The
most obvious public legacy of the anti-opium movement was _the image of
the opium `den‘ and of Chinese opium smoking in the East End of London
which it helped to form. This emerged at the end of the century and has
remained very much of a popular stereotype. The creation of the myth of
the mysterious threatening `den‘ in the back streets of the East End
had much to do with the moral campaign and the issues it raised.
The
anti-opium campaign drew attention to what was an expanding yet
curiously isolated alien community. There had been Chinese in Stepney
as early as the 1780s. But there were only a handful at this period and
throughout the first sixty years of the following century. The Chinese
who came to this country were seamen, and their presence was
transient.‘ Consciousness of the Chinese in England and of their opium
smoking was related to increased Chinese immigration. It is clear that
the number of Chinese settling in London began to expand quite rapidly
in the 1860s. In 1861, there were an estimated 147 Chinese in the whole
country, by 1881, 665. Another influx came just prior to the First
World War. Most lived in London. In 1891, 302 China-born aliens out of
a total of 582 were resident there. Many, in particular in the early
years of permanent settlement, lived in the East End, in Stepney and
Poplar. In 1881, 6o per cent of London Chinese lived in these two
boroughs .2 London’s `Chinatown‘ was a small area in comparison to its
American counterparts. The Chinese who settled in England serviced
Chinese seamen by establishing laundries, shops, grocers, restaurants
and lodging houses. Their American counterparts were employed in
railroad construction, company mining, farming or the manufacturing
industries of San Francisco.3 The centre of English settlement lay in
two narrow streets of dilapidated houses, now destroyed by bombing and
redevelopment – Pennyfields and Limehouse Causeway. The Chinese formed
a small, sealed community, isolated by culture, language and the
transience of their stay from the surrounding neighbourhood.
Opium
smoking as a domestic phenomenon never attracted attention until the
last decades of the century, for even the longevity debate took its
examples from the Far East. But descriptions of opium smoking as a
domestic phenomenon did begin in the 1860s. This was a reflection of
the greater numbers of Chinese actually settling in the country, and of
the general fashion for investigation of `darkest England‘, and East
London in particular. The early presentations of opium smoking in the
East End were notable for their calm descriptions of the practice.
Attention was drawn to the growing alien community by the Prince of
Wales’s visit to East London in the 1 860s; and among the first
descriptions of domestic opium smoking was that in London Society in
1868 which described the den he had been to in New Court, off Victoria
Street in Bluegate Fields. Here lived Chi Ki, a Chinese married to an
English wife, who had played host to the Prince .4 Such descriptions
had an air of realism. The dens were `mean and miserable‘, squalid and
poor, but not mysterious or threatening. A visitor to another den found
the Chinese company he kept a ‚pleasant looking, good tempered lot‘,
while the room in which the smoking took place was clean and tidy. He
admired the skill with which the opium was prepared for smoking, and
wondered if the practice could be given wider application: `It might be
useful if the subject were investigated by medical men, to see if opium
smoking might not be found a convenient way of administering the drug
to patients who otherwise cannot take it without the stomach being
upset‘.5
Dickens‘ famous description of opium smoking in New Court
in his unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) marked the beginning of
a more melodramatic presentation of the subject. The author and Fields,
his American friend, had witnessed opium smoking in Bluegate Fields. In
his fictional presentation of the subject, Dickens emphasized the links
with mystery and evil, the degrading and demoralizing effect of the
drug’s use on both English and Chinese smokers, which became such a
feature of later descriptions.6 The den as a haunt of evil, the evil
and cunning Chinaman wreathed in opium fumes had their origin as public
images in the 1870s. In the popular press, in social investigations
like Blanchard Jerrold and Gustave Dore’s London, A Pilgrimage (1872),
in fictional and literary presentations, the Sherlock Holmes stories,
and perhaps most notably, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray
(1891), the practice of East End opium smoking was presented in a
manner soon accepted as reality. Descriptions of the `fantastic
postures on the ragged mattresses. The twisted limbs, the gaping
mouths, the staring lustreless eyes. ..’were commonplace. Those who
read that `Upon the wreck of a four-post bedstead … upon a mattress
heaped with indescribable clothes, lay, sprawling, a lascar dead-drunk
with opium… It was difficult to see any humanity on that face, as the
enormous grey dry lips lapped about the rough wood pipe and drew in the
poison‘ were unlikely to remain sanguine about the practice.‘ Not all
writers were so obviously hostile; yet from the 1870s an increasing
tone of racial and cultural hostility was discernible.8
The question
of the harmfulness and general effects of opium smoking was an
important part of the anti-opium debate. Increased interest in the East
End opium den paralleled the rise of_ the anti-opium movement; and the
establishment of opium smoking in England as well as in China was
weighty argument for the anti-opium point of view. It gave added
substance and immediacy to arguments about the effects of the practice
in China. Many of the arguments deployed in an Indo-Chinese context
were also relevant to the domestic scene. East End Chinese, like their
Far Eastern counterparts, should be `saved‘ from the habit.
