in force, was introduced. This restrictive tariff on foreign growths rose in 1803 to 5s. 10d. per pound, against 1s. 10d. on cacao grown in British possessions. From this date it gradually diminished. High duties hampered for many years the sale of cocoa, tea and coffee, but in recent times these duties have been brought down to more reasonable figures. For many years before 1915 the import duty was 1d. per pound on the raw cacao beans, 1d. per pound on cacao butter, and 2s. a hundredweight (less than a farthing a pound) on cacao shells or husks. In the Budget of September, 1915, the above duties were increased by fifty per cent. A further and greater increase was made in the Budget of April, 1916, when cacao was made to pay a higher tax in Britain than in any other country in the world. In 1919 Imperial preference was introduced after a break of over sixty years, the duty on cocoa from foreign countries being 3/4d. a pound more than that from British Possessions.
Duty on Cacao.
1855-1915. 1915. 1916. 1919. Cacao beans per lb. 1d. 1-1/2d. 6d. 4-1/2d. foreign, 3-3/4d. British Cacao butter per lb. 1d. 1-1/2d. 6d. 4-1/2d. foreign, 3-3/4d. British Cacao shells per cwt. 2s. 3s. 12s. 6s. foreign, 5s. British
In considering this duty and its effect on the price of the finished article, it should be remembered that there are substantial losses in manufacture. Thus the beans are cleaned, which removes up to 0.5 per cent.; roasted, which causes a loss by volatilisation of 7 per cent.; and shelled, the husks being about 12 per cent. Therefore, the actual yield of usable nib, which has to bear the whole duty, is about 80 per cent. It may be well to add that the yield of cocoa powder is 48 per cent. of the raw beans, or roughly, one pound of the raw product yields half a pound of the finished article.

Introduction of Cocoa Powder.
The drink "cocoa" as we know it to-day was not introduced until 1828.