A nobleman doesn’t have the time for a formal dinner

The knack of being in the right place at the right time is something to be envied. In the modern world, it’s arguably a gift that is more important than talent and nearly as useful as being well connected or, if you want to be prime minister, going to Eton.

It’s fair to say that, on many occasions in his lifetime, John Montagu (who did go to Eton), was in the right place at the right time but was simply the wrong man, particularly when it came to affairs of state. The political life of the 4th Earl of Sandwich is littered with fiascos so dire they would make any modern government minister proud. It culminated in his mismanagement of the fleet while First Lord of the Admiralty, which played a major part in the loss to Britain of its colonies in the United States (though, with hindsight, that may have been no bad thing).

Thankfully for him, he had other arrows in his quiver. He was captain of the Huntingdonshire county cricket team. As sponsor of Captain Cook’s second and third voyages, he wound up with a good scattering of islands named in his honour, including two Montague Islands (off Australia and Alaska, respectively, and both with an additional ‘e’), the South Sandwich Islands in the southern Atlantic and the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii). Most memorably, though, he also gave his name to an item of food.

The popular story told about Montagu’s association with the sandwich is that he was engaged in an epic game of poker one evening in November 1762. Unable to drag himself from the cards to eat dinner, he is said to have asked a flunky to bring him a piece of meat between two slices of bread – a snack his gambling chums are also said to have eaten quite frequently. If so, presumably their idea was that the bread absorbed the juices of the meat, thus keeping the hands clean for playing and saving the cards themselves from being unwittingly marked by traces of blood or grease.

However, according to Sandwich’s biographer, N.A.M. Rodger, it’s rather more likely that he made this request to one of his servants while diligently working away at his desk.

John Montagu and (possibly) his gambling circle were by no means the first people to have come up with the idea of using bread as a convenient receptacle for some other ingredient. The Romans were said to be partial to tidbits wrapped in bread, while in the Arabic world, pita breads stuffed with various fillings had been eaten for centuries before Sandwich came along. He wasn’t even the first Briton to hit upon the idea of clapping something in sliced bread. In 1748, a courtesan called Fanny Murray, who happened to include the earl among her clientèle, famously took the £20 note she had been given by one Sir Richard Atkins in payment for her services, slipped it between two slices of bread and butter and ate it contemptuously in front of him. Evidently, she had been expecting rather greater compensation for her favours. Since £20 back then is worth about £2,800 today, she may not only have eaten one of the first sandwiches ever made but also the most expensive.

On account of Sandwich’s fame – he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty no fewer than three times – his ways with bread became widely publicised and the ‘sandwich’ soon caught on both in the beau monde as well as the lower rungs of society in Britain and throughout the Empire. Today they habitually form the cornerstone of picnics and packed lunches, there are chain restaurants dedicated to them, and there is barely a corner of the globe where this light meal is not known in some form.

Without the sandwich, there would, of course, be no toasted sandwich-maker. The first one was invented by American Charles Champion in the 1920s and marketed as the Tostwich. However, it was only in the ’70s that Australian John O’Brien came up with the toasted sandwich-maker as we know it today, with its clamp action that seals the filling safely within the bread. The company for whom he set up a research and development wing, Breville, has gone on to sell tens of millions of his product. Thanks to him and John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, people all around the world have the opportunity of biting into a freshly toasted sandwich and squealing in pain as they burn the roof of their mouths off.