Anti-opiumist moral feeling took little account of cultural differences
-‚these ruinous dens‘ were full of poor Chinese, ‚helpless slaves to
this expensive indulgence‘. England’s duty was not only to China but to
the Chinese in England – the `Vile, unhabitable tenements, transformed
into the homes of vicious, ruinous indulgence … constitute a pitfall
and trap to many of those simple Easterns … Has England no duty here?
Have those ill-paid servants no claim upon our care?’9
The
anti-opium arguments used for China were also applied to the East End.
The missionaries in China had encountered intense hostility at many
levels of society, in part inspired by the privileges granted to them
by the various treaties concluded between China and the foreign powers.
The missionaries, how. ever, had used opium as a convenient explanation
of their notably lack of success, and such arguments were also employed
in domestic context. A correspondent in the London City Mission,
Magazine in 1877 blamed the drug for the lack of enthusiasm for
Christianity among the Chinese. `The dirt, smoke, repulsive characters
and sometimes the semblance of religion assumed to cover fraud and
abominable sin, make the heart sick and the head ache; and I often feel
how difficult it is to launch the life-boat in such a dangerous sea.’10
The existence of English opium den was of considerable propaganda
importance; an anti-opium tract issued by the S.S.O.T. castigated the
`depraved appetite‘ and the `weak and unmanly‘ nature of the Chinese
East End opium smoker.“
The medical/anti-opium link was a strong
one, as Chapter n makes clear. Many of the doctors who supported the
amti-opium movement were also concerned with domestic opium smoking In
the 1890s Benjamin Ward Richardson spent some time visiting the London
dens in an attempt to compare smoking with eating opium, or injecting
morphia. He concluded that there were con siderable differences between
the various methods, but neverthe. less condemned opium smoking.
Surgeon-Major Pringle agreed He told the meeting of the British Medical
Association u Nottingham in., 1892 that the importance of getting rid
of the `opium smoking saloons‘ in London `could not be overesti.
mated‘.12 Domestic opium smoking, in the view of the growing group of
doctors specializing in addiction, provided further sup port for a view
of narcotic use which was rapidly becoming accepted. Medical men
concerned with domestic opium use, an( those who argued against Far
Eastern use of the drug, were boil agreed that moderation was
impossible, addiction inevitable an( moral and physical decline the
result. `So powerful is its fascina tion, so fatal its hold, that loss
of time, deferred expectancy, the trouble of preparation, nothing can
win from the irresistible craw ing, which, once felt, so rarely loosens
its grip.’13
appeared to be justified by the existence of opium
dens and their effect on English people. A Daily Chronicle report in
1881 had described how a large proportion of the crew of the S. S.
