SLAVES TO OPIUM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 10714, 25 October 1912, Page 4

SLAVES TO OPIUM.

According to''the Rev JVTr Yarrihgton there are, despite tlio 'prohibition of the drug, dozens of opium dens in the Chinese quarter of .Sydney, into which white girls are inveigled in scores. The police assert that Mr Yarrington has greatly exaggerated the position. They admit, however, that there are a large number of unfortunate white women living with, or married .to, Chinese, and that among them are some who made themselves slaves to opium many years ago and still manage to procure the drug, surrendering everything to its enticements. The. popular idea that the opium smoker gets a skin like brown paper seems to bo wrong. The Rev A. R. Edgar, head' of the Methodist Central Mission in Melbourne, speaks wistfully of a woman whom.lie has failed to induce to leave a Chinese opium den. She is the wife of a banker, and left iier husband ten years ago, surrendering herself to vice. She remains in a rookery in Little Bourke Street, Melbourne, seldom venturing out, and never seeking other enjoyment than the magnificent dreams which come at- the drug's command. "And," says Mr Edgar "she lias a face and form divine. Her complexion is lovely. Her .face retains the rounded lines of youth. She is one of the most beautiful of women in Melbourne, and I have seen her prostrate in a den, ■her head thrown back over a bare hoard, "with eyes frenzied and; features distorted, in a terrible condition of relapse after her dreaming. It is one of the most remarkable cases T have been called on to visit."