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Debra Arif may find no. 4 amusing.
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Ah, the good old days traveling with Jem and the circus...
Great spot, Gary! Thanks for posting this. Is it Booth?
Thanks to Roy and Ed for the rest of this interesting thread too.Comment
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Debra,
Yes, it is Booth. I was being a bit lazy by just posting the images and not transcribing them. I'll give it a whirl later. I'm in Lyme at the moment and the Gem Mace book is still in the window of the local 2nd hand bookshop. I'm going to buy it and see if there's any reference to a Limehouse Opium Mistress.
This really is my kinda thread. And it links up geographically to the Highway one, Narrow Street, Limehouse leading as it did into Broad Street, Ratcliffe, or vice versa.
GaryComment
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I'd barter them down a bit for the book , Gary; Wasn't it there last time you visited months back?
I think the opium mistress may have been called Marianne (maybe you know this already). On the 1891 census at Jamaica Place, Limehouse, there's a Supprich and Marrianne Cuderboxges which isn't too far away from Booth's 'Khodonabaksch'.Comment
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Best I can do:
Then into Jamaica Street passing through Nigthingale Place & several small courts - thieve's resorts. Knocked at the door of No. 13, Jamaica Street. ' Are you at home, mother. May we come in to see you" said Carter. Come in, come in, my dear answered a woman's voice from an inner room. Through a small low room, dark, into another room rather less dark but rather smaller, the greater part of it being taken up by a large square low bed or couch, at the two sides of which were hanging curtains. In the centre of the bed a tray, on which a small lamp under a glass shade looking like a night light only the flame was smokeless and clear, round the lamp 3 or four little boxes or bottles, at the back of the bed 4 small square pillows, reclining on either side of the lamp a man and a woman fully dressed, though the man was in his shirt sleeves & the trousers he wore hung loosely round his hips and legs showing the outlines of bones and joints which had evidently not been born to wear trousers. The man was an Indian, a Hindoo, & the woman English or perhaps Irish. They were man and wife and kept an opium den.
As we entered they were just going to start smoking. Two pipes were reached down from racks on the wall at the back of the bed. The pipes are made of tubes of bamboo wood, hollowed, about 2ft long, and about 3/4 of the way down sticks out the bowl of the pipe. the prepared opium which looks like treacle is taken out of a small bottle hardly larger than a thimble (full) with a small bone salt or mustard spoon, and put, I think, straight into the bowl of the pipe. Some of it is also stuck round the end of a long knitting needle which is then held over the flame of the lamp and gently roasted. it should not burn during this process and no smoke must get into it, the lamp therefore is fed with the finest colza oil & that is why the flame is so clear and smokeless. Every now and then this knitting needle with the roasted opium is progged (?) down the bowl of the pipe & the two together held over the lamp. Then comes the smoking. The smoke being gulped down as though it were a draft though after the 3rd or 4th pull it was generally emitted through the mouth and nostrils. About once in every 3 minutes they seemed to be able to get a pull of smoke. To the on-looker the trouble of it seemed to do away with any possible pleasure. On neither of them did it have any apparent effect. The smell of the smoke - a cloudy light blue in colour is nutty and not unpleasant; but one of the most sickly of smells when stale said Carter. That it does have a real effect even on those inured to it is certain because the woman said she cd do nothing of a morning without her pipe. " I feel all dribs and drabs & cannot do any of my housework before my smoke in the morning, after it i am happy and strong like a lion. It seems to give one heart and courage."
Every now and then the woman spoke as one educated who had seen better things. She spoke of G. A. Sala as her uncle; of having served Lady Burdett in his house, of having to clap on the strait waistcoat when Sala became delirious; of having travelled round with Jem Mace & a circus and acted as property woman, then finally having at (?) the misfortune to take up with coloured men - "Perhaps that was your luck" remarked her husband deliberately at this point.
Her husband is a Hindoo, a cook, has been employed in the City as a curry maker also at the Indian exhibition at Earl's Court, now he is out of work and wants something to do badly. ALS (?) gave his address of Star and Garter Hotel Richmond where Indian guests are staying for the Jubilee. His name is Mr. Khodonabatsch according to a letter they had typewritten to send round to various employers of Indian cooks. Carter called her Mrs. Codonabex.
Smoke was offered to the company but we all refused.
