As early as 1841, just five years after South Australia was settled, South Australian newspapers warned readers about the effects of opium (“at the opium shops in Constantinople”): “A stupor, which lasts about eight hours…is attended by a gnawing of the stomach, but none of that nausea consequent upon the use of vinous or alcoholic drinks. The intoxication of this drug produces an utter listlessness and dislike to everything around the individual who cannot be happy or easy until he returns to the poison again. At length the appetite for food is destroyed, the mind becomes incapable of pursuing any study, the nervous system is quite unhinged, there is a sort of delirium tremens, the muscles become indolent and flaccid, and almost incapable of obeying volition. The body becomes deformed, the chest grows out, the ribs are crooked, one shoulder get higher than the other, the vertebrae are displaced and sunken, the head falls on one side, and all kinds of horrible contortions and distortions take place, until death puts an end to the miserable existence of the opium-eater...The Chinese opium-smoker, on whose countenance the love of opium is written, becomes decrepit in early life, his skin appears like parchment, and if but 25 years old, looks full twice that age, and all the results of opium-eating becomes his lot.” (Southern Australian, 24 August 1841, p. 4)
By the 1870s, opium eating was ‘added to the vices which already hold sway over so many thousands of our fellow-colonists in Australia’. Opium was sent from Hong Kong to Sydney ‘for consumption by the lowest class of European females in that colony’ and ‘it has been rumoured that in Melbourne the fallen women who have sunk to the lowest depths of infamy by illicit intercourse with the Chinese have for some time been in the habit of taking this deadly drug.’ (South Australian Chroncile and Weekly Mail, 14 August 1875, p. 5).
In 1879, Alfred Hughes, a forty-six-year-old storekeeper from Sturt Street, died from opium poisoning – he probably took laudanum before he died. In fact, most cases from Adelaide involving opium poisoning were from people taking laudanum. Opium dens were not very common in Adelaide, although they did exist.
Fenn Place was connected with opium in the early 1890s and in 1912 – a Japanese man residing in Fenn Place died from opium poisoning in October 1892 and a Chinese man was arrested for receiving a parcel of Chinese potatoes concealing two tins of opium from 3 Fenn Place. (South Australian Register, 26 October 1892, p. 6; The Register, 22 August 1912, p. 5).
In the early 1900s, there were an estimated 50 opium dens in Adelaide, mostly in the side streets and alleys of Hindley Street, but it soon fell out of favour. This might be due to the huge cost – the customs officials cracked down on the illegal importation of opium, which made it increasingly difficult to import and, therefore, very expensive in Adelaide – about £5 an ounce by 1928.
In 1928, it had been fifteen years since an opium den had been raided by the police in Adelaide, but a photograph depicting a ‘typical scene’ in a Chinese opium den was published in The Register. It, and the accompanying article, can be viewed HERE. In the accompanying article, the journalist wrote that “within half a mile of the very heart of Adelaide there exists a Chinese opium den, probably the only survivor of many similar “joints” which jostled each other in the west-end about 25 years ago”. The den was known only to Chinamen, according to this article, and it was an unassuming building somewhere in the west end. ‘With rough concrete walls and floor, and plain wooden benches, the scene of the night’s entertainment is distinctly squalid and the atmosphere “could be cut with a knife.”’ In the early 1900s, non-Chinese men were using opium dens, which was considered ‘the worst evil’ by society at the time, but it was intimated that the opium dens of the late 1920s were used exclusively by Chinese people.
There were two raids on opium dens in Adelaide’s west end – Hindley Street and Fenn Place – in 1928 and 1929. In both cases, the men arrested for being in possession of opium were Chinese and cabinet makers. The Hindley Street opium den was in the Hooker’s Building on the southern side of Hindley Street and west of Morphett Street. If my sense of direction is correct, Hooker’s Building is still standing. This could be the opium den featured in the Register a few months earlier.
At 1pm on 1 December 1929, five detectives raided a two-storey house in Fenn Place. They seized a large quantity of opium, two opium pipes, and several lamps and trays. They also arrested a 46-year-old cabinet maker, Ah Fin, with having been in possession of opium. ‘The atmosphere in the house was said to be pungent with opium smoke’. The house, a two-storey structure, was very dark inside and the police used torches and matches to search. They also seized four bottles of Chinese liquor. Being in possession of opium was illegal because it was a prohibited import, but it was not an offence to be in possession of opium if it was not imported. The case against Ah Fin was dismissed at the Adelaide Police Court because it could not be proved that the opium had been imported. The deputy Government Analyst, Mr. W. T. Rowe, told the Court that he once made opium from poppies growing in his garden at Woodville, therefore proving that it was possible to make opium in South Australia (The Register/News Pictorial, 2 December 1929, p. 25; The Register/News Pictorial, 4 December 1892, p. 2; Chronicle, 5 December 1892, p. 3).
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| Intersection of Hindley Street and Morphett Street, facing north. Photograph taken in October 2012 from outside the 1928 opium den. |
