Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" by Commissioner Booth-Tucker
page 44 of 182 (24%)
page 44 of 182 (24%)
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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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