One of these beings has not appealed in vain to a fellow votary who has just entered the den in company with two companions, and the four make their way to the hole in the partition, and in exchange for the coppers handed in, a skinny hand passes out four little paper packets, each one containing a dose of morphia powder. Let us peep through the hole, and look at the owner of the skinny hand before following the four to the place to which they have retired. It is a Chinaman, characteristically lean, sitting at a rough table on which is a cigar box filled with paper packets similar to those we saw being handed to the late purchasers. The red and green ones contain morphia, the white cocaine (for he caters for both classes, the injecters of morphia, and eaters of cocaine). Looking up at the hole, he sees us, and thinking we are either excise or police officers, he hastily gathers up his wares, and rushing to the sanitary arrangement in the corner of his cubicle, empties them into the receptacle, and pulling the chain, flushes away the incriminating evidences of his occupation. Being assured that they are well on their way to the sea through the sewer, he turns towards us with a “smile that is child-like and bland,” and explains that he has “got nothing—all gone—you can’t do nothing.” We explain that we had no intention of doing anything, and were merely curious. Recollecting that he had heard no call from his ever watchful colleague who stands by to give timely warning in the event of a raiding party coming in sight, he admits that he has been precipitate; but in no way disconcerted, he sends his colleague off to some place best known to themselves, for a fresh supply of packets.
We now return to the four men who provided themselves with morphia two or three minutes ago. We find them sitting in a ring round another fellow who we learn is the operator. He possesses a hypodermic syringe. Let us take and examine it. It is not the sort of thing one would expect to find in a chemist’s show-case or a medical man’s pocket-case. This is a weird instrument; the barrel a length of glass tubing; the plunger a bit of knitting needle, whose plunging head consists of tightly wound rag, and whose other end is topped with a conglomerate of sealing wax and sewing thimble. Both joints are lumps of sealing wax, through the lower of which an inch and a half of hollow needle projects. Handing back this septic instrument to the operator, who, by the way, tells us that he gets a copper for every injection he gives, he proceeds to empty the contents of the packets into a small china egg-cup. Adding a modicum of water, and stirring the mixture until a clear solution is formed, he takes up some in the syringe, and one of the expectant waiters draws nearer him. A search is made by the operator for a clear spot on the body of the man, where a dirty needle has not already penetrated and caused a foul sore, and after some search such a spot is found, on the palm of the hand, and here the needle is introduced, and the contents of the syringe discharged, after which the man operated on limps away to his place, and lying down, is soon asleep. The next draws near, and having received his share of the dose with the same needle, unsterilized and unwashed, he in turn limps off; and so with the others.
Let us hope that the fell, loathesome, unnameable disease, from which one at any rate of the four was too apparently suffering, has not been introduced into the blood of the others by that death-dealing needle! But it is a hope that we cannot think is justified; the means of propagation employed are too certain to admit of any hope!
The foul and fetid atmosphere of the crowded room is almost overpowering, in spite of the strong tobacco we smoke in our well-lit pipes, but we will linger a little longer and take a glance at those who are lying around like so many logs. Look at this one of them. What an object lesson he is to impetuous youth! Thin to emaciation; his hair fallen off in tufts; his nose almost eaten away; his body covered with sores and ulcers. There is nothing to wonder at in this being taking morphia to ease his pain of mind and body. Since death will not come, let him have oblivion. It is better so.
Here we find a woman; she is a slattern if ever there was one. Clean-limbed, in the sense that she has no sores on visible parts of her body, she is nevertheless almost as certain a disseminator of disease and misery as the foul needle. She wakes as we watch her, and in a drowsy way, smiles; probably in a way she means to be fascinating, but we are not under the effects of the delusive narcotic, so cannot be expected to know! Suddenly a look of intelligence comes into her eyes, and realising who we are, she gets up, and stumbles towards the door, and out on to the street—on her way to another den in all probability!
An Indian Morphinist
Here is another. An old, or rather, an old-looking man, shrivelled and feeble. He is just awaking from his stupor. We ask him to get up, but he is unable to do more than humbly indicate the reason for his inability to do so. A glance, as the sheet which covers him is withdrawn from his body, sends a thrill of horror through us, and we turn away sickened at the sight; and the man—is he a man?—draws his cloth over his tattered body, and tries to woo sleep again. This last sight is enough to send us headlong into the fresh air and sunlight. If these are the results of morphia, then God have mercy upon its votaries, for they stand sorely in need of it!
Morphia is imported into the country in large quantities by smugglers, the drug being brought from the British Isles, Japan, and the Continent by members of the crews of steamers plying from these countries. As many as 500 ounces of morphia have been seized in one consignment, and, as it is generally admitted by those who are in position to know that for every ounce seized, a pound passes through undetected, it only requires a simple calculation to arrive at the approximate total quantity which is hawked about unrestricted.