By the year 1909, the vice of cocaine-eating had attained an extraordinary hold upon the lower classes of the population. Women and even children had fallen victims to a habit which plainly exercised a deplorable effect upon their health and morals. The supplies of the drug came in the first instance from Germany in packets bearing the name of Merk, and were frequently smuggled into India in ways that defied detection. Moreover the traffic in the drug, which was international in character, was so cleverly organized that it was practically impossible to trace and prosecute the importers and distributors. Action was therefore confined to prosecuting the smaller fry for the offences of illicit sale and possession, and the majority of such cases occurred in the notorious Nal Bazar area of the C division, which for the last thirty or forty years has sheltered a large population of disreputables. The Police were not held primarily responsible for the control of the cocaine-traffic. This duty devolved upon the Collector of Bombay, who maintained a large and well-paid excise staff for the purpose.[115] But the obligation which rested on the police to assist the excise authorities as far as possible, and the direct stimulus to crime provided by the cocaine-habit, rendered the question of combating the traffic of more than ordinary importance. With this in view, the Commissioner in 1909 put a special police-cordon on the area devoted to the traffic for about six weeks. This produced satisfactory results for the time being, but had to be abandoned, to allow of the men reverting to their regular duties which suffered by their absence. In 1911 a second attempt was made to restrict the evil by placing a European Inspector and a staff of constables on special duty in the C division for a period of about two months, during which nearly 600 individuals were caught and convicted by the courts. These incursions into the area of the retail-traffic were not the only successes achieved by the police. In 1911 the Dock Police arrested an Austrian steward of the S. S. _Africa_ with 300 grains of cocaine concealed in the soles of his boots; in 1912 the Superintendent of the Harbour Police secured the arrest of a fireman from a German merchant-ship with 40 lbs. of the drug, valued at Rs. 45,500, in his possession; another large consignment, valued at Rs. 17,000 was traced by Khan Saheb M. H. Taki and Khan Saheb F. M. Taki of the C. I. D. to a house in Doctor Street in 1913; and on two occasions Indian constables on duty in the Docks arrested on suspicion persons belonging to vessels in the harbour, with large quantities of the drug concealed on their person. It cannot be asserted, however, that these arrests and prosecutions secured any real diminution of the traffic from abroad. They did upset the local market for the drug, and interfered temporarily with the supply of the tiny paper packets sold in the darker corners of the C division.