Merionethshire had been found disporting themselves in a Limehouse
opium den when they should have been on board ship.“ But the time when
opium smoking could be a humorous matter was soon over. The opium dens
run by `cunning and artful Chinamen‘ wer part of the racial stereotype
which emerged. As an L.C.C. inspector, an ex-policeman, pointed out
after his visit to the Chinese area and its opium dens in 19o4,
`oriental cunning and cruelty … was hall-marked on every countenance
… until my visit to the Asiatic Sailors‘ Home, I had always
considered some of the Jewish inhabitants of Whitechapel to be the
worst type of humanity I had ever seen…‘. At the opium den itself,
the `loathsome apartment‘ where the drug was prepared led to smoking
rooms where seamen lay, `dazed and helpless, jabbering in an incoherent
manner‘.15 Observers saw something menacing in the very passivity which
smoking the drug induced. Dr Richardson thought that opium smokers were
`very dangerous under those circumstances … they might rise up, and
be mischievous to anyone who might perform an experiment upon them,Supporters
of the anti-opium cause were also active in dissemi nating the belief
that opium smoking was somehow threatening in its implications for the
indigenous population. The belief that the immorality of Britain’s
conduct towards China (‚The Great Anglo-Asiatic Opium Curse‘) would
somehow come home to roost however simple it might be‘.16
The
`menace‘ of opium smoking lay not just in its effect on Chinese smokers
in East London, but in the possibility of contamination of English
people by such practices. There was some anxiety that the habit might
spread among the working class in the East End, especially since, in
the investigation of the 1840s, Dr Southwood Smith had pointed out the
area as one where opium was consumed in large quantities by the local
population. The evidence of a local inhabitant who frequented Limehouse
Causeway at this period indicated that Chinese and English populations
mostly kept their distance. The boys who ran errands for the Chinese
lodging house keepers sometimes tried to smoke the drug. `I only smoked
it once… They always like to see you smoke opium, a Chinaman….‘
But
the amount of such smoking was minute.17 The fear of pollution through
opium smoking extended into a belief that opium smoking was spreading
among the white middle-class population. The establishment of such a
practice was thought to be an illustration of racial degeneracy. The
classic theory of contagion was clearly related to the onset of
economic decline, competition for jobs and class tensions in the period
of late Victorian imperialism. Professor Goldwin Smith, speaking at an
anti-opium meeting in Manchester in February 1882, had drawn attention
to the large influx of Chinese into America, Canada and Australia,
bringing with them a `hideous and very infectious vice‘.“‚ Other
writers on anti-opium matters made more specific links with the
domestic effects. The Rev. George Piercy, an East End missionary and
antiopiumist, warned of the dangers. Drawing parallels with the spread
of the practice in America, he condemned the habit: `we really have a
new habit, prolific of evil, springing up amongst us … it is coming
close to us with a rapidity and spring undreamt of even by those who
have dreaded its stealthy and unseen step‘.19 The association with
middle-class degeneracy was a particular feature of the
late-nineteenth-century presentation of the opium den, most notable in
fiction in Wilde’s Dorian Gray. As C. W. Wood commented in 1897, in the
course of a fictional presentation of the theme, `very many of these
celestials and Indians are mentally and physically inferior, and they
go on smoking year after year, and seem not very much the worse for it.
It is your finer natures that suffer, deteriorate and collapse. For
these great and terrible is the ruin.‘ 20 There were tales of two
prosperous `opium establishments‘ in the East End, set up exclusively
for a white clientele and patronized by Englishmen or `society women
seeking a new sensation‘. Furnished in lavish style, entry to them was
obtainable only by means of a password. The West End opium smoker,
seeking after fresh thrills, was a new facet of the contemporary
presentation of the opium den. 11 I `1″ as a particular illustration of
the anti-opiumist argument which stressed the domestic retribution
likely to be incurred through encouragement of the Indo-Chinese trade.
