The Architecture of 13,000,000 Pounds of Opium Production

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1407

These images present an excellent invitation to understanding the size and scope of one section of the opium industry in India.  I found these pictures in the 29 July 1882 issue of the Scientific American, which in turn had reproduced them from the Bengal Commissioner Lt. Col. Walter S. Sherwill, who published them as color lithographs in 1850 and which (again) found their way into print in The Truth about Opium Smoking by Benjamin Broomhill¹(1882).  They are iconic images of a devastating trade and were frequently reproduced over many decades--mostly not for the "devastating" part of what I just wrote, but more for the industrial/business appreciation end, as was the case with this article in SciAmerican.   The British interest in the trade stretched back two cneturies earlier, and of course the use of opium bends far back into Neolithic times.

Sherill's scenes are all from the opium receiving/production/distribution center in Patna, India, which claimed to produce some 13,000,000 pounds of opium juice annually, shipping the stuff out to Bengal and then on to China. 

There is a hint of abrasion about this trade in the article, noting that there was nothing that could be done to stem the tide of Chinese demand for the product, and that "if the government monopoly of opium were abandoned, India would not only lose a revenue which would have to be made up by some tax, but the extent of the poppy cultivation would almost certainly be largely increased  in the hands of private growers."  Also, if the British government gave up the trade altogether, the article notes that the Chinese demand would be supplied "by inferior quantities of Persian and native Chinese growth". 

The first image shows a cavernous hall for examining the incoming opium, "brought in in earthen pans...tested...by touch, or by thrusting a scoop into the mass", after which a sample is sent to "the chemical test room".  As it turns out, the text in the Scientific American article describing the various halls quotes the London Graphic  which was  reproduced almost verbatim from The Truth About Opium Smoking, but without quotations and without attribution. 

Next, in image #2, is the mixing room, where, yes, the opium is mixed.  According to the Opium/Sci American: “In the Mixing Room the contents of the earthen pans are thrown into vats and stirred with blind rakes until the whole mass becomes a homogeneous paste.”

Image #3 is the Balling Room: “From the mixing room the crude opium is conveyed to the Balling Room, where it is made into balls. Each ball-maker is furnished with a small table, a stool, and a brass cup to shape the ball in a certain quantity of opium and water called 'Lewa,' and an allowance of poppy petals, in which the opium balls are rolled. Every man is required to make a certain number of balls, all weighing alike. An expert workman will turn out upwards of a hundred balls a day.”

Image #4 is the drying room,  where “the balls are placed to dry before being stacked. Each ball is placed in a small earthenware cup. Men examine the balls, and puncture with a sharp style those in which gas, arising from fermentation, may be forming.”

The stacking room is image #5, where "the balls are stacked before being packed in boxes for Calcutta en route to China. A number of boys are constantly engaged in stacking, turning, airing, and examining the balls. To clear them of mildew, moths or insects, they are rubbed with dried and crushed poppy petal dust.”

The Chinese really weren't able to resist this trade (which they had fought over a period of hundreds of years, not to mention in two opium wars in the 19th century) until about 1916.  Notes: 1.  As it turns out, Broomhill was writing against the opium trade in his book.  See also this MIT page on the First Opium War.