Pass the tea, bag. The subject of tea consuming in the 19th century...

Caddyshack.

Originating in China, tea was taken for medicinal and restorative purposes for an age before the British began daintily sipping it. Tea reached the U.K by way of Dutch and Portuguese traders around the 17th century. Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II, was noted as a great lover and advocate of tea drinking, and was at least partially responsible for bringing tea to the British court. 

Tea continued to be advertised as curing a number of ails, as well as generally keeping one in fine fettle and reviving energy levels. Prior to the Victorian era, tea could be purchased in trendy coffee houses, and eventually, tea began, at least for a period, to supersede alcoholic beverages in popularity. This naturally displeased the Government, who wished patrons of such establishments to be guzzling alcohol, the sales of which were the source of quite a lucrative income. So naturally, they imposed a heavy tax upon tea, and so, the tea smuggling industry was born; Scandanavian traders delivered tea to British shores, where it still proved rather costly and lots of dirty business went on-it was often laced with other bits and bobs to bulk it out, and some folk weren't opposed to using the leaves, adding them to fresh batches and selling them on.

Finally, the tax was abolished, and the nighttime business of tea smuggling abated. It's likely that merchants still sold on used, old leaves and bulked out their goods with goodness knows what, and so came the Food and Drug Act of 1875, where severe penalties were handed out to those found tampering with tea.

Are these tea caddies quite divine? Two examples are predate Victoria, but we won't let that bother us, because look how exquisitely made they are. The traditional caddies most know of today were borne out of the 18th century, were available in any number of shapes and designs and served the purpose of keeping one's tea safe from nosy, thieving household help (that's not to condemn all servants of pilfering through their Master or Mistresses goods) and retaining the freshness of the leaves.

Caddies (single, double and triple) were made of wood, tin, silver or wood veneered with tortoiseshell, horn, ivory, horn, papier mache, straw. The list of fancy finishes is ceaseless, as were the decorative techniques. Ladies of the upper crust often whittled away their time painstakingly decorating caddies, because why not? The beauty of these caddies, and the high level of craftsmanship attests to the importance of taking tea in the 18th and 19th centuries.