The
image of the opium den associated with late-nineteenthcentury London
has remained so persistent that it is worth attempting to assess the
reality of the practice. The hostile reaction evoked in anti-opiumist
literature and in fiction appears on further examination to have
disguised something much more prosaic. It is impossible to find out how
much opium was being imported for smoking. Published import/export data
unlike their American counterpart, ignored prepared opium. The umber of
houses, however, where the practice took place appears to have been
small in relation to the furore it caused. In 1884, even a hostile
observer thought that there were only about half a dozen in the East
End. Later inquiries elicited from the police only the information that
there were thirteen Chinese boarding houses in the area. It was tacitly
accepted that opium smoking would probably take place in a fair number
of them. `Opium smoking is a national habit with them, and they indulge
in it in their bedrooms. The practice is rather on the decrease than
otherwise.’22 The `den‘ was a shifting entity, changing its location
almost as often as the floating population of seamen in the area. Miss
Mary Elliott, whose father was Vicar of St Stephen’s, Poplar, in the
late nineteenth century, remembered the impermanent nature of the opium
den. When the police raided a suspect house, they would find it empty,
or fresh Chinese moving in who `of course‘ knew nothing of the previous
tenants .23
Nor was reaction to the practice so universally hostile
as the accepted image of the opium den might suggest. Many of the more
open-minded investigators of the practice came to the conclusion that
there was really no such thing as an opium den at all. Opium smoking,
along with gambling, was simply a relaxation enjoyed by many Chinese,
and the rooms where it took place were something akin to a Chinese
social club. A reporter sent by the Morning Advertiser, who had gone to
the East End full of preconceived ideas about opium smoking, had to
admit that `it was not repulsive. It was calm, it was peaceful. There
was a placid disregard of trivialities, politics, war, betting, trade,
and all the cares, occupations, and incidents of daily life, which only
opium can give 1.24 Several who visited the area came to conclusions
which differed from the accepted stereotype. One such visitor smoked
five pipes of opium in `Chinatown‘ in the 1870s, and experienced
hallucinations in which a centipede about four or five inches long with
a chain round it was walking up his leg. `This will not be my last
trial,‘ he declared. `As for the so-called „dens“, they seemed to me
simply poorly fitted social clubs, and certainly as free from anything
visibly objectionable, as to say the least of it, publichouses of the
same class. ’25 His last point was taken up by those who fel‘ that to
stigmatize opium smoking simply because it was an alien recreational
practice was hypocritical when domestic alcohol consumption continued
relatively unchecked .26
The reactions of those who lived in the area at the time and saw
opium smoking at close quarters tend to agree with such moderate
assessments. These are the best antidote to the opium den myth. In
19o8, news that young boys had been mingling with the Chinese seamen in
Limehouse was a cause for concern to the London County Council’s
Medical Officer.27 One of those boys, living as an old man a few
hundred yards from where he used to run errands for the seamen years
before, disagreed sharply with the view of the den presented in late
nineteenth-century fiction : `… you’d push a door open and you’d see
them smoking … I used to be in number 11, and in that house there on
the second floor we had one bed, but on the ground floor, we had two,
two beds. They were always there and as they walked in, and as they
fancied a piece of opium….‘ There were no set houses reserved for
opium smoking. It was simply a way in which Chinese seamen spent part
of their leisure time while they were on shore:
There was one or two
houses, but, of course, it took place in most houses. In every house
that I’ve been in, there’s been a bed or two. It was quite natural for
the people who lived in that house…. They’re ordinary working people
that come in here and have their pipe, because they’re paid off from
the shipping and they have their pleasure time in the Causeway as long
as their money lasts.
Nor, in his eyes, was the image of the dazed,
lolling opium smoker, caring for nothing but the drug, at all typical.
Opium smoking was an aid to hard work, not a distraction from it, and
smokers managed to combine their habit with a normal working existence.
`I’ve known them to get up at eight, seven or eight in the morning,
smoke opium twice, two periods of opium, and then go and do their duty,
do their work and they won’t go to bed before eleven o’clock at night.‘
28 In Liverpool at the same period, a City Council report on the
Chinese settlements in the city revealed a similar reaction. The
practice of opium smoking was limited; and even local police officers
saw few harmful effects in it.29
The way the Limehouse resident saw
opium prepared tallies almost exactly with the reports, shorn of their
sensationalism, given by outside investigators. The preparation of the
raw opium for smoking was a lengthy process, involving shredding the
raw drug into a sieve placed over an ordinary two-pint saucepan
containing water. This was simmered over a fire, and the essence,
filtering through the sieve, fell to the bottom of the pot in a
thinnish treacle. Opium was often scraped out of the pipes in the house
and added to the raw variety. The pot in which the essence landed would
be constantly pushed and kneaded, although in some houses this was done
in a different way. `They got a long feather of a bird, a large bird,
and they’ll just skim the top of the opium, and until that opium is
absolutely perfect without a bubble on it, and it’s boiled to the
amount that they’ve tested, and that’s that….‘ The opium thus
prepared was stored in lidded earthenware jars. Sometimes it was sold
to outside customers; often seamen would buy it when going aboard ship.
