OPIUM SMOKING IN SYDNEY.

Patea Mail, 28 April 1881, Page 4

OPIUM SMOKING IN SYDNEY.

A white woman who must once have been of graceful figure, fine proportions, and intelligent-looking, if not handsome, lay on one of the bunks, as much a recluse from the outside world as any nun that entered cloister. Semi-nude, lost to self-respect, not caring who witnessed her depraved condition, and with her senses dulled by opium-smoking, she lay a pitiful illustration of what humanity may descend to. The sickly drug had transformed her from a sprightly girl into a being whose condition was worse than any drunkard’s, and now it seemed as though she were past all redeeming influences, and would die a sickly, senseless, mindless thing, not knowing or caring whether there was or was not a hereafter. It was dreadful to imagine this creature one of God’s fairest—passing into eternity, her brain excited by wild delirium, her senses reeling. It was equally appalling to conceive her awakening from her dreams and realising the awfulness of her position. In the room in which she lay—it was only 10 feet by 7 —there was at one end a Chinese bed, with a dirty torn rag hanging in front to answer the purpose of a curtain. In this a Chinaman lay who was also a victim to opium. Not faraway, on another bunk, a second female form divine lay prone under the influence of opium. She appeared as if she was in the last stage of opium poisoning, and, when the visitors succeeded in arousing her, she too, seemed indifferent to her fate, looking round with a dull, vacant, purposeless stare, and lying down again in a manner that showed her frame to have been deprived of all its energy. Her eyelids were swollen, her flesh was dropsical in appearance, and her long black hair was unkempt and hung in matted strings over her face and neck. Her hands trembled as though palsy had stricken them, but she managed with them to clutch the little tray containing implements for preparing the seductive drug for smoking, and as the visitors retired she laid herself out for another smoke.

The effects of opium on human constitutions seem various in their character. Some individuals who suffer from them become mere shadows of their former selves, whilst others develop a dropsical appearance, their eyelids being swollen and their flesh puffy. You will find the victims where they are least expected to be ; in garrets and in cellars dimly lighted, and in sheds that a pariah cur would fly from with disdain. In one instance the visitors crawled into a garret they thought uutenanted, but which they found occupied by a Chinaman and a white woman. Here, too, were implements generally used by opium smokers—a tray, the bamboo stems with their clay bowls, steel prickers for clearing the bowls, and a tiny lamp burning under a broken bottle. The woman was disturbed before she had completed her toilet, and therefore was not in a very presentable condition. Little she cared, however, for appearances. Naturally phlegmatic, the use of opium had increased her indifference to circumstances transpiring around her, and she did not heed the presence of strangers in the slightest degree. Her life seemed to have become purposeless, and it also seemed that she was too indolent to dress. The Chinaman, who spoke kindly enough to her, said : “ She got plenty do’, all li, but no puttee on,” and going to a large box, which he opened, he showed a collection of clothing he had recently obtained clean from a laundress. Such are sights obtainable in “dear old Sydney.”