Business is very bad, so they said. Their customers, Chinese and Lascars, or anyone who comes, don't come. Ships now insist on their crews being on board at 7pm so smoking is more common in the morning than it used to be and less common at night. No fixed payment is asked the lid of a tin box is turned upwards & each expected to put something in it as he goes away. We gave between us about 5s at which they were much pleased.
Mrs. K said she was of the few who really could prepare good opium for smoking. Prussian (?) is the best and Persian the worst because it has dirt in it. Raw opium, as far as I cd understand, is dark stuff and looks like chocolate or a hard gum (?). In its raw state it costs 12/- per lb and they buy it from Lacey the chemist nearly opposite The London Hospital. (The shop has its window full of patent medicines, it goes a long way back and has a very queer looking man serving behind the counter.) Raw opium is boiled or simmered in a clean copper vessel, then poured off into water, being strained through canvas on its way, then mixed with old opium pipe scrapings called seesi or seeni (?) then it is workable though (?) ready. The proper mixing is all important. (NB this description is probably incorrect.)
K smokes about 1/4 of a 1/2 an ounce of opium daily - one lb of opium costing 12/-; how much does it cost her per day? ans surely 1d. The Queen's manshi Abdul Karin used to come here to smoke. So did many other Indians whose framed photos she shewed to us.
Then we left. She said we might come again any time we liked.
Then we walked into Limehouse Causeway: calling in at a Chinese general shop on the East Side of the road kept by a young Chinaman. 'Chinamen are very tame, but very slippery, tricky & cunning' said Carter. Through the shop & into a back room about 6 ft square. There a low bed like the other & two Chinamen on it smoking opium. A great ticking of clocks. There were 7 laying all round the room so that men may see when to get back to their ships. A very happy jolly looking Chinaman - looked like a Jap - on the bed faced wreathed in smiles who had smoked: and a very sour looking pig-tailed heathen who was just starting - business is bad they said here also: in spite of the fact that Foh Sow this man's rival over the way who had 3 dens is dead and his place turned into a laundry. Never the less our man was evidently well off & almost certainly a liar. He knew of our coming beforehand. He had several other rooms, I think, for smoking but denied their existence. He does not smoke opium himself. He does all the Chinese business of the quarter: gets together crews for ships and is the adviser of the seamans general shop in the W. I. Dock Road just round the corner.
We saw some dead drunk & insensible as Carter said men became after much opium.
Then back to the police station after a most interesting evening.Comment
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Thanks for the transcript, Gary.
Booth got the address slightly wrong; Marianne (who was Italian) and Supprich Cuderboxges lived at 13 Jamaica Place.Comment
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Good find, Debra.
I've edited the transcript because I realised the word in the last sentence but one that I couldn't make out was ' & insensible.'
The bit about Limehouse Causeway intrigued me because my grandparents had a shop there in the 30's. I once ran off all the 1911 census pages for LC and there were loads of Chinese names and a very amusing comment against one person's nationality - something like, 'British, and thoroughly ashamed to be so because of Mr. Lloyd George'.Comment
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Quiz
Does anyone know what this is?Attached FilesComment
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It says chicken chow mein, £6
Bird's nest soup, £4.50
Knickerbocker Glory, £5.50...Comment
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I've read most of Limehouse Nights, Debra.
The bookshop in Lyme that has the Jem Mace book is also a B & B. The bedrooms are filled with the overflow stock from the shop. Some years ago we stayed there and I found an almost pristine early edition of LN in the room we were staying in. I read most of it during our stay and was intending to buy the book when we left, but I forgot. When we returned the next year the owner let me search the room (we weren't staying there) but the book had disappeared.
GaryComment
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Robert/Debra,
It's a pukka poo ticket (don't judge me on the spelling).
From what I've heard the main Chinese vice in Limehouse in the 30s was not opium or the delights of 'lust houses', but gambling. Pukka poo was a sort of lottery apparently. You could by the tickets in 'Chinese' Causeway.
Of course it was illegal to sell them and the premises that did were often raided by the police. My dad recalled lying in bed at night and hearing the scamper of slippered feet across the roof of the shop followed by the thump, thump of regulation size nines. (I'm not sure whether the Limehouse Chinese actually wore slippers in the 30s - you can never really trust family stories, can you.)
GaryComment
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Did you check under the bed? The book may have been propping up the mattress.
Regarding the Chinese community in Limehouse, I have read that the resident community - as opposed to transient sailors - was only a few hundred strong at most.
Up until the late 1980s two of the best Chinese Restaurants in the land were still in Limehouse. Both are now closed.Comment
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