Soho: London's Most Notorious Neighbourhood

Summary

Podcast Summary: Dan Snow's History Hit – Soho: London's Most Notorious Neighbourhood

Release Date: February 24, 2025
Host: Dan Snow
Guest: Dr. Kate Lister, Sex Historian and Host of Betwixt the Sheets Podcast

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Introduction: The Dual Faces of Soho

In this episode, historian Dan Snow delves into the rich and tumultuous history of Soho, London’s most infamous neighborhood. Once a haven for aristocrats and later a breeding ground for organized crime, sex work, and cultural revolutions, Soho has transformed dramatically over the past century. Dan is joined by Dr. Kate Lister, a leading sex historian, to explore Soho's evolution and its enduring allure.

Dan Snow opens the discussion reflecting on Soho’s transformation:

"If you look down the side streets, you can still see traces of it, namely those adult shops and those old pubs that were previously gentlemen's bars."
[00:00]

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Historical Evolution: From Aristocratic Playground to Notorious Hub

Soho's origins trace back to its days as a greenfield area on the outskirts of London, later developed into a posh neighborhood for aristocrats in the 18th century. However, as the elite moved westward, Soho began to attract a more bohemian and shabbier crowd. The emergence of the theater district played a pivotal role in shaping Soho’s reputation, intertwining entertainment with nightlife that included speakeasies and brothels.

Dr. Kate Lister explains the early development:

"The word Soho comes from an old hunting cry where you'd go, Soho. Because it was once upon a time, obviously it wasn't in central London, it was just sort of on the outskirts."
[04:33]

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The Roaring Twenties: A Cultural and Social Revolution

The 1920s marked a significant turning point for Soho, characterized by post-World War I trauma and the burgeoning of a new social order. Surviving soldiers returning from the trenches sought to escape their wartime experiences by indulging in nightlife and hedonism. This era saw the rise of jazz, flappers, and a shift in both economic and sexual autonomy, particularly for women.

Dr. Kate Lister highlights the impact of the war:

"You've Got a new generation of women who have seen what it's like to earn your own money, to have a career, to go out and do the things that you want to do. And they're not going to go back into the kitchen willingly."
[06:41]

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Jazz and Social Change: The Soundtrack of Soho’s Transformation

Jazz music, introduced by American soldiers during World War I, electrified Soho and became synonymous with the neighborhood's vibrant nightlife. Despite initial resistance and moral panic, jazz clubs flourished, becoming centers for dance and social interaction. This musical revolution paralleled changes in dance styles and fashion, epitomized by the flapper culture.

Dr. Kate Lister discusses the jazz influence:

"Jazz had been associated with black culture, there's a racism that goes with it of like, oh, my God, these black people coming over and infecting our decent white girls."
[11:07]

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The Emergence of Drug Culture and Legal Crackdowns

The 1920s also witnessed the rise of drug use in Soho, facilitated by the availability of substances like opium, cocaine, and cannabis. Initially perceived as a medical miracle, cocaine became widely misused, leading to the first wave of drug-related laws under the Defense of the Realm Act. These regulations aimed to curb drug abuse among soldiers and the general populace, inadvertently fostering a clandestine drug culture within Soho.

Dr. Kate Lister explains the legal landscape:

"The first drug laws start to be passed under the Defense of the Realm act, which was basically that stop taking drugs was the sort of the big one."
[14:11]

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Dope Girls: Media Sensation and Moral Panic

Central to Soho's notoriety were the "Dope Girls"—young women entangled in the burgeoning drug scene. The media sensationalized their stories, intertwining narratives of glamour, addiction, and moral decay. Figures like Brenda Dean Pole and Billy Carlton became emblematic of this phenomenon, embodying the fears and fascinations of a society grappling with rapid social changes.

Dr. Kate Lister describes the media portrayal:

"They really were young women who were off their faces in the 1920s. The flapper age, the fast set, jazz, it girls before it girls."
[20:58]

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Race, Migration, and Stereotypes: The Role of Immigrant Communities

Soho's drug scene was also racialized, with Chinese immigrant communities unfairly stereotyped as the purveyors of opium. The infamous case of Brilliant Chang exemplifies how media narratives exploited racial prejudices, portraying immigrant men as predators preying on innocent white women. This not only fueled moral panic but also entrenched harmful stereotypes that persisted for years.

Dr. Kate Lister on racial stereotypes:

"It was all linked to the Billy Carlton case... Chinese opium dens drawing in innocent white girls. And that was all linked to the Billy Carlton case."
[22:59]

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Government Intervention and Attempts to Tame Soho

In response to the escalating drug issues and moral panic, the British government intensified legal measures, culminating in the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1920. These efforts aimed to clamp down on drug distribution and usage, but faced significant challenges due to Soho’s entrenched nightlife and resistance from its patrons.

