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Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" by Commissioner Booth-Tucker
page 44 of 182 (24%)
glittering white teeth. Here is a young girl sitting among a group
of newly arrived customers singing some romance. As they hand round
the pipes there is a bonny little lad of six or seven watching his
father's changing face with a dreadful indifference.

"At night these dens are crowded to excess, and it is estimated that
there are upwards of twelve thousand persons in Lucknow enslaved by
this hideous vice. An opium sot is the most hopeless of all
drunkards. Once in the clutches of the fiend, everything gives way
to his fierce promptings. His victims only work to get more money
for opium. Wife, children, home, health, and life itself are
sacrificed to this degrading passion."

If twelve thousand for Lucknow be a fair estimate, can we put the
figures for the whole country at less than 100,000?

Still there is a deeper depth. In the same city, says Mr. Caine, there
are ninety shops for the sale of Bhang and Churras. "Bhang," says the
same writer, "is the most horrible intoxicant the world has ever
produced. In Egypt its importation and sale is absolutely forbidden, and
a costly preventive service is maintained to suppress the smuggling of
it by Greek adventurers. When an Indian wants to commit some horrible
crime such as murder, he prepares himself for it with two annas' worth
of Bhang."


_(c) Prostitution._

In the all but impenetrable shades and death-breathing swamps of this
social forest, lie and suffer and rot probably not less than one hundred
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