A Corpse in Christmas Close by Michelle Salter is out now! Click to get your copy.
In the 1920s, illicit drinking and drug dens sprang up in cities across the country.
Cocaine was popular with bright young things throughout the 1920s and 30s. Cole Porter originally wrote, ‘Some get a kick from cocaine’ in his song I Get a Kick Out of You from the musical Anything Goes. The line was later changed to ‘Some like the perfume in Spain’.
And actress Tallulah Bankhead famously joked, ‘Cocaine habit-forming? Of course not. I ought to know. I’ve been using it for years.’
However, what isn’t as well known is that a decade earlier, the use of cocaine was widespread amongst troops in the Great War, as Iris Woodmore discovers in A Corpse in Christmas Close.
She’s shocked when her close friend, Percy Baverstock, tells her that the British Army gave soldiers a gelatine-coated pill called Forced March that contained cocaine and cola nut extract. While it was supposed to improve endurance, soldiers took it to enhance their mood rather than their physical ability.
At the start of the war, cocaine wasn’t a controlled substance and was readily available to buy. In 1916, Harrods in London sold a kit that included cocaine, morphine, syringes and needles and was marketed as a present to send to soldiers on the frontline.
However, moral outrage was growing at the widespread use of psychoactive drugs like cocaine and opiates. In 1916, the army council introduced a Defence of the Realm Act to prevent the sale of cocaine, morphine and opium to the British Armed Forces.
Later, the 1920 Dangerous Drugs Act criminalised civilian possession of these drugs unless there was a medical need. The Act ruled that only medical practitioners were allowed to prescribe morphine, cocaine and heroin.
In 1922, a British crime film called Cocaine depicted the distribution of cocaine by gangsters in London nightclubs. The plot sees a man seeking revenge following his daughter’s death.
The film’s portrayal of drug use made it highly controversial as it was feared it would encourage the trade in banned substances. However, censors approved its release because it highlighted the danger of drugs, and it was shown in cinemas in June 1922 under the alternative title While London Sleeps.
Iris Woodmore has seen the film, and it comes to mind in the winter of 1923 when she discovers that drug use in the Great War casts a long shadow over some ex-servicemen…
