Victorian Drug Use
Dr Andrzej Diniejko, D. Litt.; Contributing Editor, Poland
[Victorian Web Home —>Biology —>Chemistry —>Psychology —>Public Health —>Addiction]
Introduction
oday it is hard to believe, but in early- andmid-Victorian Britain it was possible to walk into a chemist's shop andbuy without prescription laudanum, cocaine, and even arsenic. Opiumpreparations were also sold freely in towns on market halls and in thecountryside by travelling hawkers.
Until 1868, the sale of drugs was practically unrestricted, and theycould be bought like any other commodity. (Mitchell 228) During theIndustrial Revolution drug usein England grew rampant, particularly among the working classes. (Meier138) Drugs were brought to Britain from every corner of the expandingBritish Empire and the amount of opium sale was particularly staggering.(Parssinen 49) Dangerous drugs were commonly used for making homeremedies and less frequently as a recreation for the bored and alienatedpeople. The recreational use of opiates was popular particularly withpre-Victorian and Victorian artists and writers.
There was no moral condemnation of the use of opiates and their usewas not regarded as addiction but rather as a habit in the Victorianperiod. However, when in the 1860s, “Dark England” with its opium densin London's East End was described in popular press and books, variousindividuals and religious organisations began to campaign againstunrestricted opium trafficking. In 1868, the Pharmacy Act recogniseddangerous drugs and limited their sale to registered chemists andpharmacists, but until the end of the nineteenth century few doctors andscientists warned about the dangers of drug addiction.
The Romantic legacy
rugs (mostly opium and its derivatives) were used forboth medicinal and recreational purposes by the Romantic era writers,such asThomas deQuincey (1785-1859) andSamuel Taylor Coleridge(1772-1834). De Quincey described minutely the non-medical use ofopiates in his book,Confessions of anOpium-Eater (1821). He “ate opium” in the shape of pills orpellets. Coleridge, who suffered from neuralgic and rheumatic pains,tried to relieve them by opium or its derivatives. It is believed thathe composed his famous poem, “Kubla Khan,” in a dreaminduced by laudanum. Coleridge struggled with his drug dependence allhis life. His daughter, Sara (1802-1852) confided to a friend that shewas unable to sleep without laudanum. Other poets, including LordByron,John Keats,andPercyShelley, took laudanum from a vial for medicinal and recreationaluses. Byron's daughter, Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), a mathematical geniusand the first computer programmer, became addicted to laudanum havingbeen prescribed it for asthma.
Opium and opium derivatives
he narcotic and painkilling properties of opium have beenknown since prehistoric times. At the beginning of the eighteenthcentury, opium was produced in some areas of Egypt, Asia Minor andBengal. Opium and its various derivatives were marketed as a medicineand also as a recreational drug throughout Asia. “The trade in opium toChina was begun by the Portuguese and the Dutch as early as theseventeenth century, but it did not attain major proportions until afterthe British had taken Bengal in 1757” (Trocki 53). By 1830, the Britishhad become the major drug-traffickers in the world. The British Empiresupportedopiumtrafficking to China, which was an enormous market. The Opium Act of1878 strengthened the role of opium as a cornerstone of the Britishimperial economic policy in the Far East.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, as a result of theexpandingBritish Empire,opium also became available in Britain and soon it was as popular asalcohol. However, the bulk of opium imports to Britain came not fromIndia but from Turkey. “Turkish opium, noted for its strength and highquality, usually provided between 80 and 90% of Britain's total importof the drug, only losing some of its preeminence in the late seventiesand eighties when the Persian variety was more widely imported.”(Berridge 438) Opium and opium derivatives were widely recognised inVictorian Britain as a 'cure all' and the range of opiate preparationson the market was enormous.
Medical texts of the time list opiate electuary, powder ofchalk with opium, opiate confection, powder of ipecacuanha and opium(Dover's Powder), tincture of soap and opium, liquorice troches withopium, wine of opium (Sydenham's Laudanum), vinegar of opium, extract ofopium, opiate clyster, suppositories, opium liniment, plaster of opium,and two of the most noted compounds — tincture of opium, or laudanum, amixture of opium and alcohol, and the camphorated tincture, known asparegoric elixir. [Berridge 440]
The most popular opium derivative was laudanum, a tincture of opiummixed with wine or water. Laudanum, called the 'aspirin of thenineteenth century,' was widely used in Victorian households as apainkiller, recommended for a broad range of ailments including cough,diarrhea, rheumatism, 'women's troubles', cardiac disease and evendelirium tremens. Many notable Victorians, who used laudanum as apainkiller, includedElizabethBarrett Browning,CharlesDickens,ElizabethGaskell,George Eliot,Bram Stoker,Gabriel Dante Rossetti, and hiswifeElizabeth Siddal,who died of an overdose of laudanum in 1862.Wilkie Collins used laudanumfor the pain of gout and other maladies.
