This photo of an 1880s opium den was taken in San Francisco, not New York. So the Zip girl is not in the picture. (Image by Louis Philippe Lessard.)

I worry about young Miss Ottilie Zip, a Brooklynite who went insane after twice visiting a Manhattan opium den with a shadowy lawyer. I’d be worried more if this story about her hadn’t been published in the November 5, 1900 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. I think everyone involved is probably long gone to the big opium den in the sky. An excerpt: “Miss Ottilie Zip, 19 years old, of 245 Forty-sixth street, was taken by her mother, Mrs. Emma Zip, on Saturday to the Kings County Hospital, where she is now confined in the insane ward. Her mental condition will be examined to-day in order to decide whether she should be sent to an insane asylum. The girl talks almost constantly about a lawyer, but never mentions any name. It is reported that this man enticed her into an opium den. Miss Zip went twice last week to the Fourth avenue police station and asked the police to protect her. It is said she called on one occasion, between 1 and 2 o’clock in the morning and raved about a lawyer and the Supreme Court. The sergeant at the desk was finally obliged to send an officer home with her. Mrs. Zip, the girl’s mother, made the following statement: ‘My daughter Ottilie has been acting very strangely for the past week. She is constantly raving over a lawyer whom she  met at Franklin and Centre streets, Manhattan. She does not mention his name. My daughter was formerly employed at the Parker House and went over to New York from Brooklyn to visit her aunt. She was in the habit of staying with her aunt when she was out of employment. She stopped in a drug store to telephone me and I have been informed that she tendered the clerk a dollar bill and he refused to give her change. Then she went to Centre street court to make a complaint against him. While in the court, she met a young lawyer, who took her to a Chinese opium den. She told her aunt about the matter and then became insane. The statement that I took her to dance halls in untrue.'”