Dr. Kate Lister comments on government action:

"But, hyggge's always gonna be an uphill struggle for them."
[27:17]

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Gentrification and the Modern Transformation of Soho

Despite repeated attempts to "clean up" Soho, the neighborhood persisted as a hub of excitement and seedy intrigue until the late 20th century. Eventually, economic factors and property development led to its gentrification. Luxury apartments and high-end businesses replaced many of Soho's notorious establishments, altering its character while retaining a semblance of its historical charm.

Dr. Kate Lister discusses Soho’s gentrification:

"It was money. It became the trendy area to be. So people start buying up the property... So what's happened in Soho is it gets gentrified and then because there's more money in the area, more people are living there, it's easier to pass laws about, you know, residential committees and people saying, well, you can't have that and you can't have that."
[27:36]

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Conclusion: Soho’s Enduring Legacy

Soho remains a symbol of London’s complex interplay between culture, crime, and commerce. From its aristocratic beginnings to its notorious reputation in the roaring twenties, and finally to its modern-day gentrified state, Soho encapsulates the dynamic forces that shape urban neighborhoods. Dan Snow and Dr. Kate Lister conclude by reflecting on Soho’s ability to adapt and reinvent itself, ensuring its place in London’s historical and cultural landscape.

Dan Snow wraps up the episode:

"So Soho survives. The government cannot shut it down. It remains exciting and seedy and fun all the way through to the late 20th century."
[27:43]

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This comprehensive exploration of Soho offers listeners a nuanced understanding of how historical, social, and economic forces converge to shape one of London's most iconic neighborhoods. Whether you're a history enthusiast or new to the subject, Dan Snow's engaging discussion provides valuable insights into Soho's enduring mystique.

Transcript

[Dan Snow]

Hi, I'm Dan Snow and if you would like Dan Snow's History Hit ad free, get early access and bonus episodes. Sign up to History Hit with a History Hit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe hi folks, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. If you're in central London and you walk down the streets of Soho, you will see theatres. You will see probably patisseries and cafes and restaurants serving cuisine from all over the world, from the Asian eateries of Chinatown to London's oldest French restaurant set in a beautiful Georgian townhouse. But that famous area is also now home to luxury apartments with eye watering rents and the offices of tech startups and co working spaces. It's all really a very, very far cry from the establishments that made Soho world famous in the 1920s. Though what I love about Soho, if you look down the side streets, you can still see traces of it, namely those adult shops and those old pubs that were previously gentlemen's bars. Soho was once London's, if not Europe's most notorious neighborhood. A thriving melting pot of speakeasies and sex work and organized crime from the razor gangs, the 1920s, the pre war pimps and money laundering shop fronts. The area has always been, and some say still is, a little bit a hotbed for thieves, con men, drug dealers and shady goings on. But it's also been an exciting place. A place for art and culture, fertile ground for revolution, groundbreaking jazz, rock and roll, countercultural movements. It's been a safe place for the LGBTQ movement to flourish. I want to do an episode on Soho because we're all talking about the moment. It's the historic Soho has been brought to life in a new BBC TV show called Dope Girls. It tells the story of Soho when female gangs ran the nightclubs dealing drugs and moonshine after the First World War. So I'm going to learn about the extraordinary history of these streets and the colorful characters that have inhabited it over the last century. Who else am I going to ask? I'm joined by the leading expert herself, sex historian, host of our sister podcast, Betwixt the sheets. It's Dr. Kate Lister. And just a heads up, there is discussion of drugs, of sex work, of things you might not want to listen to with your kids. Just saying. Enjoy.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

T minus 10 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. God save the King. No black white unity till there is first some black unity. Never to go to war with one Another again. And liftoff. And the shuttle has cleared the tower.

[Dan Snow]

Hi, Kate, good to see you here in the heart of swingy Soho.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Thank you very much for asking me here.

[Dan Snow]

We're all watching Dope Girls and what I like about this, it's got two great passions of mine. One is I used to go out at Soho all the time. It felt like an exciting place to go out when I was younger. And two, I'm fascinated by that, that post war generation, how wild it was. It was like the 60s before the 60s, wasn't it? And we've just forgotten about that.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

It has been called the first sexual revolution. You know, scholars of that period get very angry when people try and say it was the 1960s and they go, no, no, I think you'll find it was the 1920s and for good reason as well.

[Dan Snow]

And then the 1890s, lads join the channel.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

And then the 18th century get involved and then we go all the way back until we're just amoebas in a pond somewhere.