It was carried about in a hollowedout lemon – the inside of the lemon
taken out, the shell put over a broom handle and bound tightly with
string until it was completely dried out. Opium was weighed in this too.
They
bring out a great big quill from some gigantic bird … with a little
leaden weight at one end, with a nice silk coloured ribbon on it and a
steelyard … and they’ll put your empty on first and they’ll weigh
your empty. They’ll weigh it, dive down under the counter, put it in,
like treacle, weigh it again then give it to you. And I’ve gone there
for a cook and he’s had is/6d … they got a lot for is/6d.30
A
special pipe, about eighteen inches long and often made of
dark-coloured bamboo, was used for the actual smoking. One end, hollow
and open, served as the mouthpiece. At the closed end, a tiny bowl
`made of iron and shaped like a pigeon’s egg‘ was screwed in. Prior to
smoking, a small quantity of prepared opium was taken on the point of a
needle and frizzled over the flame of a lamp -‚twist it and twist it
until it becomes sticky, a solid sticky substance…‘. The opium pipe
was then placed over the lamp and the opium inserted on the point of a
needle through a small hole in the bowl of the pipe. The smoker would
draw continually at the pipe until the substance was burnt out – `the
Chinaman … took the bamboo fairly into his mouth, and there was at
once emitted from the pipe a gurgling sound – the spirits of ten
thousand previous pipe-loads stirred to life‘.31
The interest
aroused in the practice by the growth of the antiopium movement had led
to a corresponding period of medical experimentation with opium
smoking. Smoking the drug was suggested for the treatment of tetanus; it was said to be ‚an easy, inoffensive,
and very efficacious mode of treating chronic and neuralgic affections
…‘. An opium pipe (complete with `all appurtenances, including lamp,
vessel for oil, boxes for opium, etc.‘) was available for medical
experimenters and others from Farmer & Rogers, in Regent Street,
price 10/6.32 Brereton’s book on opium smoking and the publications of
the defenders not only of the opium trade, but of opium’s medical
usage, encouraged such experimentation. A pamphlet dealing with Opium
Smoking as a Therapeutic Power According to the Latest Medical
Authorities was available from the 1870s – although its publication was
discontinued in 1903 after strong protests from the Lancet.33
Medical
usage had its parallels in social experimentation. Notably lacking at
this period was any extensive narcotic-using drug sub-culture. But
there were signs that the increasing deviance of _opium use was
beginning to be reflected in self-conscious `recreational‘ use. Opium
smoking as a distinctively different means of using the drug was the
first form to experience this development. The drug began to be used
for smoking among a small section of artistic society in the 1890s.
`Recreational‘ smoking of opium – and of other drugs such as cannabis
and mescal – was largely confined to the `radical Bohemia‘ of the
avant-garde arts world and left-wing intelligentsia, small groups
whose, flouting of `respectable‘ late-Victorian convention emphasized
an interest in the spiritual, non-materialist side of life which
encompassed both the occult and the effects of drugs.34 Opium smoking
was very much part of the developing drug `scene‘. Perhaps the most
notable literary exponent in the I890s was Count Eric Stenbock, the son
of a Bremen family settled in England, but who had inherited estates in
Estonia. Stenbock’s practice of smoking opium was as notorious as his
alcoholism. This homosexual occultist, accustomed to appear with a live
snake encircling his neck, was truly `a sort of living parody of
Ninetyism‘.35 Yet opium smoking was also practised by other, less
theatrically flamboyant members of the 1890s scene. The poet Arthur
Symons described the experience in `The Opium Smoker‘.
I am engulfed, and drown deliciously.
