‘“A Dangerous Revolutionary Force Amongst Us”: Conceptualising Working-Class Tea Drinking in the British Isles, c.1860-1900’

Histories of British tea consumption have highlighted how the substance acted as an index of middle-class civility and marker of national identity. In this article, I maintain that concerns regarding surrounding tea also with this perspective throughout the late nineteenth century. As medical practitioners increasingly intervened in food matters, apprehension regarding the physical consequences of increased access to tea amongst working-class communities proliferated. Ultimately, discussion of tea became closely embroiled with wider debates regarding national decline, physical and mental deterioration, the subversion of gender roles in the domestic sphere and Imperial expansion.