Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground

Abstract

This book uncovers the origins of twentieth-century popular culture's most enduring themes - drugs, sex, and pop music. The drug-induced death of the West End musical actress, Billie Carleton and the highly publicised inquest which resulted, became the focus for a heady cocktail of public anxieties about drug abuse, the supposedly malign influence of oriental men and the frailty of the women who associated with them. Cocaine and opium had been criminalised only two years before, and the popular press made much of the link between the Chinese opium dens of Limehouse and the drug habits of the decadent demi-monde of London's West End. Meanwhile, women had made enormous social advances during the war years, winning the vote for the first time in 1918 but provoking fear and resentment about their changing role in a still deeply conservative society. Dope Girls attempts to evoke the mood of the time -the hectic social life, the jazz and musicals, the sex and drug scandals, and their voyeuristic coverage in the popular media.

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