BILL PERKINS, a Democratic state senator who represents Harlem, has introduced legislation that would ban eating in the New York City subway system and fine first-time violators $250 (twice that for repeat offenders). Mr. Perkins and his allies — including the local transit workers’ union — argue, not unreasonably, that eating on the subway breeds rats.

It’s far from clear that the proposed ban would be enforceable, or would do enough to overcome cutbacks in cleaning stations and tracks. Worse, the claim that noshing leads to litter and filth harks back to racial and class stereotypes from the Victorian era. In those days, social reformers tried to crack down on working-class public eaters and food vendors — many of whom were immigrants — by linking them to squalor, disease and shame.

To 19th-century guardians of public morality, the newfangled habit of eating outside the home was a menace to body and soul. The oyster stalls of downtown Manhattan were an assault on the family values of the dinner table. The “hot-corn girls” who sold their wares on the streets were no better than prostitutes. Public eating was a gateway sin that led to drinking and debauchery.

“Eating in public may beget a certain freedom of manner and nonchalance in little ladies and gentlemen,” Putnam’s magazine warned in 1853, “but we fear the practice is not calculated to promote the health either of the mind or the body.” For children, the magazine hinted darkly, eating in public was worse than unhealthy — it was bad for their morals.