No. 626
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
September 29, 2023

Lessons in Opium-Smoking.

October 8, 2013
...
...

 "The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan MandijnWelcome to this week's Link Dump!Enjoy some music from the Strange Company HQ orchestra while you read.Political connections and getting away with murder.The Tradeston Flour Mills explosion.Primitive submarine?  Or cauldron for fish stew?  You make the call!The dreaded Aztec Death Whistle.  (Note: If you do play this video--and I'm not sure I recommend
More...
Strange Company - 9/29/2023
`
Soapy Smith in Leadville, ColoradoJuly 21, 1880Soapy and partner, rear, between carriagesCourtesy Kyle Rosene collection(Click image to enlarge) Soapy Smith's stereo-view photographLeadville, Colorado, July 21, 1880Where was it taken?WHERE IN LEADVILLE WAS THIS TAKEN?(Click image to enlarge)     Those who have read Alias Soapy Smith: The Life and Death of a Scoundrel may recall seeing the
More...
Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 9/14/2023
Shelley M. Dziedzic Many years ago Warps & Wefts published the story of Eliza Darling Borden who threw her young children down the cellar cistern at #96 Second Street. The two youngest, Holder and Eliza Ann drowned. Maria, the oldest child managed to survive a terrible fate while her mother used a straight razor to end her own life. Eliza was married to the brother of Abraham Borden, Andrew’s father, whose name was Lawdwick Borden. For years his name has seen any number of spellings but Lawdwick seems to be the correct one as it appears in numerous records, including the city directories. Lawdwick would have been Lizzie Borden’s great-uncle. Lawdwick worked for a good part of life in a planing mill, not surprising as his brother Cook Borden owned a lumber business. He was born March 14, 1812 to Richard and Martha “Patty” Borden. Lawdwick married Maria “Mary Jane” Briggs on September 8, 1833 in Dartmouth. The marriage ended tragically with Maria’s death on January 5, 1838 . After only five years of marriage and the deaths of their two infants, Maria (born and died in 1834) and Matthew (born and died in 1836) . Mrs. Maria Borden is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery. Lawdwick found himself a young widower. But not for long. His second wife, Eliza Darling (1811-1848) is the woman from whom all the interest stems. We know about her because of Lizzie Borden’s trial. The topic of her horrific suicide by straight razor after casting her children in the cistern on May 10, 1848 arose as the defense was looking at Lizzie’s possible mental competency, citing the sad tale of Eliza Borden, who may have suffered what today is termed postpartum depression. It was soon pointed out that Eliza, Lizzie’s great-aunt, was only a Borden by marriage – not a blood relation. Fall River Daily Evening News May 17, 1848 Son Holder S. Borden 1847-1848 Daughter Eliza Ann 1846-1848 Maria Borden (1844-1909) was spared and went on to marry twice and have children of her own in the city of Fall River, as was reported during the time of Lizzie’s trial. Maria first married Samuel Bond Hinckley (1832-1918). Sam was from Machias, Maine and the couple were wed on October 2, 1866. It appears the couple did not have children and that there was a divorce involved as Captain Samuel Bond Hinckley is buried in Riverside, California with his second wife, Julia and had attained the rank of Captain. Maria Borden Hinkley’s second husband was John B. Chace. They were married on November 27, 1873 in Somerset, MA. It was the first marriage for John B. Chase. The couple had two children, Lawdwick Chase who died on March 2, 1875 from severe lung congestion and Emma Lou Chase. The 1880 census shows Maria and John with daughter Emma Lou living in the Lawdwick Borden house at #96 Second Street. By that time, Andrew, Abby, Lizzie and Emma had been living next door at #92 for eight years. Maria Borden Hinckley Chase died at her home at 517 Middle Street on June 17, 1909. Here is her obituary from the Fall River Herald, June 18, 1909. Maria’s daughter Emma Lou would marry Harry F. Goulding at her father’s home in April of 1912. Her mother did not live to see her daughter and only surviving child’s wedding. Their son, Borden Chase Goulding born on September 27, 1914 became a design engineer for Rolling Mills and lived in Worcester MA. So what became of Lizzie’s great-uncle Lawdwick? Why he married twice more after the tragedy with wife #2. His third wife was another Eliza – Eliza Tripp! After her death, Lawdwick married yet again. Wife #4 was Ruhama Crocker who outlasted Lawdwick who died on October 6, 1874. Ruhama died in June of 1879. Fall River Daily Evening News, June 18, 1879. Lawdwick Borden left his nephew Jerome C. Borden as trustee of his estate- inherited by his daughter Maria Borden Hinckley Chase. So who is buried where? Lawdwick with wife Eliza wife 2 and Eliza wife 3 and the two children who drowned (Eliza Ann and Holder) as well as his two children by Maria Briggs, (Matthew and Maria) are in the Borden plot in Oak Grove Cemetery. First wife Maria Briggs “Mary Jane” Borden is buried in the Oak Grove plot , wife #4, is buried in South Attleboro, Maria Borden Chase and her husband John B. Chase are in Oak Grove Cemetery and Maria’s first husband Sam Hinckley is in Riverside, California. It’s an interesting family story, especially now that the Lawdwick Borden house is in the news over the controversy concerning the coffee shop. Alice Russell would live in that house as well as Dr. and Mrs. Michael Kelly- all connected to Lizzie Borden!
More...
Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 9/28/2023
An article I recently wrote for the British online magazine, New Politic, is now available online. The article, “The Criminal Origins of the United States of America,” is about British convict transportation to America, which took place between the years 1718 and 1775, and is the subject of my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: […]
More...
Early American Crime - 12/17/2021
William Farrell, Patrick Muldoon, and “Tonce” Joy played cards in Muldoon’s Cincinnati saloon on November 30, 1896. They were secretly colluding to cheat a fourth man. After skinning their victim, Joy’s job was to steer him away, but when he returned for his share, his partners wouldn’t pay. A fight ensued, a pistol fired, and “Tonce” Joy stagged out of Muldoon’s saloon to die. Farrell and
More...
Murder By Gaslight - 9/23/2023
How boring would the New York City subway system be if every station was built at the same time, resulting in a uniform look for the signs outside every subway entrance? Luckily, that didn’t happen. As stations opened across the boroughs in the decades after the 1904 debut of the first stretch of the IRT, […]
More...
Ephemeral New York - 9/25/2023
Youth With Executioner by Nuremberg native Albrecht Dürer … although it’s dated to 1493, which was during a period of several years when Dürer worked abroad. November 13 [1617]. Burnt alive here a miller of Manberna, who however was lately engaged as a carrier of wine, because he and his brother, with the help of […]
More...
Executed Today - 11/13/2020
Puck's Family Temperance Primer. | Fall Styles.

