DORA, flappers and the 1920s cocaine panic

Research for The Soho Jazz Murders

Everything, including a heroin kit to send to your soldier sweetheart overseas

On the morning after the Victory Ball of 1918 – a glamorous affair held at the Royal Albert Hall – a young actress named Billie Carleton, born in Bloomsbury to a chorus girl mother and unknown father, was found dead at the age of 22. By her bedside was a little gold box half-full of cocaine.

I learned about Billie’s story in Marek Kohn’s book Dope Girls, while researching night clubs and jazz for my second 1920s murder mystery, The Soho Jazz Murders. The cocaine panic of the early 1920s reveals an interesting intersection of changing attitudes in British society and the concerns it raised. I drew on Billie Carleton’s story for the plot of my novel, including a twist that I’d better not give away!

Cocaine had been legal in Britain until the First World War, along with most other drugs. Pastilles for sore throats contained cocaine. Syrups to soothe teething babies were laced with morphine. You could buy a heroin injection kit in Harrods to send to your loved one in the trenches of France. But the war changed most things, including the government’s laissez fair attitudes to drugs.

Enter DORA. Not a woman, but the Defence of the Realm Act 1914, a draconian piece of legislation which (among other things) banned strikes, allowed for censorship of newspapers, banned the purchase of binoculars, limited pub opening hours, outlawed the buying of rounds, feeding bread to wild animals, and flying kites.

By 1916, the army was alarmed by reports of drug use among soldiers. Sir William Glyn-Jones, the secretary of the Pharmaceutical Society, warned: “It was an exceedingly dangerous thing for a drug like morphine to be in the hands of men on active service. It might have the effect of making them sleep on duty.” Which would never do.

DORA was amended to prohibit the possession, consumption or sale of cocaine and morphine for non-medical reasons. After the war, most of the restrictions of DORA were lifted, but the rules around drugs were codified into the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1920, partly at the urging of the United States. Restrictions on alcohol licensing laws also remained in place, effectively criminalising most late night entertainment in the West End of London.  

At the same time, women were changing. With the onset of war, many who had previously worked in domestic service or traditional women’s work had options. They flocked to better wages and more freedom working in factories, on trains and buses, or to take up the office jobs left vacant by men called up to the armed forces. For the first time, they had money of their own and a degree of freedom. The emergence of the ‘flapper’ – a young woman who dressed in modern clothes, went to night-clubs and danced to jazz music – created alarm.

When the two combined, as in the death of Billie Carleton, the newspapers and moralists were on the hunt for a scapegoat. They found it in the link between Chinese immigrants to the East End (the original Chinatown in London was in Limehouse, by the docks) and opium.

The Chinese opium den was an object of fear and fascination, depicted in novels from Dickens to Oscar Wilde. By the 1910s, the supposed danger of Chinese men drugging and seducing innocent English women was a well-established trope. And so the authorities knew where to turn when looking for Billie Carleton’s supplier.

The blame was pinned on Mrs Ada Yo Ping Lo, “a Scotchwoman married to a Chinaman”,  of Limehouse Causeway, who apparently admitted that “there used to be an opium den [in her house] but not since the Defence of the Realm Act”.

Another Chinese man whose name frequently comes up in relation to drugs in the 1920s was Chan Nan, usually referred to as Brilliant Chang, who ran a popular Chinese restaurant in Regent Street. He was suspected of supplying cocaine to the young women who frequented his restaurant, some of whom worked in nearby nightclubs including Kate Meyrick’s 43 Club (more of which next time). He came under suspicion in 1922, when nightclub dancer Freda Kempton died of a cocaine overdose after spending part of the night in his company.

However, either the suspicions were groundless or he was very good at evading the police, because he was only convicted of possession of cocaine in 1924, when a small amount of cocaine was found concealed in his home. He claimed it was planted by the police, and that isn’t beyond the realms of possibility.

I was interested in the fascination with which Chang was described in newspaper reports. He was very well-dressed, with shiny brilliantined hair brushed back from his forehead, wearing a blue overcoat with fur collar, grey suede shoes and a Saville Row suit. He had a flat on Jermyn Street and gave the impression of being an English gentleman. In her memoir, Kate Meyrick described him thus: ‘His snake-like eyes and powerful personality used to fascinate nearly all the women he met.’

I wondered how much of this suspicion was well-founded, and how much was simple racism. Would it really make sense for a restaurant manager to not only allow illegal drugs on the premises, but engage in the trade himself?

Brilliant Chang was very much in my mind when I created Mr Li, the Chinese owner of the Harlequin night club in which much of The Soho Jazz Murders takes place. I wanted to up-end the stereotype and suggest that a successful Chinese businessman might be just that, without having to be a drug dealer.

Research Tip

It’s always worth thinking about the context of information or opinions given in historical evidence. Kate Meyrick was keen to distance herself from the illegal drug trade, for the sake of her own reputation and that of her club. Freda Kempton had worked at the 43. Little wonder that Kate Meyrick, its owner, wanted to point the finger elsewhere when considering how Freda might have got hold of the cocaine that killed her. And if everyone else was pointing at the Chinese man with the fascinating personality, wasn’t that reason enough for her to join them?

Favourite research find

According to Dope Girls, British women living in Limehouse in the 1910s and 20s favoured Chinese men as husbands, because they were less frequently drunk than native Englishmen. I kept that in mind when considering the relationship of my fictional nightclub hostess Violet Crumb to Mr Li.

Next time: Edith Garrud, jiu-jitsu and the suffragettes.