As the Edwardian era gave way to the horrors of the Great War, British society stood on the brink of unprecedented change. Whilst tens of thousands soldiers died on the battlefields of Ypres, the Somme and Arras, many of the British women back home discovered a new found freedom in employment traditionally reserved for men. The efforts of such women in sustaining the industry of war, in often-perilous conditions, has only been officially recognised by the British Government as recently as 2009.
Essential though the efforts of these women had been in securing a victory in the war against Germany, the aftermath of the Great War saw a creeping reaction to female emancipation, as soldiers returned from the conflict to find women keen to maintain their status and financial independence. This was the era of suffrage as women stood to defy the paternalism of the Victorians.
Another prominent feature in the changing cultural landscape of the Great War was migration. The last bastions of the British Empire were called upon to support the allied forces in their campaign across Northern France, including around 100,000 Chinese laborers, many of whom dug trenches along the battlefronts. In the aftermath of the Great War migrant workers settled in Britain along with hundreds of other workers arriving from across the globe, drawn to the ports of the Great British Empire in search of a better, more prosperous life.
The 11th November 1918 saw the end to the terrible carnage that had so dominated Europe in the preceding four years of warfare. As soldiers returned from the battlefield faced with the task of reintegrating with a population who were unable to comprehend their experiences, Great Britain turned its attention to celebrating the victory in Northern France.
An actress, Billie Carleton, who was an up and coming star of the West End, attended one such celebration, The Great Victory Ball at the Royal Albert Hall. In the twilight world of the Theatre, Billie Carleton had become a user of drugs including opium and cocaine. In addition, she had become a regular user of prescription drugs supplied to her by her doctor, and was becoming, what might be described in the parlance of today, a polydrug user. On the night of the Great Victory Ball, Billie Carleton was to return to her flat at the back of the Savoy. Having spent the evening using cocaine, Billie was later to die of a drug overdose in the early hours of the morning.
Whilst it is worth noting that her overdose was more likely attributable to the prescribed drugs that she was taking at the behest of her doctor than the cocaine she had imbibed, her tragic circumstances lead to considerable media moral panic as the newsprint picked apart the events leading up to her death, a tragedy that was to epitomize the collision between Edwardian society and the emerging hedonism of jazz.
The final inquest into Billie Carleton's death drew light on her relationships with a number of men, one of who, Reginald De Veulle, a dressmaker, was cross-examined by the coroner. The media cast aspersions on his masculinity, highlighting what they viewed as feminine traits, not least of all his avoidance of conscription in the war. The increased scrutiny by the media focused upon Billie Carleton's use of cocaine, adopting it as a metaphor for their fears of the changing cultural landscape. Revelations in newspapers such as The Daily Sketch described a frail, waif like woman who had slipped from societies paternalistic embrace to fall foul of the vices of drugs, the pitfalls of the theatrical way of life and her relations with an underclass of men, all of whom had avoided the war draft. Billie Carleton became the epitome of the 'butterfly on a wheel'.
As jazz culture took hold on both sides of the Atlantic, our story focuses on another woman whose life was tragically taken as a result of her penchant for drugs, in this case the records point to clear evidence of a cocaine overdose. In 1922 the British Government was increasingly legislating against the supply, possession and use of drugs, largely in response to the prohibitionist drive of the USA and the moral panics surrounding the deaths of Billie Carleton and the earlier tragedy that befell the Yeoland Sisters at the turn of the century, whose disappointment in their theatrical careers lead to a suicide pact involving cocaine in 1902.
Freda Kempton was a dancer who lived in Westbourne Grove with her landlady, but spent her working life frequenting the nighttime economy of the West End. Her lifestyle brought her into contact with cocaine as a means of staying awake and energising herself for the rigors of dancing with the club membership. Freda's use of cocaine had already drawn the concern of some of her friends, however it was the intoxicating mix of her substance use, her relationship with a Chinese entrepreneur known in the West End as 'Brilliant Chang', and her tragic overdose that drew the baying of the media.
