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Her anti-drug, anti-immigrant manifesto, The Black Candle, was published by Thomas Allen in 1922. It was a best-seller in its day and was reprinted in the 1970s by Coles Bookstores, so it’s not hard to find a copy now.

Murphy had a theory that she concocted and passed off as truth: Africans, African-Americans, Chinese, Middle-Easterners, Greeks, Mexicans and other non-white people had banded together into an international conspiracy called The Ring.

The Ring had a plan to corrupt the “purity” of the white race. They’d flood the streets of European and North American cities with drugs. The Chinese would run the opium trade. Cocaine would come from South America.

The effects of this conspiracy, she claimed, could already be seen on the streets of Edmonton, where Murphy was a police court magistrate. Opposite page 30 in The Black Candle is a photo of a white woman with an opium pipe. The caption reads: “An open-eyed insensate in the dread Valley of the Shadow of the Drug.”

Below, another picture shows the natural progression of The Ring’s victims: a fully-clothed white woman reclines with shirtless black man. The caption reads: “When she acquires the habit, she does not know what lies before her; later she does not care.”

Opposite page 49, there’s a picture of a dark-skinned man and white woman, posed together, with opium paraphernalia in front of them. The caption says: “Once a woman has started on the trail of the poppy, the sledding is very easy and downgrade all the way.”