2/14/2023 0 Comments Victoria 2 dismantle empireThe public must have shuddered at these descriptions and imagined areas such as London’s docklands and the East End to be opium-drenched, exotic and dangerous places. Opium smokers in the East End of London, London Illustrated News, 1874 Lying pell-mell on a mattress placed on the ground are Chinamen, Lascars, and a few English blackguards who have imbibed a taste for opium.” So reported the French journal ‘Figaro’, describing an opium den in Whitechapel in 1868. “It is a wretched hole… so low that we are unable to stand upright. The opium den with all its mystery, danger and intrigue appeared in many Victorian novels, poems and contemporary newspapers, and fuelled the public’s imagination. “There were opium dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.” Oscar Wilde in his novel, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ (1891).
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