infants of working mothers and for
'stimulant', 'recreational' purposes, a
cheap alternative to drink. De Quincey
was among the first to present the
working-class use of opium as a problem:
"Some years ago, on passing
through Manchester, I was informed by
several cotton-manufacturers that their
work-people were rapidly getting into the
practice of opium-eating... The immediate
occasion of this practice was the lowness
of wages, which, at that time, would not
allow them to indulge in ale or
spirits.. "(Confessions, 31-2)
This view is corroborated by the above-
quoted physician in the Medical Times
and Gazette of July 19, 1873:
"In these [fen and ague] districts
it is taken by people of all classes, but
especially by the poor and miserable, and
by those who in other districts would seek
comfort from gin or beer."
This biassed attitude to opiate use was
induced by class tensions. The anxiety
about working-class opiate use did not
have so much to do with
humanitarianism as with fear and
unease. One direct result of
industrialization was the creation of raw
manufacturing towns and slum quarters,
which no 'respectable' Victorian ever need
set foot in and where political unrest,
violence and promisquity teemed.
During the 1840s and 1850s the blank
spaces of London were filled in. While
London prepared for the 1851 Exhibition
to celebrate British progress, poverty was
closing in on its 'respectble' inhabitants.
Danger lurked amid civilization and
consequently strange myths were
established about working- class habits,
child dosing, for example, or 'stimulant'
opiate use.
This had everything to do with lack of
understanding or interest regarding the
horrible living conditions of the working
classes. Southey who had attacked the
evils of industrialization in his Colloquies
on the Progress and Prospects of Society
(1829), was ridiculed by Macaulay, who,
even though he loathed the utilitarians
himself, boxed Southey"s ears with facts
and figures in the approved Gradgrindian
way and generally misinterpreted his
claims in favour of state intervention.
Laissez-faire assumed that unregulated
working conditions would ultimately
benefit everyone and suffering was
considered by the average mid-Victorian
liberal to be essential to human progress.
So why would working-class people need
to eat opium, if not for 'stimulant'
reasons?
Victorians were keen to separate body
and mind, to distinguish between 'animal'
and 'spiritual' characteristics. Sensations
were as bad as dreams, unacceptable
because incompatible to the spiritual
associations which distinguish man from
animals. Indulging in 'stimulant' use of
opium and allowing for hallucinations
must therefore be considered a step down
the evolutionary, and social, ladder, but
so biassed was Victorian society, so
frightened of the working mob, that it was
only criticized among the lowest
substratum, which so fearfully reminded
the new middle classes of the poverty,
suppression and slavery which they had
only lately escaped. It would not, they
realized, take a lot to land them there
once more.
Self-preservation prompted them to adopt
the norms of hypocrisy and prudery which
were handed to them from higher up, in
order to protect themselves from the
everyday reality they read about in the
newspapers of the 1850s: people of more
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