Inside America’s 19th Century opium dens which spread across the country creating thousands of dope addicts
CHINESE immigrants and well-to-do Manhattan socialites lie together in drug-induced stupor - victims of the epidemic of opium addiction that spread across America in the late 19th century.
Rare photographs reveal the inside of some of the hundreds of drug dens that sprang up in US cities including San Francisco, Denver and New York.
These harrowing images give an insight into what these opium dens looked were like for those drawn to get their fix.
In one haunting picture from New York, several well-dressed addicts gaze blankly into the camera after inhaling the stultifying smoke.
In another image from 1926, four young women lie around a Chinese man, all of them clearly intoxicated.
One of the more light-hearted images shows a Chinese man smoking an opium pipe while clutching his cat in San Francisco.
The picture became a best-selling souvenir postcard from the Californian city, showing how attitudes to drugs have changed in the last century.
MOST READ IN WORLD NEWS
Opium smoking arrived in North America with the large influx of Chinese workers in the 1840s and 1850s.
Many of them set up homes and businesses in the Chinatown districts of San Francisco and New York, where drug abuse was rife.
Opium had been used recreationally in China since the 15th century.
Usage amongst the elite and peasants alike didn’t wane even when they began to understand the drug's addictive qualities in the 1800s.
Thousands of Chinese men and women arrived to seek their fortunes during the California Gold Rush of 1848-1855.
The first recognised mass shipment consisting of fifty-two boxes of opium arrived in the USA in 1861.
Opium smoking – which can become addictive within a few weeks of regular use – soon become so popular in the US that Western men and women of upper and middle class means began to frequent these dens.
An undercover reporter for The Examiner in 1882 described witnessing “two white girls, neither of whom were over 17 years of age” dressed as though they were going to “a Sunday picnic” in an opium den in San Francisco.
The spaces were decorated with traditional oriental wall-hangings and rugs to lure American customers – with San Francisco boasting the most luxurious dens.
San Francisco became the first city in the USA which tried – and failed – to eliminate drug use with law enforcement when they passed an 1875 edict to ban opium dens.
By 1882, opium smoking became such an acute problem in the country that Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act – which prohibited all immigration of Chinese labourers to America - as well as a law that banned all importation of raw opium.
It took the catastrophic 1906 earthquake and fire to rid San Francisco’s old Chinatown of most of its opium dens.
The opium smoking business petered out around the start of the Second World War.
However one den at 295 Broome Street in New York continued trading until 1957.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at [email protected] or call 0207 782 4368