WHAT OPIUM-SMOKING FEELS LIKE.
By ONE WHO HAS TRIED IT.
My first visit to China Town, and my experience of opium then acquired, had whetted rather than sated my curiosity, and not many days elapsed before I found my way back again. I chose a Saturday again for my expedition, because I knew that Saturday was the day when I was most likely to meet the habitual frequenters of the Chinese boarding- houses in which opium-smoking goes on. Work is over early on a Saturday, and the Chinese sailors from the ships of the various lines trading to China come up from the docks, and stay at these houses over the Sunday. As soon as their marketing is over they take their purchases of rice, pork, and fowls to the saloons they frequent, and there get them cooked, cut up into small morsels so as to be conveniently eaten with chopsticks. On this occasion I refrained from trespassing on the hospitality of my former host, and succeeded in affecting an entrance into a larger “joint,” which seemed to be doing a flourishing business. As is often the case, the lower room was a shop, and the smoking was carried on in an upper room.
Note : given this reporter was from the Pall Mall gazette, it is most likely the opium den he encountered was in what is now modern Chinatown in W1 rather than the more dingy places in Limehouse/Leytonstone..
The Cat’s Meat Shop: What Opium Smoking Feels Like