Lessons in Opium-Smoking.

Growing Metropolitan Evil A Growing Metropolitan Evil.—Scene in an opium den in Pell Street, frequented by working–girls. [more]

Lessons in Opium-Smoking.

How Young Girls Become Victims of the Dreamy Drug.

“What makes you tremble so?” “Opium-smoking.” “How long have you been so”” “Three or four years, sir. Those Chinamen give girls opium in candy and all sorts of things, until we can’t do without it. I have to go every day to smoke. I got into trouble with Mrs. Ching King because I saw her dosing children.”

Such was the statement made by Emma Pool, a young woman, eighteen years of age, before Justice Kilbreth, in the Tombs Police Court, a few days since.

“That testimony is rather startling if true,” said an artist of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper to an officer of the Sixth Precinct, while walking up Mott Street, on the opposite sides of which avenue dwell two discordant factions of Chinadom, headed respectively by Tom Lee and Sam Kee.

“I am inclined to doubt that story about little children being dosed,” replied the officer, “but there’s no denying the fact the opium dens in this neighborhood are frequented by a good many people besides Chinese. You’d scarcely expect to find women and young girls visiting such places, but they do.”

“What kind of women and girls?”

“Well, the kind that—that you see mostly about this neighborhood. Two or three years ago it was no uncommon thing to see carriages form up-town stop in these out-of-the-way lanes and alleys, and richly-dressed ladies, in thick fails, alight at some dingy rookery known to everybody hereabouts as an opium resort. But that is all done away with—that is to say, such people do their smoking up-town nowadays. Come along, and you can have a peep at the inside of some of these places, thought I don’t know that you’ll be able to see anything out of the common at this time of day.”

We turned up Pell Street, a narrow, squalid, disreputable lane between Chatham Square and Mott Street. The dirty strip of sidewalk, choked up with garbage, was thronged with Chinese and Italians, as low and ferocious-looking types of humanity as one would care to meet, even in daytime.

A laundry and a Chinese grocery store were first visited, but the occupants were discovered innocently eating boiled rice with red chop-sticks, which was not what we had “come out for to see.”

Presently we entered a low, dingy doorway, over which swung a green sign, bordered with scarlet, and bearing a Chinese inscription in gilt characters. A wrinkled old Chinaman conducted us through a bare, dark passageway to an inner apartment. A door suddenly opened, and disclosed as scene which more than realizes any preconceived idea of a Chinese opium den, whether drawn from picture, description, or a disordered imagination.

One pale shaft of sunlight, entering through a small window, dimly illuminated a narrow room, the walls of which were decorated in a semi-barbaric manner with vases, colored prints, mirrors and Chinese inscriptions. Along one side of this apartment extended two broad shelves, or divans, the upper about six feet above the floor, the lower less than two feet high. These were covered with bamboo matting, and on the side next to the wall were provided a low ridge or pillow—for upon these “bunks” the opium-smoker reclines whilst inhaling the drowsy fumes, and perhaps vainly courting those luxurious languors of which DeQuincy wrote. A peculiar, sickening order pervaded the place.

Our eyes having adapted themselves to the glimmering dusk, we peered through a vail of blue smoke down into the further end o the den. There reclined four or five young women, of good appearance, though rather flashily dressed, each holding over the flicker flame of a lamp the clumsy bamboo opium-pipe, which a Chinese attendant from time to time replenished by means a of a knitting-needle, with which a morsel of the drug was dipped for a tiny box and punched into the tiny aperture of the read earthen bowl. A few puffs would exhaust the supply, when another “dip: would be furnished. All of the unfortunate creatures seemed more or less under the spell of the intoxicating fumes. In one or two instances the eyes were close, and the flushed faces wore a vacant, dreamy smile. Some of the girls chatted in languid murmurs, and one, having shaken off the opium spell, had arisen form the matting, and in a dazed way was arranging her hat before a looking-glass, preparatory to quitting the place.

The mysterious gloom, the flickering opium-lamps, the barbaric colors on the walls, the trace-like appearance of the smokers, and the deathly stillness, scarce broken save by the sickening gurgle of the pipe—all contributed to make the scene a weird and impressive one, which fascinated even while it disgusted the unaccustomed gaze.

The old Chinaman muttered ominously as the artist began dashing of a rough sketch on a apiece of loose paper; and, taking one more survey of the den, we went out form the ghastly gloom and reeking atmosphere into the now strangely brilliant light of day, and in five minutes found ourselves in busy Printing-house Square, mingling again with that civilized half of the world which knows not, nor could ever dream, how the other half lives.


Reprinted from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper 12 May 1883.