The curtain is being raised on the seedy, secret underworld of Soho after the First World War in the new television drama Dope Girls.
Female-empowerment, liberation and hedonism all play a role in the six-part show starting this weekend on BBC One, with a women-led cast.
But the show also reveals the drinks, drugs and violence which pervaded the underground nightclub scene of the 20s.
And at the heart of this fictitious tale is a kernel of truth stemming from a book about the times and the people who populated this underground world.
The new BBC series Dope Girls is, in part, based on the 1992 book Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground.
Written by Dr Marek Kohn, it chronicles the scandals and moral panic in Britain following the end of the First World War.
Drug use, especially morphine and cocaine which were once available in the chemist shop, had become a national menace during and after the First World War.
Some restrictions in use had been introduced by the Defence of the Realm Act in 1916 but it was not until the 1920 Dangerous Drugs Act that their production, import, export, possession, sale and supply became illegal.
The highly-publicised death of Billie Carleton, a West End musical actress, from an overdose in 1918 fueled public anxiety.
Characters such as Brilliant Chang, a Chinese restaurant proprietor and drug dealer, and Edgar Manning, a jazz drummer from Jamaica known as the Dope King, had become the villains of the hour.
And around them swirled a group of rebellious hedonists, from authors and actors to royalty and military, all enjoying London’s burgeoning nightclub scene and what it offered.
Kate Meyrick was an infamous nightclub owner of the 20s in London and an inspiration for the character of Kate Galloway in Dope Girls.
Born in Kingstown, Ireland in 1875, Kate Evelyn Nason was the daughter of a doctor who moved to the UK after her marriage to Dr Ferdinand Merrick.
They lived in Southsea, Hampshire and then Ealing in London, where Ms Meyrick assisted her husband running nursing homes for psychiatric patients.
The couple had eight children, six daughters and two sons, by 1914 but by 1918 they had separated.
Faced with a weekly allowance of £1 for her family, Ms Meyrick looked for work and answered an add to go into partnership running tea dances.
By April 1919, she had opened Dalton’s in a basement close to the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square in partnership with Harry Dalton.
It was to be the start of her nightclub empire which would see her earn hundreds of thousands of pounds and but also end up behind bars.
By January 1920, the Dalton’s was shut down and both Meyrick and Dalton were fined.
Undeterred, she went on to open a succession of clubs including the 43 Club in Gerrard Street, Proctor’s Club, the Folies Bergères, the New Follies and the Silver Slipper Club.
She was fined on numerous occasions for breaching licensing restrictions or serving alcohol without a licence, regularly had her clubs closed down and served five prison sentences over the course of her career.
However, she also earned the moniker “Queen of the Night Clubs”, was estimated to have made £500,000 through her empire and married off three of her daughters to nobility.
She died on 19 January 1933 from influenza, aged 57. On the day of her funeral, West End theatres and clubs dimmed their lights.
Billie Carleton was an English musical comedy actress, real name Florence Leonora Stewart, who was the daughter of a chorus singer and unknown father.
She left home at 15 to work on the stage in London and rose to fame in the 1914 revue Watch Your Step.
By 1917, she played a flapper in the musical The Boy and in August 1918, she took the starring role of Phyllis Harcourt in The Freedom of the Seas at the Haymarket Theatre.
She briefly became the youngest leading lady in the West End.
On 27 November 1918, she attended a Victory Ball held at the Royal Albert Hall after her performance at the theatre.
She later retired with friends to her apartment at the Savoy Court Mansions (an annexe of the Savoy Hotel). And it was here she was discovered the next morning by her maid, dead at the age of 22.
A coroner’s inquest found Ms Carleton had died of a cocaine overdose and at a subsequent court case her friend the actor and costumier Reggie de Veulle pleaded guilty to supplying her with drugs.
Ms Carleton’s death was a scandal which both fascinated and horrified the public as details emerged of the drinking and drug-taking in her social circles.
Edgar Manning, also know as Eddie Manning, was a jazz musician who earned the title “Dope King” in 20s London.
Born in Jamaica, he settled in London in 1916 and was reported to be a drug dealer in the West End.
He garnered a reputation as a drug trafficker and “pedlar of dope” and his frequent convictions saw his name appearing regularly in the press.
In 1929, he was found guilty of the theft of a car and other property and sentenced to three years in prison.
He died in Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight in 1931.
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