Opium: to the ancient Sumerian, ‘the plant of
joy’; for the laudanum addicted British author Thomas De Quincey, ‘the
celestial drug’, and for Homer in The Odyssey, ‘nepenthe’, an alcoholic
medicine believed by scholars to contain raw opium, is given to Telemachus by
Helen of Troy to ease his woes. Imbibed by the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians
and Romans before spreading via Arab traders to the Chinese, opium, in its
diverse incarnations, has cured ailments and chemically instigated euphoria for
millions of people for thousands of years; its use continues to this day
legally, in tiny quantities, for painkillers and anti-diarrhoeal medication,
and illegally, in the immeasurably vast and profitable heroin trade.
However,
its presence in modern societies the world over during the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries is perhaps what most intrigues humankind today. In the
dank, seedy underbelly of Victorian London; in the California Gold Rush of the
1850s as well as dynastic China during the two Opium Wars and many other
destinations globally, where the toxic, unquenchable thirst for the drug
infected a range of countries and cultures. Opium, glorious, contagious, ruinous,
is potentially humanity’s greatest and most incessant addiction.
London, United Kingdom
The opium dens of Victorian-era London are one of the
most well-documented, but fiercely contested examples of opium smoking in
literature of the period. Modern scholars argue that writers such as Arthur
Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens and Thomas De Quincey portray a skewed image of a
London overrun by an insidious opium network. Confessions of an English
Opium-Eater, De Quincey’s seminal 1821 work, titillated society from top to
bottom; although it is true that opium was sold readily over the counter in
pharmacies, in the form of laudanum, which De Quincey himself administered
orally rather than smoking opium itself, it’s significant that there’s not one
known photograph in the world of an opium den in London.
Unlike
in American cities of the same period, there were only handfuls of Chinese
people in London at the time, and whatever trade there was centred around the
Limehouse docks area. Nevertheless, the existence, or perhaps nonexistence of
an opium trade in Victorian society still intrigues people today, particularly
fans of Sherlock Holmes; did Holmes ever smoke opium in his pipe, enthusiasts
wonder? Although Holmes, in the opening to The Sign of Four and in
other stories, injects himself with cocaine, ‘his only vice’ according to John
Watson, his trusty sidekick, Holmes seemingly disapproves of opium dens in
another story, entitled The Man with the Twisted Lip. However, what is
clear is that, to Sherlock Holmes aficionados and many people in general, the
presence of opium dens in Victorian London continues to be a highly contentious
issue.
Paris, France
Unlike London, where spurious claims of the sinister
reach of opium were greatly exaggerated, Paris was a European city with a
genuine incidence of addiction to the drug. Predominantly through the return of
soldiers from French Indochina (now modern day Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos), the
practices of opium smoking began to pervade French society. Newspaper reports
from 1901 scandalised Parisian society by estimating that the city had in
excess of 1,200 opium dens; despite this probably being an exaggeration, it’s
certain that opium permeated the society of the time. The legendary Moulin
Rouge was rumoured to be a hub of opium related activity, and it was even
suggested that the notorious elephant’s head section of the building was an
opulent, exclusive smoking den. Even the nobility was implicated; the Countess
de Salles’ opium den in the Bois Boulogne was raided in 1947, where the rich
and aristocratic mixed with famous writers and artists. Additionally, the
problem was so prevalent throughout French port cities that in 1907, the navy
ship La Nive’s much publicised crash was attributed directly to the insobriety
of opium addicted sailors on board, causing loss of life and much embarrassment
for the French government.
San Francisco, United States
West
Coast America, and San Francisco in particular, had the most luxurious dens and
the most acute opium smoking problem in the whole of the United States during
the second half of the nineteenth century. Asian, and particularly Chinese
workers arrived to seek their fortunes in the Californian Gold Rush around the
same time that the first recognised mass shipment of opium (fifty-two boxes)
was brought ashore on the clipper Ocean Pearl in 1861. Initially, only the
Chinese settlers were permitted entry into the dens but, within a short space
of time, canny businessmen loosened this rule so that by the 1870s any paying
customers were welcome. Such was the popularity of opium smoking within wealthy
society that upper class patrons began to use their own paraphernalia to smoke
at home, allowing anonymity, privacy and avoiding the possibility of police
raids on dens used by the wider public.
New York, United States
Despite the fact that New York was, and arguably
remains, the archetypal modern metropolis, its opium dens were never quite as
magnificent as those which succeeded on the Pacific coast of America. Nevertheless,
a thriving trade was definitely present, particularly in Mott and Pell Streets
which were situated in the city’s Chinatown. Intriguingly, John Jacob Astor I,
America’s richest man during the early 19th century and the patriarch of
the modern Astor dynasty, made immense profits from trafficking tons of Turkish
opium to Canton in China, before later deciding to ship exclusively to London.
