Out of time: Nottingham's history of opium

Nottingham was like many other cities in England, as it had many places you could purchase such drugs. Laundanum was a tincture – a mixture of (usually) 10% powdered opium mixed in alcohol. It became a popular over-the-counter painkiller for anything from gout to vomiting – coughs to upset stomachs. It was heavily marketed towards women for period pain. The attitude towards the use of such drugs was very class-divided: the middle and upper classes viewed the use of laudanum in the working classes as ‘misuse ’, but their own use was seen as dabbling, or a habit.

These medicines were not sold quietly but could be part of advertising for druggists. One such advert for Dr Thomas Harrison proudly announced that he was to be found at St. Peter’s Square – he listed Godfrey’s Cordial as one of the medicines he carried in 1930. The cordial was a popular patented medicine containing laudanum mixed with treacle, spices, and alcohol, and was usually marketed to soothe babies or young children. It could be sold for a penny, which made it highly affordable to the working class. Although it was patented, many druggists made their own and sold it with little to no information on correct dosage. As a result, many children died from accidental overdoses. Those that didn’t die had a certain look to them that was described in a report from Nottingham’s coroner, Mr Browne, in 1944. He reported that children were often given the cordial from birth or when they were three to four weeks old and that, “those who escaped with life became pale and sickly children, and half-idiotic, always with a ruined constitution.”

Once children developed a tolerance, the dose was often increased. It wasn’t just about soothing sick or teething infants or children; there were other reasons for its use. Life in the city was particularly grim at this time. Nottingham had become an overcrowded series of narrow courts, yards, streets and alleyways with back-to-back housing that lacked sanitation or paved streets. Disease ran rampant, especially cholera and smallpox. The city also experienced a trade depression from 1836 to 1842, during which there was little to no work in the leading hosiery and lace industries. Many sought help or entered the workhouse during this time, and the Nottingham Poor Union was established in 1836 to provide relief. With employment scarce, earning a wage often became a family affair, with husband, wife, and children working either at home or in factories. Mothers turned to mixtures like Godfrey’s Cordial (also known as Mother’s Friend) to keep small children and babies quiet while they had to work. In 1861, Mrs Beeton recommended in her Book of Household Management that opium powder and laudanum were kept in home medicine cupboards, though she cautioned not to use Syrup of Poppies or Godfrey’s Cordial to get children to sleep.

A lack of education could also cause a problem when it came to laudanum. One such case in Sneinton shows how precarious and casual dosage could be, made worse when people couldn’t read the labels. At the inquest of a six-month-old baby boy, the court heard that his mother had sent her eight-year-old neighbour, Elliot Mallet, to Mr Bailey, the druggist on Carlton Road, for half a penny’s worth of Godfrey’s Cordial. Sadly, Mrs Eillicock and Mallet couldn’t read that there had been a mix-up with the bottles before she administered it to her baby. She only figured out the mistake when she visited her neighbour who could read. The thirteen-year-old shop assistant had sold the wrong form of laudanum. 

Cures for overdoses were completely ineffective and seemed to revolve around rhubarb. Doctors desperately tried to save people, in particular children, by administering concussions. At an inquest of a six-year-old boy, William Wright, at the Wheatshelf Pub in Sneinton, the druggist revealed he had given the child rhubarb, magnesium and aniseed water as a treatment after his mother gave William four drops of Godfrey’s Cordial for vomiting. This may have been because rhubarb was seen as a purgative, so was used to get mixtures out of the body as quickly as possible.

There were occasionally stranger uses of opium, including a plot to drug forty voters from the Exchange Ward in the city in an attempt to keep them from voting. In the 1844 election, after agreeing a hefty sum for his troubles, a liberal voter purchased opium and other drugs with a view to mixing them with alcohol, which would prevent electors from voting. The plot was discovered, and the drugging did not happen. 

The practice was not regulated until the Pharmacy Act 1868. This act attempted to control the sale of opium based mixtures by only allowing the sale through registered chemists – all substances had to be labelled with contents, the word ‘poison’, and the name and address of the seller clearly printed. However there was no limit on how much could be sold, and again the issue of being able to read may have meant the labels were ineffective, let alone the reselling of such cordials and mixtures. Towards the end of the 1800s, aspirin was invented, and opium fell out of favour along with the start of the anti-opium movements, which saw it as a vice. Opium was often associated with the Chinese community through racist articles in newspapers and treated with suspicion. Nottingham had its own anti-opium movement that held meetings in the city. In 1894, they invited visiting Rev. Y.K. Yen from Shanghai to give a lecture about the evils of opium in China at the Castle Gate Lecture Hall. 

Finally, after much lobbying, Britain agreed to dismantle the India-China opium trade in 1910.