of the preparations used were opium-
based. Godfrey's Cordial - a mixture of
opium, molasses for sweetening, flavoured
by sassafras- was especially popular in
England. In mid-nineteenth-century
Coventry, ten gallons of Godfrey's Cordial
-enough for 12000 doses- was sold weekly,
and was administered to 3000 infants
under two years of age, according to Dr C.
Fraser Brockington Public Health in the
Nineteenth Century, London 1965, 225,
226):
"Even greater quantities of opium
mixtures were said to be sold in
Nottingham...Every surgeon in
Marshland testified to the fact that 'there
was not a labourer's house in which the
bottle of opium was not seen and not a
child but who got it in some form.'...
Wholesale druggists reported on the sale
of immense quantities of opium; a retail
druggist dispensed up to 200 pounds a
year - in pills and penny sticks or as
Godfrey's Cordial..."
Bad living conditions caused gastro
intestinal complaints, of which a great
many children died. Children made
fretful by such complaints were soothed
by means of opium preparations, which
were generally believed to be
'strengthening". Middle-class children
were often cared for by a nurse who was
accustomed to using opium as a
quietener.
The medical profession could not keep
track of the extent of opium sales in mid-
Victorian England and it was barely
recognized, while in a large
manufacturing town between two and
three hundred labourers would buy opium
each day. It was a kind of cure-all, a
remedy for the fatigue and depression
unavoidable in working-class life; it
mitigated the effect of heavy drinking; it
was used for sleeplessness and also for
rheumatic pains and neuralgia, especially
in the Fens. In 1873 an English physician
reported in the Medical Times and
Gazette of July 19:
"The genuine opium-eating
districts are the ague and fen districts of
Norfolk and Lincolnshire. There it is not
casual, accidental or rare, but popular,
habitual and common. Anyone who visits
such a town as Louth or Wisbeach and
strolls about the streets on a Saturday
evening, watching the country people as
they do their marketing, may soon satisfy
himself that the crowds in the chemists'
shops come for opium; and they have a
peculiar way of getting it. They go in, lay
down their money, and receive the opium
pills in exchange without saying a word."
Self-medication was the most common
reason for working-class opiate use: it was
not usually taken for its socalled
'stimulant' or 'recreational' effects, even if
it did in practice produce them. Mrs
Gaskell describes in Mary Barton (1848)
how "many a penny that would have gone
little way enough in oatmeal or potatoes,
bought opium to still the hungry little
ones, and make them forget their
uneasiness in heavy troubled sleep. It was
mother's mercy." John Barton becomes
addicted to opium: "He wanted it to
relieve him from the terrible oppression
its absence occasioned." Mary does not
seem to realize that her father is
dependent on opium, and indeed
dependence or addiction often went
unrecognized, both by buyers and sellers,
unless it became scarce for some reason or
other.
The opiate death rate was quite stable:
five deaths per million living in 1840 as
against 6 deaths per million living in the
early 1860s. Open availability had not
resulted in a dramatic rise in home
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