97,500,000,000 CUPS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4046, 11 May 1938, Page 8

97,500,000,000 CUPS

THE ENGLISH AS TEA DRINKERS We congratulate the “Daily Telegraph and Morning .Post” on its recent excellent supplement on Empire Tea, writes a London contemporary. The subject is of prime interest to a nation which has the reputation for brewing the worst coffee and the best tea in the world. Its interest to London may be assessed by two statements in this supplement: Sir Alfred D. Pickford, chairman of the International Tea Market Expansion Board, mentions that British subjects drink 97,500,000,000 cups of tea every year; what this means to the Capital is explained by the Hon. W. Ormsby-Gore, Secretary of State for the Colonies, who says that London is the principal tea market of the world. Various articles in the supplement convey in lyical phrases the theme that the tea pot is firmly enshrined among the lares and penates of British households. Mr. Basil Lubbock contributes a short article on the tea clipper ships and describes the famous 1866 tea race between Taepang, Ariel and Serica. At the end of the race Ariel arrived outside the East India Dock gates at 9p. m. on September 5. Taeping did not reach the London docks until 10 p.m., but as she was a smaller ship drawing less water she actually docked 20 minutes before her rival. Serica was hauled through into the West India Dock just as the gates were being closed at 11.30 p.m. Last year 454,000,000 lbs. of tea were imported into the Port of London, representing 93 per cent, of all the tea brought into the United Kingdom.