Patent and proprietary medicines
pium derivatives were also used in many patent medicines and sold without a prescription in great quantities in Victorian general stores and apothecaries. The most popular patent medicines which contained opium or its derivatives were Kendal Black Drop, Godfrey’s Cordial, Dover's Powder, Dalby’s Carminative, McMunn’s Elixir, Batley’s Sedative Solution, and Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup (Hayter 31). Opium and its derivatives were used as cheap homemade mixtures.
Opium most infamous use in Victorian Britain was as infants' quietener (Parssinen 42). Children were often given Godfrey's Cordial (also called Mother's Friend), consisting of opium, water, treacle, to keep them quiet. The potion had pernicious effects and resulted in deaths and severe illnesses of babies and children. It was recommended for colic diarrhea, vomiting, hiccups, pleurisy, rheumatism, catarrhs, and cough. Twenty or twenty-five drops of laudanum could be bought for a penny. Raw opium was often sold in pills or sticks (Berridge 440).
Other opium derivatives included paregoric (camphorated opium tincture), widely used to control diarrhea in adults and children, and Gee’s Linctus (opiate squill linctus) for cough relief. There were also proprietary medicines, remedies whose formula was owned exclusively by the manufacturer and which were marketed usually under a name registered as a trademark. One of the most popular remedies, introduced in 1857, was Collis Browne’s Chlorodyne, which according to the advertisement, “assuages pain of every kind, affords a calm, refreshing sleep without headache, and invigorates the nervous system when exhausted” (Hodgson 105).
Opium consumption in the low-lying marshy Fens, covering parts of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and Norfolk, attracted a particular attention of doctors and social investigators. Dr. Julian Hunter noted, when reporting to the Privy Council in 1864:
A man in South Lincolnshire complained that his wife had spent £100 on opium since he married. A man may be seen occasionally asleep in a field leaning on his hoe. He starts when approached, and works vigorously for a while. A man who is setting about a hard job takes his pill as preliminary, and many never take their beer without dropping a piece of opium into it. [Berridge 440]
In the Fens opium addiction, which was called “elevation, ” is briefly described inCharles Kingsley'sAlton Locke (1850). Farmer Porter says to Alton Locke while driving him toward Cambridge that women are frequent purchasers of opium in the Fens.
“Oh! ho! ho! — yow goo into druggist's shop o' market-day, into Cambridge, and you'll see the little boxes, doozens and doozens, a' ready on the counter; and never a ven-man's wife goo by, but what calls in for her pennord o' elevation, to last her out the week. Oh! ho! ho! Well, it keeps women-folk quiet, it do; and it's mortal good agin ago pains.” “But what is it?” “Opium, bor' alive, opium!” [116 ]
Women made a substantial part of the addicted Victorian population, and were, as a rule, more medicated than men. A number of patent drugs and proprietary medicines containing opium or its derivatives, were called 'women's friends'. Doctors prescribed widely opiates for 'female troubles', associated with menstruation and childbirth, or fashionable 'female maladies', such as the vapours, which included hysteria, depression, fainting fits, and mood swings.
Cocaine
ocaine was first extracted from coca leaves in 1860 by the German chemist Albert Niemann, but its commercial production was delayed until the 1880s, when it became popular in the medical community. Cocaine lozenges were recommended as effective remedies for coughs, colds and toothaches in the Victorian era. It was believed in the nineteenth century that cocaine had therapeutic effects and it was often prescribed in the treatment of indigestion, melancholia, neurasthenia. Cocaine was also used as an anesthetic. (Pearce 227).
In 1863, an ingenious Corsican-born French chemist, Angelo Mariani, made a fortune selling a new beverage called Vin Mariani or Elixir Mariani. The tonic, which was made from coca leaves, was regarded as a wonder medicine for a variety of ailments. It was advertised that it fortifies and refreshes body and brain, restores health and vitality. In Britain, the effects of this coca wine were praised, amongst others, byQueen Victoria,Rudyard Kipling, andEdward Elgar (Dormandy 374). Two glasses of Vin Mariani were believed to contain about 50 milligrams of pure cocaine.
Cocaine was also used in a number of patent medicines. From the 1880s to the 1920s coca was even advised by pharmacists for relieving vomiting in pregnancy, and cocaine wool was recommended to relieve toothache.
In the mid- and late-Victorian period doctors and pharmacists' organisations attempted to formulate a “professional ethic” and called for more stringent control of the sale of opiates and poisons. Constant drug use was regarded as an addiction rather than a moral weakness. Gradually, quinine and chloral replaced opiates as recommended remedies for fever and sleeplessness.
