Cartoon 210 - Cream of the Valley, Registered Dairy Illustration of an incident at a dairy, depicting an overweight farmer being led away by a stern magistrate. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries the adulteration of milk with water was a common problem in Britain and Ireland. Demand was high in the cities for milk, and rich farmers were seen as adulterating their milk with water to make higher profits at the expense of the working classes. In 1860 a bill was passed in parliament to try to curb the practice of adulteration of foodstuffs. Sir Charles Cameron was one of the few public analysts in Britain and Ireland, and in this role he was particularly active in sampling milk for adulterations. In the 1860s he tested five times the number of milk samples as the rest of the UK put together. [1900-1910]