This is a discussion of the transformation of drug use (especially morphine and cocaine, which was once commonly available in any chemist's shop) into a national menace. It revolves around the death of Billie Carleton, a West End musical actress, in 1918. Its cast of characters includes Brilliant Chang, a Chinese restaurant proprietor and Edgar Manning, a jazz drummer from Jamaica. They were eventually identified as the villains of the affair and invested with a highly charged sexual menace. Around them, in the streets off Shaftesbury Avenue, there swirled a raffish group of seedy and entitled hedonists. Britain was horrified and fascinated, and so the drug problem was born amid a gush of exotic tabloid detail.
| ISBN: | 9781862076181 |
| Publication date: | 1st November 2003 |
| Author: | Dr Marek Kohn |
| Publisher: | Granta Books |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 208 pages |
| Genres: |
Health, illness and addiction: social aspects Social and cultural history European history Cultural studies |