Soft music like a perfume, and sweet light
Golden with audible odours exquisite,
Swathe me with cerements for eternity.
Time is no more, I pause and yet I flee.
A million ages wrap me round with night.
I drain a million ages of delight.
I hold the future in my memory.36
Oscar
Wilde’s description in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and the
revelations of the Sherlock Holmes stories were indicative At the
milieu in which such use was acceptable. The reality was, however,
sometimes more prosaic than its fictional presentation. The Limehouse
resident who saw West End ’slummers‘ trying opium smoking in the early
1900s remarked that many had to give up because they could not keep the
flame alight.
The reality of the practice was thus more prosaic,
more narrowly circumscribed than the myth would suggest; the reaction
of local people most in touch with it was tolerant; and the
associations with white society limited. Yet opium smoking evoked a
distinctly harsher legal response. In the early twentieth century, the
legal :controls imposed on the alien practice of opium smoking were to
be an indication of the attempt which was to be made to introduce a
generally absolute narcotic policy. But there was no distinct
legislative response to Chinese opium smoking in England in the
nineteenth century. 37 Moves against opium smoking in England first
came at a local level and expanded at the time of the First World War
into nationwide control .38 The myth of the opium den was in the wider
sense a domestic result of imperialism and the reaction to economic
uncertainty. The Chinese and their opium use were a useful scapegoat.
The cultural insensitivity which inFormed the reactions to Far Eastern
opium use had its domestic :counterpart; and the reaction to what was
in reality only the customary relaxation of Chinese seamen illustrated
both the structural tensions of late Victorian society and the changed
place of opium within it.
References
1.
The following chapter is in part based on V. Berridge, `East End opium
dens and narcotic use in Britain‘, London Journal, 4, No. 1 (1978), pp.
3-28. See also, for the Chinese in London, P.P. 1814-15, III : Report on
Lascars and Other Asiatic Seamen; and P.P. 1816, X : Correspondence …
Relative to the Care and Maintenance of Lascar Sailors during their
Stay in England.
2. Figures are taken from K.C.Ng, The Chinese in London (London, Institute of Race Relations, 1968), pp. 5-11.
3.
J. Helmer and T. Vietorisz, Drug Use, The Labor Market and Class
Conflict (Washington, D.C., Drug Abuse Council, 1974), PP. 3-7, details
the position of immigrant Chinese in the U.S.A. See also J. Helmer,
Drugs and Minority Oppression (New York, Seabury Press, 1975), PP- 31-2.
4. Anon., `East London opium smokers‘, London Society, 14 (1868), pp. 68-72.
5.
Anon., `What opium smoking feels like. By one who has tried it‘ (187o,
unattributed), John Burns collection, Greater London Record Office.
6.
J. Forster, Life of Charles Dickens (London, Chapman and Hall, 1874),
vol. 3, p. 488, describes how the visit to the opium den took place.
The scene is in C. Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (London, Chapman
and Hall, 187o, Penguin edn 1974) PP. 37-9, 77.
7. G. Dore and W. B.
Jerrold, London, A Pilgrimage (London, Grant, 1872; New York, Dover edn
197o), pp. 147-8; see also O. Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
(London, Ward Lock, 1891, Penguin edn 1966), pp. 207-8.
8. See, for
example, R. Rowe, Picked Up in the Streets (London, W. H. Allen, 188o),
pp. 38-42; J. Platt, `Chinese London and its opium dens‘, Gentleman’s
Magazine, 279 (1895) pp. 274-5; and `London opium dens. Notes of a
visit to the Chinaman’s East-End haunts. By a Social Explorer‘, Good
Words, 26 (1885), pp. 188-92. Others are cited in V. Berridge, op.
Cit., p. 24.
9. Good Words, op. cit., pp. 188-92.
10. `Opium smoking in London‘, Friend of China, 3 (1877), pp. 19-20, originally in the London City Mission Magazine.
11. `The Chinese in London. No. 4. An opium den‘, Tract in the Braithwaite Collection, op. cit., Ms. Vol. 207.
12.
