A Shanghai Opium Palace, 1888

Sadly there is no artists name attached to this drawing, supposedly of a Shanghai “opium palace” – so we can’t know quite the date or provenance, or accuracy. It was printed alongside an article on opium in the St Louis Post Dispatch in March 1889. The article was by Frank G Carpenter, a writer of geography textbooks for American students and who wrote a series of books called Carpenter’s World Travels which were very popular between 1915 and 1930. This is obviously earlier and Carpenter, in the article, claims he visited Shanghai (and an opium palace) in December 1888.

Carpenter wrote several textbooks on China and actually died in Nanking in 1924 while on a round the world trip – he was 69.

Reported in June 1924