$7.00 a pound, inclusive of a government tax of $1.25 on each
pound, and the consumption in England was then estimated at
140,000 lbs. per annum.

There being no authentic record or official computation of the
population of Great Britain or of England previous to 1801, no
comparison can be made of English tea consumption per capta with
those early days.

Dr. Samuel Johnson, when taking tea with David Garrick, the
tragedian, and Peg Woffington, about the year 1735, was amused at
Garrick's audible complaints that the fascinating actress used
too much of his costly tea at a drawing. In 1745 the British
yearly consumption of tea was but 730,000 lbs. The Scotch Judge,
Duncan Forbes, in his published letters of that period, wrote
that the use of tea had become so excessive, that . . .

"the meanest families, even of laboring people, particularly in
boroughs, make their morning's meal of it, and thereby disuse the
ale which heretofore was their accustomed drink; and the same
drug supplies all the laboring women with their afternoon's
entertainment, to the exclusion of the twopenny," (i.e., dram of
beer or spirits).

So that we may trace our ultra-fashionable 5 o'clock tea of 1900
back to its plebian origin among plain working people, to the
working woman, to the washerwoman of 150 years ago. Let the
revived custom not lose caste by this admission, but rather gain
in wholesome popular estimation by evidence of a common tie
between the humblest and the most fortunate of mankind.