Emery Staines’s opium dependence and recovery

Emery Staines’s opium dependence turns an unexplained disappearance into a period of lost time, impaired memory, and dependence on other people’s care. He later identified 14 January 1866, the night Crosbie Wells died, as the first time he took the drug. More than two months passed before he returned to Hokitika, and his subsequent treatment in custody brought physical improvement without establishing that his recovery was complete.

The Beginning and Course of the Dependence

Staines’s account places the beginning of his dependence on a particular night, but not within a clear recollection of what followed. Under questioning, he said that he first took opium on 14 January, the same night as Wells’s death. He believed he had spent much of the ensuing absence in the opium den at Kaniere Chinatown, though he could not say so with certainty. The uncertainty is central: the period was long enough for more than two months to pass, yet it did not remain in his memory as a continuous stretch of days.

When asked how long he had stayed in Kaniere Chinatown, Staines estimated about a fortnight, immediately qualifying the estimate because the days had blurred together. He remembered Ah Sook as kind to him: Ah Sook took him in, fed him, and kept a tally of his debts on a small chalkboard. This care gave Staines shelter and routine, but the debt record also shows that his stay had a material cost. His account presents dependence not as an isolated private habit but as a condition organized around a den, an accumulating obligation, and another person’s daily provision.

Staines believed he had been searching for his hidden bonanza, but said that he had become confused and could not remember where he had buried it. Opium thus disrupted both time and purpose: he retained the broad idea of looking for his fortune while losing the practical knowledge needed to find it. His later uncertainty about where he had been prevents the search from serving as a reliable itinerary; it is instead one of the few explanations he could offer for an absence he could not reconstruct.

Return, Arrest, and the Decision to Remain

After Staines reappeared, he was arrested on charges of fraud, embezzlement, and dereliction and remanded in custody. His bail was set at one pound and one shilling, the standard amount described in the account. He chose not to pay it. Rather than leave custody, he stayed with Anna Wetherell, who was also detained, and awaited his summons to the Magistrate’s Court. That decision shaped the setting of his recovery: he faced the consequences of his own case while remaining beside Anna, whose bail was set at eight pounds and was beyond her means without outside assistance.

The reunion was followed by a swift improvement in Staines’s health. His shoulder was healing, though it remained stiff and restricted his movement, and the physician, Dr. Gillies, considered his recovery rapid. The improvement was not presented as the end of his dependence. Dr. Gillies prescribed five drams of laudanum each day, with the dose to be reduced by one dram every fortnight until the shoulder had healed. The medicine was intended as a measured taper, not an abrupt withdrawal, and Staines received it under supervision in the Police Camp gaol-house.

Supervised Treatment and Daily Care

Cowell Devlin brought the laudanum to the gaol-house each night. Under Dr. Gillies’s instructions, he watched as the chaplain poured the medicine into tin cups and saw that Staines and Anna each drank the prescribed measure. He mixed the bitter tincture with sugar, and sometimes sweet sherry, to make it easier to take. The same nightly procedure treated two people in custody, but their responses differed: Staines developed a sudden, strong thirst for the drug, whereas Anna appeared reluctant to take it. The contrast marks Staines’s continuing attachment to opiates even while he was receiving a planned reduction in dosage.

The treatment therefore occupied an uneasy middle ground between medical care and the circumstances of imprisonment. The dose was prescribed by a physician and reduced according to a timetable, while Devlin administered it within the gaol. Staines’s health was improving, but the account does not say that the taper was completed or that he had become abstinent. His recovery is shown as a process supported by supervision, with continuing dependence visible in his response to the medicine.

Fragmented Memory and Testimony

Devlin learned that Staines remembered little of the weeks of his absence. He could not recall boarding a ship or experiencing a shipwreck, and his memories of that period consisted largely of dreamlike sensations and broken impressions. He did seem to remember coming ashore with a cask of salt beef, approaching Crosbie Wells’s cottage, and passing diggers around a fire. Other fragments included leaves and running water, an abandoned canoe, a gorge, and a weka. He also recalled dreams of Tarot patterns, gold-lined corsets, and a fortune hidden in a flour sack beneath a bed. These images give the missing period a scattered material texture, but they do not restore a dependable chronology.

In court, Staines acknowledged that he had been under the effects of opium and expressed shame about it. He was astonished that more than two months had elapsed. He thought he had spent much of that time at the Kaniere Chinatown den, but could not be sure; he likewise described himself as having become lost while searching for the bonanza he could no longer locate. His testimony makes the memory gap part of the evidence about his dependence: he can identify when it began and what he may have been seeking, but cannot fully account for the intervening time.

Significance and Limits of the Recovery

Staines’s course links opium use to a consequential absence, the loss of access to his hidden gold, and the eventual need for supervised treatment. Yet the narrative distinguishes what he can say from what remains uncertain. His own account locates the first use on 14 January and places much of the absence in Kaniere Chinatown; it does not provide a complete record of his movements. His vivid but disconnected memories likewise suggest persistence of impressions without restoring ordinary recollection.

The recovery is defined by improvement and treatment rather than a declared cure. Dr. Gillies’s taper, Devlin’s nightly administration, Staines’s improving health, and his continued thirst for laudanum all belong to the same period. The care he received depended on others, including Ah Sook during his stay at the den and Devlin and Dr. Gillies after his return. By leaving the outcome open, the account presents recovery as a fragile, supervised change in condition, not as a simple reversal of the lost months.