Cocaine - 1912

On November 18, 1912 August 1, 1912, a plain clothes officer with the Hamilton Police Department told a reporter with the Hamilton Herald the news that a locally-prominent citizen had approached Police Chief Smith with the information that Hamilton had become a centre for the use and distribution of cocaine, and that “the habit was not only prevalent among degenerates,” but also among many in the city’s upper classes.

        The physician, whose identity the plain clothes police officer refused to reveal, told the story of “a well-connected young woman who was the victim of the habit.”

        For the past several weeks, the physician had noticed a change in the young lady’s demeanor. She would be alternately high strung and giddy, or morose and depressed.

        Concluding that the twenty-one year old woman was taking drugs, the physician informed her mother about his suspicions.

        A search was made of the young lady’s bedroom while she had gone out one afternoon. In a pocket of a disused skirt found in her clothes closet, a small bottle containing a little more than an ounce of cocaine was discovered.

        It was decided to let her finish that portion of her supply, but to secretly follow her when she went to get more.

        In three days, her clothes closet was again checked and the bottle was found to be nearly empty.

That night, after she told her parents that she was going to the theatre with a girl friend, she was followed to a house on MacNab street north, where she was admitted at once.

        Her father who was among those who followed the young lady, went up to the door of the MacNab street house, and knocked.

        A black woman answered the door, and seeing a man who she did not recognize, refused him admission, tried to block him from entering the house.

        Simply pushing her aside, the father stomped through the doorway.

As told to the Herald reporter, inside the front entrance was “a large room fitted up lavishly” where the daughter was discovered “lying in a stupor upon a divan.”

        The reporter was also told that “in the same room were three or four white women, two negroes and a businessman of this city.”

        One of the “negroes” was a rather large man unfamiliar with the man who burst into the room. After asking the father if he was there for a reading, a stormy scene broke out, and the penitent daughter was dragged away.

        The next day, the young lady was sent to a retreat in the hope that a prolonged abstinence from the drug would cure her habit.

        The large man who offered to tell the fortune of the cocaine victim’s father was from New York City, where it was alleged that he had jumped bail on a drug charge.

The Herald reporter discovered that the man was “a crystal gazer, but it is said he is only a trickster who feeds his designs as a cocaine peddler in this way.”

        The police officer concluded his tip to the Herald reporter with the observation that “many women of some prominence frequented this house on MacNab street: “if you knew some of the women that had been going there, you would be astonished. For the most part, they are fashionable.”

        The Hamilton police were determined to break up the MacNab street “joint” and the plain clothes officer promised, “arrests were expected to follow.”