Sujet

Opium-smoking in China - from drawings by a native artist, 1858. Creator: Unknown.

Légende

Opium-smoking in China - from drawings by a native artist, 1858. Fig. 4. 'Having disposed of his costly garments, the victim next sells his furniture, and at a ruinous sacrifice obtains the means for further indulgence...Fig. 5...[his] means being all exhausted, he becomes dependent upon his wife and child, who support him by the scanty wages obtained by winding silk...Fig. 6....disease and misery have done their work, premature death has seized its prey. The wife and brother mourn over the body laid out on a mat...sticks of incense and rice cakes are presented as an offering to the dead...The engravings show the views of the Chinese themselves as to the evil effects which follow opium-smoking. Reliable witnesses assure us that these illustrations are by no means exaggerated...We cannot but regard it as a blot on the character of our East Indian Government [ie the British East India Company] that for purposes of revenue it should be engaged in cultivating and selling a drug which, invaluable as a medicinal agent, is so antagonistic to the weal of all who employ it as an indulgence. Every well-wisher of his fellow-men must sincerely desire the suppression of a traffic which carries destitution and death into so many Chinese families'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.

Crédit

Photo12/Heritage Images/The Print Collector

Notre référence

HRM23A82_325

Model release

NA

Property release

NA

Licence

Droits gérés

Format disponible

28,4Mo (1,7Mo) / 21,9cm x 32,5cm / 2584 x 3835 (300dpi)

Mots clés

female women woman people male work job man men sell selling arts industry pipe country marriage drug drugs China art Chinese trade guy occupation British color dead weaving death weaver industrial smoking addiction location century seller material textiles Britain profession fabric desperation maths mathematics DESPERATE newspapers press cloth print furniture silk textile concept grief opium incense wives wife controversy abacus husband arithmetic B&W addict funeral addicts controversial grieving engraved engraving addicted textile industry drug addiction Colour dead body drug addict 19th century black & white black and white B W husbandry white and black tobacco pipe drug addicts nineteenth century possessions The Print Collector child labour East India Company Illustrated London News mathematical instrument opium pipe textile worker women at work ILN opium den textiles worker newspaper working Unknown 19th-century silk industry