A shifting Chinese community, mainly seamen on leave between vessels, had existed in Britain since the eighteenth century, centred almost entirely upon the London East End boroughs of Stepney and Poplar, close to the docklands, where it occupied just two streets, Pennyfields and Limehouse Causeway. Its numbers were insignificant. By 1861, the resident Chinese population of the entire country was 147, rising to 665 over 20 years. Several opium dens existed but they catered exclusively for Chinese. Few non-Orientals ever went into a den. Indeed, as with modern London Chinese gambling establishments, outsiders were positively discouraged. The only foreigners to enter them were Victorian sensationalist press journalists looking for sleaze, corruption and vicarious excitement or exotic danger. What they wanted to find, they found. Dens were described quite uncensoriously as humble, wretched places but they were not regarded as sinister: they were objects of curiosity and opium smoking was considered as little more than an exotic foible of John Chinaman.