[Dan Snow]

Can we start with Soho? Because there's something about Soho I remember being the streets are narrow. It feels like, if not medieval, but sort of Georgian London. There's not many cars on the streets. There's street life there, isn't there? Even though it's in the heart of some extremely expensive real estate now there.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Is and there always has been. It's got a really, really long history to Soho. And even though it's been extensively gentrified since the 1980s, it still has that slightly risque, slightly naughty feel about it. But in its earliest, earliest days, it wasn't naughty at all. It was quite a posh area. It's where aristocrats lived and they're the ones that sort of built all of the big houses. And the word Soho comes from an old hunting cry where you'd go, Soho. Because it was once upon a time, obviously it wasn't in central London, it was just sort of on the outskirts.

[Dan Snow]

So, okay, so it was a greenfield Soho.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

It was greenfields kind of an area. And then it starts to be developed and it becomes the playground of aristocrats and rich people. But eventually, sort of about the 18th century, they start to move out.

[Dan Snow]

But they keep going west.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yeah, they keep going west and it's starts to become that kind of shabby boho chic. The properties are a little bit cheaper to buy, so people of a less high quality start moving into the area. And the thing that really does for it is it starts becoming a theatre district. And the theatre has long Been associated with all kinds of naughtiness. And where there's theatres, there's drinking dens. Where there's drinking dens, there will be drunk people. And where there's drunk people, there will be brothels as well. So it just all kind of grew up in this area, and then the area became notorious for it, and then it starts to sort of feed on itself, as this is the destination, this is where you go.

[Dan Snow]

So in the 1920s, you've got this generation who've survived what they think is the greatest war in history. They're traumatized by it. They've lost their mates, they've lost family members, and they're still very young. They're coming back from the trenches like 21, 22 years old. So they want to go out and party and live life and I suppose, to a certain extent, sort of drown their sorrows.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

They do. It's kind of difficult, I think, for us to try and imagine what they went through and what life must have been like, not just Post World War I, but post Spanish Flu as well. And, like the trauma of the war. And you've got a generation that's just sort of like, okay, so, well, now what do we do? The entire world is different. Everything's different. And in particular, women's roles are different. Because one thing that the war did, that had never happened before, is it allowed women to go into the workplace. Cause obviously the men had to go and fight in the trenches. So the home, London and everywhere back home became largely dominated by women. They were the ones driving the buses, they were the ones running the services in the shops. They were going out to work. And then the war is over. The men come back and the women are like, we just go back home now then, do we? And that was always a really difficult thing, and it was never gonna happen. So you've got a new generation of women who have seen what it's like to earn your own money, to have a career, to go out and do the things that you want to do. And they're not going to go back into the kitchen willingly.

[Dan Snow]

Did they enjoy not just more personal autonomy, economic autonomy, but also sexual autonomy? Is that something that went alongside that?

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Definitely. The 1920s, and in fact, the First World War is notorious for it, because there's nothing that'll change your mind faster on sexual morality than impending death. I think bombs falling from the sky makes everyone go, oh, maybe. Maybe I'm not quite so uptight about this. So things are changing, and they were changing before that. You've Got the first kind of reliable contraception coming through. People are talking about it in ways that have never been spoken about it before. Sex is much more mainstream, but everyone in the ward did things differently. People are having sex differently. It changed attitudes and as you said, the sort of. The overwhelming feeling when they came out, the other side of it is, well, let's party.

[Dan Snow]

Reliable contraception is ish.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

It's reliable ish contraception. So they were using cervical caps at that point. You could have gone down to Marie Stopes clinic and got yourself fitted for a cervical cap. Which is. They weren't nice and they weren't 100% effective, but there were contraceptive clinics that you could go to if you were a married woman.

[Dan Snow]

Surprising that it involved really invasive, unpleasant things put in women rather than just men.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Of course it did. I mean, you could get condoms. You could. But they had a reputation as being slightly seedy, something that you'd only use for promiscuous sex. And the birth control advocates were very, very keen on trying to be like, well, this isn't about promiscuous sex, this is about married life and controlling the population.

[Dan Snow]

So take me back to. So in the 1920s, what can I expect? I walked down the street.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

You can expect fun if you know where to look for it. I suspect if you walk down and you had no idea where you were going or what you were doing, it would not be immediately obvious. Apart from the theaters, this is very relatable to my life because drinking culture and pubs were really, really strictly controlled during the First World War and after it, with the Defence of the Realms Act. They were the ones that said pubs can only open for two hours in the day and then for four hours at night. You and I are both probably old enough to remember when there were drinking restrictions.

[Dan Snow]

Still, Sunday afternoon, they closed pubs. You had to leave the pub.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Exactly. And that was because of the Defence of the Realm Act. So it stayed in place all that time. But there were really strict rules around where you could drink, who could have a license, because basically they didn't want the soldiers being pissed up during the war, ammunitions workers or munitions workers. You know, it wasn't so much that they desperately cared about the health of the populace. What springs up around that is a lot of speakeasies, a lot of drinking dens, places where if you know someone who knows somebody, they can take you there. So there's that culture, and if you know where to go, then you can have a really good time. