All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French

Low Life Druggies in China -1906ish

Posted: February 22nd, 2015 | No Comments »

Colin Watson’s eminently (still) readable 1971 history of crime writing, Snobbery With Violence, argues that (in England) just before and around the time of the First World War, ‘…drug taking, being expensive, was mainly the indulgence of wealthy and often well-connected people.’ True if you include the worlds of the underbelly and the theatrical. He goes on to note that therefore memoirs of drug taking are invariably few and far between and mostly by the wealthy and privileged. However, this got me thinking, this was not the case in the Far East where drugs were much more affordable closer to source and so pretty much anybody wishing to indulge could. This reminded me of James S. Lee’s druggie memoir Underworld of the East, first published in the 1930s but covering the period from the late 1890s to the early 1920s. Lee, a jobbing English engineer with a taste for narcotics and travel talks of his drug taking experiences in Africa, Brazil, Malaya, India, London and, of course, Shanghai. His Shanghai experiences involved opium, morphia, cocaine and other delights such as drink, prostitutes and pornography in the city in 1906-1907. It is, of course as with such a sensational memoir, long argued as to the complete truth of his memory, but is still interesting. I note that, while originals are hard to come by, it was republished some time back and so worthy of a mention here….

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