Class-restricted tolerance
and initially the Company stopped
transport, as it did not want to lose its
Chinese trading rights. But Bengal was
poor and an increase of land tax or exise
duties to boost the Company revenue was
not desirable; increasing the opium
revenue was relatively painless as all
consumers were foreign. Thus, opium
continued to be shipped into Canton, in
spite of the Peking opium ban. When
Indian cotton was banned in England and
Manchester cotton was sold duty-free in
India in the early nineteenth century, the
Company became even more dependent
on their opium smuggle. In the 1830s
stresses built up as a result of a huge
increase in the amount of opium reaching
Lintin. A spread of opium traffic resulted
in an outbreak of conflicts between
smugglers and mandarins. By 1839 the
Emperor decided to assert his authority
in Canton and Lin-Tse-Hsu was
appointed Imperial Commissioner there.
He had the bulk of the Cantonese opium
stock destroyed and Palmerston (Foreign
Office) sent an expeditionary force, which
reached Macao in 1840. In three quarters
of an hour the Chinese fleet was
destroyed. The Chinese were forced to
accept the terms of the treaty of Nanking,
including freedom of commerce in certain
ports other than Canton, cessation of
Hong Kong and financial compensation.
The smugglers felt victimized by the
Chinese actions and at home a hatred of
the 'Chinese barbarians' was carefully
nurtured when between 1856 and 1858 a
second opium war, a combined Anglo-
French enterprise, resulted in the fall of
Peking. In the next twenty years China-
bound opium traffic nearly doubled.
People in Britain had hardly been aware
of the existence of this opium traffic, or of
its scale, and when London newspapers
reported the events, they were countered
by laissez-faire propaganda. Even if they
had known, Victorians might not have
thought much of the opium smuggle, since
opium was such a perfectly common
household good.
In Britain, opium was mainly imported
from Turkey, although home-grown
opium was sold as well. Poppy-head tea
had long been a well-known household
remedy, used for soothing fractious
babies, but also for many adult
complaints. Families would have their
own recipes. Industrialization and the
subsequent urbanization decreased these
families' autarky and they could no longer
produce their own remedies. Instead they
took their recipes, often containing
dangerous quantities of laudanum, to a
shopkeeper or chemist.
There were pharmacists who had taken
the, initially, voluntary examination set
by the Pharmaceutical Society; there were
also apothecaries under the jurisdiction of
the Society of Apothecaries, and there
were men who had learned the trade
through aprenticeship. Otherwise, the
profession of a pharmacist barely existed
before the 1840s. To a large extent, opium
pills, laudanum and other preparations
were sold by bakers, publicans, shoe
makers, factory operatives and so forth in
small corner shops. These shops were
kept by people little removed in social
status from the customers they served,
and usually but little encumbered by any
knowledge of poisons at all. Various fatal
cases are known of shopkeepers
mistakenly selling powdered opium for
powdered rhubarb. Street markets had
their opium preparations too, and buying
pills and drops on a Saturday night was
as normal as buying vegetables or meat.
Working people would not consult a
trained doctor on a regular basis. Self-
medication was common usage and many
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