Similarly to most other global cities which possessed an opium smoking trade,
the business began to peter out as World War Two loomed; however, one
particular den at 295 Broome Street, between Forsyth and Eldridge Streets at
the edge of Chinatown, continued trading until June 28th 1957. The tenant,
a Chinese immigrant named Lau, owned merely a handful of decades-old pipes and
lamps in addition to a fairly meagre quantity of opium and heroin before he was
imprisoned, his two floor apartment a relic to a more prosperous and decadent
past.
Vancouver, Canada
In an
effort to curb the influence of opium on American society, the authorities in San
Francisco began taxing imported opium; as all good businessmen do when
attempting to search for the best possible price, importers switched some trade
north to Canadian territory, particularly to Victoria and Vancouver. The
latter’s opium trade grew alarmingly, especially after the emergence of
Shanghai and Canton Alleys in the city during the early 1900s, an area renowned
for its rugged, downmarket dens. These were the antithesis of the magnificent,
extravagant dens on show in Paris or the private smoking rooms of the upper
classes in San Francisco. Opium remained legal in Canada until 1908, although
the practice of smoking it continued illegally long afterwards.
Bombay, India
Although Bombay, or Mumbai as it’s now officially known,
was once one of the finest jewels in the British Empire’s crown, at the
opening of the 19th century it was a collection of seven pestilent,
disease-ridden islands that had originally been fishing villages. Within fifty
years, the East India Company had helped to transform the city into an Asian
trade hub; albeit one underpinned by the British Empire’s rampantly profitable
and brutally corrupt shipping of opium to Chinese ports, where they traded the
drug for the tea which was so popular back in Britain, is a shameful political
manoeuvre which casts an ugly humanitarian stain on the British to this day. Bombay’s
opium dens were said to be widespread until the 1970s and ’80s which, if true,
would make it one of the last cities to lose its booming opium trade, although
this claim is highly disputed.
Shanghai, China
At the
epicentre of the two Opium Wars of the nineteenth century, the first between
the British and the Qing Dynasty and the second between combined British and
French forces against the Qing, Shanghai was responsible by 1845 for almost
half of the opium imported into the whole of China, and was the most
strategically significant port for importing the drug. At the beginning of the
twentieth century, there was a transformation in the dynamic of the opium trade
in Shanghai, as imports from India dried up due to the Chinese growing their
own domestic product, at approximately 45,000,000 pounds on average annually.
With over 1,500 opium dens during this period, Shanghai, truly, was the opium capital
of the world. Despite the creation of the International Opium Commission in
1909 and the eventual banning of opium by law in 1917, the trade continued to
prosper illegally during the 1920s, before a gradual decline in consumption as
well as the criminal monopoly on the drug during the build up to World War Two.
Hong Kong
Similarly to Shanghai, Hong Kong was a fundamental
pawn in the British Empire’s efforts to extract a profit from showering China
in supplies of opium so as to get millions of its population addicted. However,
Hong Kong also offered a uniquely debauched type of opium den: the ‘hua-yan
jian’, or flower-smoke rooms, were hugely popular in Hong Kong for over a
hundred years until their downfall in the 1930s. These were houses of ill repute-
or brothels, if you will, where ‘flower’ referred to the prostitute, and
‘smoke’ referred to the opium. Essentially, one could suck on the smoke whilst
the ‘flower’ sucked on… Well. One can use their imagination.
Bangkok, Thailand
Although
the Chinese, after the advent of Communism, went to great lengths to outlaw and
eradicate opium from their new, revolutionary society, the southeast Asian
countries surrounding it took longer to follow suit. Thailand, which legally
allowed opium dens until 1959, is said to have been home to the world’s largest
ever den; Heng Lak Hung on Bangkok’s Charoeng Krung Road, was apparently able
to house between 5,000 and 8,000 customers depending on which report you
believe. As the sun set on Asia’s last remaining legal opium smoking
establishment, thousands of pipes and other paraphernalia were set alight in a
celebratory bonfire near the royal family’s Grand Palace. It was, truly, the
end of an era.
Vientiane, Laos
Despite the legal enshrinement in 1971 of a law attempting
to curb opium smoking in Laos, widespread corruption within the police and
government ensured that the number of opium dens subsequently prospered.
Indeed, three years after the law came into effect, the police estimated that
there were approximately eighty registered dens, with at least a hundred more
which remained unregistered. Considering the population at the time, this
equates to seven hundred or so residents per opium den. Indeed, the prevalence
of opium in Laos during this era precipitated its spread into smaller rural
communities, where arguably, it even served a social function as a place to
meet and encounter other addicts. Despite a return to popularity in the 1990s
and early 2000s in the notorious party town of Vang Vieng, further attempts
have been made to eradicate opium smoking in the country, which have been
generally very successful.
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