The famous authority on good household management, Mrs. Beeton, included opium in the list of home remedies in her famous book,Mrs Beeton's Household Management (1861), but she warned against the abuse of this drug. “Selfish and thoughtless nurses, and mothers too, sometimes give cordials and sleeping draughts, whose effects are too well known.” (975)
References to drug use in Victorian literature
ictorian literature contains numerousreferences to drug use, particularly opium and its derivatives. Authorswho wrote about the use of opium were, amongst others,Anne andCharlotte Brontë,Charles Dickens,William Makepeace Thackeray,Elizabeth Gaskell,Wilkie Collins,Bram Stoker,Oscar Wilde,Robert Louis Stevenson,and Sir ArthurConan Doyle.In Dickens's
Shaking from head to foot, the man whose scatteredconsciousness has thus fantastically pieced itself together, at lengthrises, supports his trembling frame upon his arms, and looks around. Heis in the meanest and closest of small rooms. Through the raggedwindow-curtain, the light of early day steals in from a miserable court. He lies, dressed, across a large unseemly bed, upon a bedstead that hasindeed given way under the weight upon it. Lying, also dressed and alsoacross the bed, not longwise, are a Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggardwoman. The two first are in a sleep or stupor; the last is blowing at akind of pipe, to kindle it. [1]
Opium is also mentioned in Anne Brontë'sTenantof Wildfell Hall (1848) and Charlotte Bronte'sVillette (1853). Branwell Brontë, a compulsive laudanumaddict, was most probably Anne's model for Lord Lowborough in
In William Makepeace Thackeray's Catherine: AStory (1840), published under the pseudonym of Ikey Solomons,Jr., the heroine buys from several apothecaries small portions oflaudanum for a toothache and brews it in punch. InVanity Fair (1847-48), Becky Sharp keeps a bottle oflaudanum in her room, which was a common practice in Victorian England.In Elizabeth Gaskell'sMary Barton (1848),John Barton intoxicates himself with opium “in response to his anger anddepression over extreme poverty and lack of employment prospects.”(Aikens 27)
The dream atmosphere ofLewis Carroll'sAlice in Wonderland (1865) evokes the effect of opiates.As Kristina Aikens notes:
the substances Alice consumes in Wonderland are nevercalled drugs specifically, but her encounters with mysterious bottlesfilled with strange substances, cakes imprinted with injunctions toconsume them, hookah-smoking caterpillars, and magical mushrooms — allof which appear to Alice in a dreamspace, and which distort her sense ofher body, space, time and logic — have become associated in the popularimagination (today's at least) with drug consumption. [1]
Wilkie Collins, who took opium from the early 1860s in the form oflaudanum to alleviate the symptoms of gout and rheumatic pain, used themotif of drug addiction in the plot of his famous novel,The Moonstone (1868).
George Eliot mentions opium use in several of her novels. In
“I've been smoking opium. I always meant to do it sometime or other, to try how much bliss could be got by it; and havingfound myself just now rather out of other bliss, I thought it judiciousto seize the opportunity. But I pledge you my word I shall never tap acask of that bliss again. It disagrees with my constitution.” [670-71]
Likewise, inFelix Holt, TheRadical (1866), Maurice Christian, who suffers from 'nervouspains', takes opium frequently.
In Thomas Hardy'sTrumpet Major (1880),Bob Loveday falls unconscious because he drank poppy head tea.
‘I fell in slipping down the topsail halyard — the rope,that is, was too short — and I fell upon my head. And then I wentaway. When I came back I thought I wouldn’t disturb ye: so I lay downout there, to sleep out the watch; but the pain in my head was so greatthat I couldn’t get to sleep; so I picked some of the poppy-heads in theborder, which I once heard was a good thing for sending folks to sleepwhen they are in pain. So I munched up all I could find, and dropped offquite nicely.’ [272-273]
It is alleged that cocaine gave inspiration to Robert LouisStevenson to writeThe Strange Case of Dr. Jekylland Mr. Hyde (1886). Dr. Jekyll concocted a strange potion whichtransforms him into the evil Mr. Hyde. Although, the content of Jekyll'smind altering potion is not revealed, there is little doubt that he wasaddicted to some psychotropic potion.
There was something strange in my sensations, somethingindescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I feltyounger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a headyrecklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like amillrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknownbut not an innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the firstbreath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold aslave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced anddelighted me like wine. [80]
There are many references to opium inThePicture of Dorian Gray (1890). In Chapter 16, the unageingDorian visits an opium den in the East End.
