- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: Granta Books; New edition edition (22 Mar 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1862074062
- ISBN-13: 978-1862074064
- Product Dimensions: 20.8 x 13.5 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 744,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
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 Bille 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 identified as the villains of the affair and invested with a highly charged sexual menace. Around them in the streets off Shaftesbury Avenue and in Chinatown there swirled a raffish group of seedy and rebellious hedonists. Britain was horrified and fascinated. The drug problem was born, amid a gush of exotic tabloid detail.
About the Author
Marek Kohn is the author of The Race Gallery and As We Know it. He writes the 'Second Site' column for the Independent on Sunday and lives in Brighton.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Drugs have lost their history. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Drugs have lost their history. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
1920's Dope Fiend Shock!,
By P J Taylor (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground (Paperback)
Don't be put off by the film-noir title or the unimaginative cover. This is an excellent account of English social history in many respects. Ostensibly, this book is the fascinating factual account of the under side of late-Edwardian social life in London and its use of drugs, albeit mainly cocaine and morphine, that weren't at actually criminalised at that time. Set in London pre and post-First World War, the main character is that of of Billie Carlton, a budding theatre actress at the end of the 1910's, who gets in with a certain 'seedy' crowd that many other people from many walks of life were members of at this time, there is even an account of the trend amongst upper-class ladies (one of whom recounted here was a very well-known aristocrat) having followed the Parisian trend of morphine tea-parties. Drugs, drug use and abuse are the main characters downfall but this well-researched book explores the difference in attitudes to drugs on a social basis at the beginning of the last century and how these widespread attitudes shaped the drug laws and people's perception of them up to the present day, for better or worse. Literally, writes the author, the one court case subsequent to the death of Billie Carlton at such a young age in 1919, from an apparent overdose of opium, initiated changes in drug legislation that remain with us. The author covers not just these aspects but how the First World War, racism, class-structure and the new young generation of the time all combined in a heady mixture that was too much for the media and the government in the 1920's. A fascinating 'story' and personally I am glad that there are books such as Marek Kohn's 'Dope Girls' that dig up long forgotten and almost unknown parts of history like this.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dope Book...,
By
This review is from: Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground (Paperback)
I had to buy this book for a Uni assignment and wasn't really looking forward to reading it. However I'm glad I did, this book is informative and very good with being preachy or boring. Plus it helped me to get a 2.1 so who am I to knock it :)
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