On the night prior to her death she had reportedly been in the company of Chang. It was alleged that she had known him for a short time and that she had obtained a regular supply of cocaine through his association. Having returned to her flat in possession of a bottle of cocaine in the hours of the morning of the 6th March, she spent most of that day in bed before her mother called round. Later on that afternoon she returned to bed until the evening when she appeared for a glass of water. The landlady described how Freda Kempton had again emerged from her room, only this time complaining of terrible pains to her head, which resulted in convulsions and foaming at the mouth within the hour. Freda died in the arms of her landlady, Sadie Heckel.
The subsequent verdict was suicide following the discovery of a note by her landlady, although the evidence was largely inconclusive. Freda Kempton was later buried at Kensal Rise Cemetery in common grave number 47380, square 198 at 9.30 am on Saturday 11th March 1922 - aged 21. The plot no longer remains, having made way for the memorial garden to the back of the crematorium some years later. As with Billie Carleton, the media were keen to draw parallels between Freda Kempton's use of cocaine and her interracial relations, as though drugs and ethnicity were inexorably linked. Brilliant Chang was afforded the mysterious andcruel caricature of the Sax Rohmer creation Fu Manchu by contemporary reports. As with the later efforts of the eugenics movement they were keen to describe his racial physiology as they portrayed him masterminding a sinister network of vice behind his emotionless smile. The media warned of the perils facing a permissive society were it to refrain from it's moral duty in taking a strong stance on the issues of multiculturalism, substance use and female emancipation.
In doing so, they clearly chose to overlook Britain's aggressive approach to the export of Indian opium to China less than a century earlier, a commodity that culminated in two wars with China and the enslavement of thousands of Chinese people to the soporific and habit forming drug.
There can be no doubt of course that substances then, as now, presented a risk to the user. Many substances such as cocaine were initially hailed as wonder drugs in the run up to the Twentieth Century, endorsed by such notable figures as the Pope and Sigmund Freud. It was only when the latter’s best friend Fleischl-Marxow died through his use of cocaine that Freud tempered his inclination to extol the virtues of the Erythroxylum plant.
With the advent of the Pharmacy Act 1868 drugs such as opium came under tighter regulation in this country, although still accessible to the public at large. The Defense of the Realm Act at the onset of the Great War brought tighter controls in a bid to support the war effort, most notably the licensing laws that restricted sales of alcohol. In contradiction, soldiers fighting on the front were provided with ‘Forced March Tablets’, containing extract of kola and cocaine.
At the same time there were reports in the newspapers of soldiers returning from the battlefield delirious from their use of cocaine, alongside more racist stories of black men ‘crazed’ through excessive consumption of the drug.
This period of contradiction was to eventually give way to the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1925, the foundation stone for what was to later become the Misuse of Drugs Act in 1971. In the years following the Dangerous Drugs Act, the media moral panic was harnessed by the likes of the American prohibitionist Harry J Anslinger, (1892-1975), Head of the Federal Bureau Of Narcotics, in his campaign to outlaw all drug use. Where the media on both sides of the Atlantic had previously alluded to links between drug use, sexual promiscuity and the perceived dangers of inter race relations, Anslinger was forthright in his racist outlook,
'There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others’.
As repulsive as Anslinger’s rhetoric may sound to the contemporary ear, it is worth noting that such links between the vulnerability of white women, immigration and drug use remain a staple of the modern media moral panic, a phenomenon as familiar today as in the days of Freda Kempton. The following provides a recent excerpt from a Judge’s summing up of a case involving a young black man, as reported in a London newspaper, ‘The case has everything about it that is un-English, drugs, knives, guns and the exploitation of whores’.
History’s role in supporting us to challenge our assumptions is irrefutable. The tragic lives of Billie Carleton and Freda Kempton played a pivotal role in the creation of a moral panic that gendered drug use, a moral panic that that continues to thrive to this day, directly linking to the legislative framework governing both the consumption of drugs and the treatment available to those whose lives are affected by their use in the UK.
Originally published in Kensal Green Cemetery Magazine, July 2010
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