`The medical aspect of the opium question‘, supplement to Friend of
China, i3 (1892), op. cit., and `Report of the British Medical
Association Annual Meeting at Nottingham‘, British Medical Journal, 2
(1892), p. 258.
13. Good Words, op. cit.
14. Daily Chronicle, 17 October 1881, quoted in Friend of China, s (1882), p. 28.
15.
`Opium dens in London‘, Chambers‘ Journal, 81 (19o4), pp. 193-5. 16.
Friend of China, supplement 13 (1892), op. Cit. 17. Interview with W.
J. C., Limehouse, 1976. 18. A. J. Arbuthnot, `The opium controversy‘,
Nineteenth Century, 11 (1882), pp. 403-13. Publicity given to H. H.
Kane’s `American opium smokers‘, Friend of China, 14 (1881), pp.
44o-44, also tended to the same conclusion.
19. G. Piercy, `Opium smoking in London‘, Friend of China, 6 (1883),PP. 239-42, originally published in the Methodist Recorder.
20. C. W. Wood, `In the night watches‘, Argosy, 65 (1897), p. 203
21. East London Advertiser, 28 December 1907.
22.
Friend of China, 7 (1884), p. 220; Public Record Office, Foreign Office
papers, F.O. 371, 423, 19o8, `Report on Chinese opium dens by
Commissioner of Police‘; also P.P. 1909, CV: Correspondence Relative to
the International Opium Commission at Shanghai, pp. 307-9.
23. East End Herald, 3o December 1955.
24. Friend of China, 7 (1884), p. 220. See also W. Besant, East London (London, Chatto and Windus, 19o1), pp. 2o5-6.
25. Anon., John Bums Collection, op. cit. 26. The Times, 25 and 28 November 1913.
27.
Hansard, 14 (1893), col. 17o4. This is also mentioned in Papers
presented to the Public Health Committee, 21 May 1908, and Minutes of
the Public Health Committee, 5 November 1906 and 21 May 1908, London
County Council Records, Greater London Record Office.
28. Interview with W. J. C., Limehouse, 1976.
29.
Report of the Commission Appointed by the (Liverpool) City Council to
Inquire into Chinese Settlements in Liverpool (1907), p. 7. J. P. May,
`The
Chinese in Britain, 186o-1914′, pp. 111-24 in C. Holmes, ed.,
Immigrants and Minorities in British Society (London, George Allen and
Unwin, 1978), quotes similar evidence for Birkenhead in the 1900s.
30. Interview with W. J. C., op. cit.
31.
There are descriptions of the process in, amongst others, J. Greenwood,
In Strange Company (London, Henry S. King, 1873), pp. 22938; Notes and
Queries, 8 (1896), p. 129; Anon., `A night in an opium den‘, in G.
Cotterell, ed., London Scene from The Strand (London, Strand Magazine,
1974), pp. 76-9; and Daily Graphic, 14 February 19o8.
32. See
discussion on the medical utility of opium. smoking in Medical Times
and Gazette, 2 (1868), p. 704, and r (1869), pp. 26-7 and 320.
33. `A dangerous pamphlet‘, Lancet, 2 (19o3), PP- 33o-31
34.
For a more extensive consideration of the drug sub-culture and its
structural roots, see V. Berridge, `The origins of the English drug
„scene“‚, in J. Kramer, ed., Drugs and the Arts (California, 1979).
35.
R. Croft-Cooke, Feasting with Panthers. A New Consideration of Some
Late Victorian Writers (London, W: H. Allen, 1967) pp. 25o, 253-4; J.
Adlard, Stenbock, Yeats and the Nineties (London, Cecil and Amelia
Woolf, 1969), PP. 45 and 64-5; and E. Rhys, Everyman Remembers (London,
J. M. Dent, 1931), pp. 28-9.
36. A. Symons, `The opium smoker‘, in Poems (London, Heinemann, 1902), vol. I, p. 3
37.
State laws against the practice were being enacted in the U.S.A. at
this time; see D. F. Musto, The American Disease. Origins of Narcotic
Control (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1973), PP-
36,244-5.
38. See V. Berridge (London journal), op. cit., pp. 3-23.