As Dorian hurried up its three rickety steps, the heavyodour of opium met him. He heaved a deep breath, and his nostrilsquivered with pleasure. When he entered, a young man with smooth yellowhair, who was bending over a lamp lighting a long thin pipe, looked upat him and nodded in a hesitating manner. [...] Dorian winced and lookedround at the grotesque things that lay in such fantastic postures on theragged mattresses. The twisted limbs, the gaping mouths, the staringlustreless eyes, fascinated him. He knew in what strange heavens theywere suffering, and what dull hells were teaching them the secret ofsome new joy. [50]
Apart from descriptions of opium use, we can also find in Victorianliterature descriptions of morphine and cocaine use. In Bram Stoker'sDracula (1897), Dr Jack Seward, theadministrator of an insane asylum in Carfax, is a morphine addict. Hisformer teacher, Professor Van Helsing administers blood transfusion andmorphine to Lucy Westenra before she turns into a vampire. In ArthurConan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, the great detective occasionallyshoots himself up with cocaine because he believes that it stimulateshis brain when he is not on a case.
Conclusion
he widespread use of psychoactive drugs (particularly opium) in Victorian Britain affected all classes of society, but their use was not regarded as a serious social and medical problem until the early twentieth century, when doctors began to warn about the dangers of addiction. Ultimately, the use of drugs was banned in Britain by the Dangerous Drugs Act in 1920.
References and Further Reading
Abrams, M.H.The Milk of Paradise:The Effect of Opium Visions on the Works of De Quincey, Crabbe, FrancisThompson, and Coleridge. New York: Octagon Books, 1971.
Aikens, Kristina.A Pharmacy of HerOwn: Victorian Women and the Figure of the Opiate. Ann Arbor, MI:ProQuest, 2008.
Beeton, Isabella Mary.Mrs Beeton'sHousehold Management. Ware, Hertforshire: Wordsworth Editions,2006.
Berridge, Victoria. “Victorian Opium Eating: Responsesto Opiate Use in Nineteenth-Century England.”Victorian Studies 21, no. 4 (1978): 437-461.
Berridge, Virginia, and Griffith Edwards.
Booth, Martin.Opium: AHistory. London: Simon and Schuster, 1996.
Dickens, Charles.The Mystery ofEdwin Drood. London: Chapman and Hall, 1870.
____.The Pickwick Papers.Vol. II. New York: W. A. Townsend, 1861.
Eliot, George.DanielDeronda. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Foxcroft, Louise.The Making ofAddiction: The 'Use and Abuse' of Opium in Nineteenth-CenturyBritain. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2007.
Gootenberg, Paul.Andean Cocaine:The Making of a Global Drug. Chapel Hill, NC.: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 2008.
Grinspoon, Lester, James B. Bakalar.
Hardy, Thomas.TheTrumpet-Major. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Hayter, Alethea.Opium and theRomantic Imagination. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University ofCalifornia Press, 1968.
Hodgson, Barbara. In the Arms ofMorpheus: The Tragic History of Morphine, Laudanum and Opium and PatentMedicines. Vancouver: Greystone Books Ltd, 2001.
Kingsley, Charles.Alton Locke.Tailor and Poet. An Autobiography. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz,1857.
Inglis, Brian.The Forbidden Game:A Social History of Drugs. London: Hodder and Stoughton,1975.
McCormack, Kathleen.George Eliotand Intoxication: Dangerous Drugs for the Condition of England.New York: Saint Martin's, 2000.
Milligan, Barry.Pleasures andPains: Opium and the Orient in Nineteenth-Century BritishCulture. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995.
Meier, William M.Property Crime inLondon, 1850-Present. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Mitchell, Sally, ed.VictorianBritain: An Encyclopedia. Abingdon, New York: Routledge,2012.
Parssinen, Terry M.SecretPassions, Secret Remedies: Narcotic Drugs in British Society,1820-1930. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Values,1983.
Pearce, D.H. “Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle andCocaine.”Journal of the History of theNeurosciences: Basic and Clinical Perspectives 3, no. 4 (1994):227-232.
Stevenson, Robert Louis.TheStrange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Peterborough, Ont.:Broadview Press, 2005.
Trocki, Carl A.Opium and Empire:Chinese Society in Colonial Singapore, 1800-1910. Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press. 1990.
Tromp, Marlene.Altered States:Sex, Nation, Drugs, and Self-Transformation in Victorian Spiritualism. Albany: State of New York University Press,2006.
Wilde, Oscar.The Complete Works ofOscar Wilde. New Lanark: Geddes & Grosset, 2001.
Wohl, Anthony S.Endangered Lives:Public Health in Victorian Britain. Cambridge: HarvardUuniversity Press, 1983.
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Created 7 March 2008
Last modified 9 December 2022