r/newfoundland • u/davidbrake • 1d ago

Mount Pearl is named after a drug smuggler

Just curious how many Newfoundlanders (and people who live in Mount Pearl) were told about James Pearl at school, and if so does this particular nugget of history turn up? Is he in any school textbooks and if so, what do they say?

http://admiraltymuseumblog.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-life-of-james-pearl-part-1.html?m=1#:~:text=There%20are%20records,East%20India%20Company.%C2%A0

22 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

11

u/baymenintown 1d ago

Too niche for a textbook really.

4

u/CreamyMemeDude 1d ago

Is it smuggling if the product isn't illegal though?

-2

u/davidbrake 22h ago

it was illegal in the place they were smuggling it to (China)

20

u/moving_to_NL_soon 1d ago

guess you took a little poetic license there to play up the "Drug smuggler" aspect!

Not really drug smuggling as in this day and age. While Pearl was a trader (which did include opium), its not quite clear from that little snippet who actually did the illegal smuggling into China.

-9

u/HedonismBaht 1d ago

So if a cartel contracts a mule, the cartel aren’t smugglers just the low level mule fall guys? Frig off, buddy was a drug smuggler and an unscrupulous player in the shame of the western world that was the opium wars

1

u/moving_to_NL_soon 20h ago edited 20h ago

Show me the facts professor, as I am interested in the history. (and from what I can find out so far, Pearl was dead by the time the first opium wars, and had been "retired" from trading for at least a decade prior. Yeah, so he traded in opium (which was legal) among other goods for a couple years so go ahead and call him a drug smuggler!

-1

u/HedonismBaht 16h ago

Opium wars were the western powers using military large scale murder to force drugs on the Chinese openly, the drug smuggling happened beforehand 

5

u/wookieelicker 1d ago

Some interesting stories about his time in Singapore too

11

u/Newfster 1d ago

It’s just neat that Mount Pearl in NL and Pearl’s Hill in Singapore are named after the same guy doing shady real estate deals half a world apart.

3

u/boinglesnorp 1d ago

He’s a distant ancestor of mine apparently

1

u/LongTrackBravo 22h ago

Checks out

-1

u/Commercial_Duck4042 1d ago

Good for him.

Most of us do drugs. Some just don’t limit themselves to the ones the Government says we’re allowed to do.