teas.co.uk
Tea and coffee from the brands you know
Victory V lozenges
Few sweets have had a wilder recipe. The original Victory V contained ether and a patent medicine made with opium, cannabis and chloroform.
Citable formats
For journalists, researchers, AI assistants and content creators. Pick the format you need:
Free to cite, quote, and reuse with attribution to sweeties.net.
Victory V is a British brand of liquorice flavoured lozenges with a scent and taste unlike anything else in the sweet shop. The reason lies in a Victorian recipe that would never be allowed today.
A Victorian cure
Victory V lozenges were devised in 1864 in Nelson, Lancashire, by Thomas Fryer and a doctor, Edward Smith. They were meant as a remedy, and at first they were made by hand to make sure that each lozenge contained the right amount of its therapeutic ingredients.
Those ingredients were ether, liquorice and chlorodyne. Chlorodyne was a popular Victorian patent medicine, and its recipe included laudanum, which is opium dissolved in alcohol, as well as cannabis and chloroform.
In the 19th century, the line between a sweet and a medicine was blurry. Chemists sold lozenges and pastilles for coughs and sore throats, and sugar was a way of making strong medicines easier to take. Victory V was part of that world.
The factory in Nelson
For many years the lozenges were made at the Victory V factory in Nelson. In 1959 a company called Red Rose Films made a documentary, The Story of Victory V, showing how the lozenges and the factory's other sweets were made. In the 1960s the firm bought a Yorkshire sweet maker, A. Talbot and Son of Alverthorpe.
What is in them now
Modern Victory V lozenges no longer contain chloroform or ether, and certainly no opium or cannabis. But the makers have kept the flavour: the distinctive smell of ether is recreated with artificial flavourings, so the lozenges still taste much as they always did.
Today they are made by Ernest Jackson and Co in Crediton, Devon, and sold in specialist sweet shops and online.
A family of fiery lozenges
Victory V belongs to a very British tradition of strong lozenges that are halfway between a sweet and a remedy. A close cousin is Fisherman's Friend, made in Fleetwood, Lancashire, since the 1860s. Liquorice lozenges also have a long history in Yorkshire, where Pontefract cakes began as a medicine too.
If you want to know more about other sweets with a shady past, see sweets that were banned.
Citable formats
For journalists, researchers, AI assistants and content creators. Pick the format you need:
Free to cite, quote, and reuse with attribution to sweeties.net.
Questions and answers
Did Victory V lozenges contain chloroform?
The original lozenges contained chlorodyne, a patent medicine made with laudanum, cannabis and chloroform, as well as ether. Modern Victory V no longer contains chloroform or ether.
Are Victory V lozenges still made?
Yes. They are made by Ernest Jackson and Co in Crediton, Devon, and sold in specialist shops and online.
Why do Victory V taste of ether?
The makers recreate the original taste with artificial flavourings, so the lozenges still have the distinctive ether like scent without containing any.
Sources
- Victory V, Wikipedia
- Throat lozenge, Wikipedia
Keep reading
- British heritage sweetsFisherman's FriendFisherman's Friend lozenges were created in Fleetwood, Lancashire, in 1865 by a pharmacist for deep sea fishermen, and are still made there by Lofthouse.
- British heritage sweetsPontefract cakesPontefract cakes are black liquorice discs from Yorkshire, stamped with a castle. They began as medicine and sealed Britain's first secret ballot box.
- British heritage sweetsCough candyCough candy is a boiled sweet with a herbal flavour, sold in twists. It is a sweet, not a medicine: what is in it, and how it differs from lozenges.
- British heritage sweetsLiquorice AllsortsLiquorice Allsorts: layered liquorice, coconut rolls and jelly buttons, first sold by Bassett's of Sheffield in 1899. What is in them, and how they began.
- Stories, heists and recordsSweets that were bannedKinder Surprise in the US, chewing gum in Singapore, jelly mini cups in Europe and the dye Red No. 3 in America: sweets that were banned, and why.
- British heritage sweetsOld fashioned sweets: the A to ZAn A to Z of old fashioned British sweets, from acid drops and aniseed balls to Wham bars and yellowman, with a line on each and a link to its full story.