Posted on 06/28/2017 6:43:10 AM PDT by C19fan
Reclining on bunk beds while sucking on opium pipes, these haunting photos provide a rare glimpse into life in America's 19th century opium dens that prompted the country's first crackdown on drugs. Established by the Chinese, the first opium dens in the US sprung up in San Francisco's Chinatown during the 1840s and 1850s, and were soon being used by people from all walks of society. The opium rush was at its most prevalent during the 1880s and 1890s, which coincided with the rise of the temperance movement. Its popularity eventually resulted in a string of legislative measures being introduced to try and stamp out the addictive craze, including the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906 and Smoking Opium Exclusion Act in 1909.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Just goes to show no matter the era, there are always complete morons about, no more or less than today’s variety I suppose...
I see all kinds of idiots passed out in cars or whatever from “ODing’... just stupid.
“I went to FDRs home in Hyde Park, NY. The volunteer tour guide mentioned FDRs mom’s family made their fortune from the opium trade. They were the El Chapos of the Victorian era”.
The tour guide was speaking the truth. It’s amazing that he or she would mention that.
Then they made more money supplying opium to the US Army Medical Corp during the civil War.
I’ve been to an opium den in Asia. You are supposed to lie on your left side to smoke it. Which is why many people are doing so. With that said, you know some of these people were strung out. But for some it could have been their first time. After all, it took a long time to set up photos back then. Maybe the cameraman wasn’t even high.
“First the Chinese smoked the drug, then the Anglo-American underworld, followed by men and women in the middle and upper classes, before finally reaching children in the community.”
Tour guides are getting very honest and interesting these days. They aren’t little old ladies filling your head with useless pleasantries any more. Interesting.
The tour guide was very open about the what a modern person would see as the seedy ways these families made their money. She mentioned the Roosevelts started their fortune by processing sugar in colonial NYC. Which I knew was part of the Triangle Trade pattern of Colonial America. The sugar was made by slave labor working under horrific conditions in the Caribbean.
Drugs were not illegal in the 1800’s, nor the early 1900’s.
Coca-Cola was laced with cocaine, and Thomas Edison was a devote of Coca-Cola.
If it was not illegal, why are we bitchin’ about the folks who earned a profit from it?
Do any of you own shares of alcohol stocks in your 401K’s or mutual funds?
I’m just saying lets be honest about ‘the war on drugs’ -it did not exist back then.
BTW - Ever READ any Sir Arthur Conan Doyal mysteries? Hint: The brainiac was an opium user...
I see all kinds of idiots passed out in cars or whatever from “ODing’... just stupid.
Opium was imported to China by the British from India as a way to change their balance of trade with China. China insisted that everything be paid for in silver. By getting people addicted they soon began to have a trade surplus leading the Opium Wars where Britain ended up forcing China to open its markets to opium. That was actually the first war on drugs.
sorry, I didnt mean “in person” I mean I see news stories every single day about some idiot passed out in his/her car... often with children in the back seat.
This also coincided, but not coincidentally, with the rise of the anti-abortion movement.
The situation with abortion wasn't that the average person thought it was OK to kill a baby, but that the general belief was that a baby wasn't a baby until it "quickened"; people thought that the baby became alive when s/he started kicking. With the rise of medical knowledge concerning fetal development, people began to realize that the baby was alive from the moment of conception; with the rise of sanitation protocols because of the advancing of germ theory, physicians took over obstetrics from midwives in order to keep mother and child alive more often, and the Hippocratic Oath, which doctors used to swear to, prohibited inducing abortion.
It should be, but is not general knowledge that the same women who promoted temperance around the turn of the 20th century also promoted the prohibition of abortions. It wasn't until feminism was taken over by the Marxists and the Nietzscheans that abortion became the sacrament of feminist heretopraxis.
Sex, drugs, and ragtime.
Only the music changes...
They are almost impossible to find in antique stores any more, but it used to be fairly commonplace to find a set of containers for the 1900 kitchen, four containers, each one smaller than the last, marked Flour, Sugar, Salt, and Cocaine.
Cocaine was the go-to drug for such ailments as coughing, and IIRC Bayer invented heroin as a drug to replace cocaine as a cough medicine, thinking incorrectly that heroin was not addictive, unlike cocaine.
Sorry! Yes, we all see those.
And I do smell or see people getting high in their cars while driving all the time now. Which I didn’t before it became legal. It bothers me, even though I was for legalization.
Yes, I do remember that now. I saw the movie, “The Last Emperor” years ago, and the one scene that sticks in my mind is of people zonked out in opium dens.
Those look as skanky as today’s druggies.
Thanks!
Remember the Socialist mantra "There Are No Honest Profits." No matter how someone gets rich, certain people will be right there to point out it was done unjustly - if only to his or her competitors. :)
I wonder when they will run a story of Britain’s opium dens? Or do they only want to put Americans in a bad light and expect people to believe that Brits didn’t have the same segment of society that used drugs?
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