Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground by Marek Kohn

Author:Marek Kohn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Disease & Health Issues, Social History, Social Science, History
ISBN: 9781862076181
Publisher: Granta UK
Published: 2003-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

7 - BROKEN BUTTERFLY

In the wake of the exposure of a 'circle of degenerates' after Billie Carleton's death, the public was treated to a stream of similar spectacles; some explicitly fictional, others presented as fact. But although Billie Carleton herself had been part of the circle, she was posthumously removed from it. Having filled the leading role in the dope drama, she was given immunity.

Exploitation of the theme began within a fortnight of her death, with a short Daily Express series on the drug menace. Recapitulating wartime themes, it described cocaine cigarettes and a German conspiracy, a la Pemberton Billing, to subvert the nation by means of the drug habit. Cannabis was also mentioned, with a broadly accurate description of its effects, but those of cocaine were confused with those of opiates.(1)

The drug habit was claimed to be largely the result of wartime restrictions on alcohol and legitimate entertainment (specifically, according to one account, of the non-availability of bottled stout, the chorus girls' favourite tipple). Now the traffic was controlled by a great 'Vice Trust', which also had interests in prostitution, gambling and nightclubs. The trust's drug profits came from women, who were both its agents and its victims: 'The woman drug fiend is almost invariably a missionary of her vice.'(2)

The specific object of concern in this piece was the well-educated, independent-minded young woman who might aspire to be an actress or an artist. She was apt to be drawn to a bohemian fringe that now included dope fiends.

You will find the woman dope fiend in Chelsea, in Mayfair, and Maida Vale. An obscure traffic is pursued in certain doubtful teashops. The sale of certain beauty specifics is only a mask for the illicit traffic in certain drugs.

A young and attractive girl deeply interested in social conditions and political economy made the acquaintance of another woman through a mutual friend. Within three months she had become a confirmed haunter of a certain notorious cafe. She had lost her looks and health. Before she closed her miserable existence a bare nine months later she had introduced at least four other decent girls to her practice of vice; and for the last two months of her existence she was acting as a decoy for a notorious gambling hell ...

The queer, bizarre, rather brilliant bachelor girl is a frequent victim to the insidious advances of the female dope fiend.

This was a thoroughly feminised version of the clandestine conspiracy myth, with teashops and beauty parlours under suspicion instead of German bakeries. But it played on a sense of instability in female identity. The young woman's interest in economics and politics indicated an interest in the way the world worked, a concern asserted by a politicised generation of educated women; but it combined fatally with her innocence, a quality ascribed to such women by their paternalist critics. The elliptical suggestion that an interest in politics did women no good gained piquancy from the timing of its publication, a few days before the election.

More than this, however, the piece hints that a disordering of femininity underlies the young woman's downfall.

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