Peppermint (Mentha x piperita), an indigenous natural hybrid of water mint and spearmint, was first cultivated here in the late seventeenth century. Britain’s epicentre of peppermint cultivation was Mitcham and its environs, nestling in the Wandle’s sleepy headwaters, it provided perfect conditions for the plant to flourish.
Of the 250 acres cultivated by physic gardeners in Mitcham, freeholders who grew medicinal plants, such as lavender, wormwood, camomile, aniseed, rhubarb, and liquorice, more than one hundred were given over to peppermint, according to David Lyson’s The Environs of London vol 1 – County of Surrey (1792). “Forty years since, “he observed, “a few acres only were employed in the cultivation of medicinal herbs in this parish. Perhaps there is no place where it is now so extensive”.
Peppermint was harvested during July and August with yields of around four to six tons of oil per acre. The plant’s size was no indicator of how much oil it would produce. “When the summer has proved wet and cold”, a writer in the Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal, Volume IX (1875-6) noted, ”the plants, although bulky, have been known to produce only a small proportion of oil, and in other years, when the season has been warm and dry, the reverse has been the case, and small plants have yielded a double quantity of oil”. The aroma of peppermint was a distinctive feature of Mitcham’s lanes.
In Lyson’s day the peppermint was sold fresh to be distilled into oil elsewhere but by the early 19th century Mitcham and Wallington had their own stills, smoke from their chimneys billowing into the sky during the harvest season. Even the celebrated Bond Street perfumer, Messrs. Piesse and Lubin, had a distillery on the high road to Mitcham.
As well as for its scent, peppermint was valued for its medicinal properties, the Egyptians using it as a digestive aid and a cure for stomach pains caused by flatulence. By the 18th century it had become a panacea for a wide range of ailments from nausea, vomiting, respiratory infections, and menstrual disorders to cholera, diarrhoea, and laryngitis. It made its first appearance in Sir Hans Sloane’s London Pharmacopoiea in 1721, the definitive list of drugs that English chemists were authorised to sell.
From mediaeval times peppermint was also used as an anaesthetic for toothache and as a mouth freshener, either chewed raw or mixed with vinegar and taken as a mouthwash. The wide availability of sugar in the 18th century led to a dramatic rise in dental decay, fuelling a demand for breath fresheners. Mitcham peppermint made hay, Lysons noting that “it being much used in making a cordial well-known to the dram-drinkers”.
Initially, these early mouth fresheners were taken in liquid form, making them inconvenient for maintaining fresh breath when out and about. In 1780 a confectioner based in Fell Street in the City of London, William Smith, hit upon the idea of making lozenges from sugar, gum arabic, oil of peppermint, gelatin, and glucose syrup.
Called Altoids and marketed as a “stomach calmative to relieve intestinal discomfort”, they were considerably stronger than other mint products around at the time, thanks to the generous quantity of real peppermint oil called for in the recipe. Portable and convenient to take, these curiously strong mints soon became popular both for their medicinal properties and as a piece of confectionary to maintain fresh breath. Altoids, still using the original recipe, remain one of our leading mints.
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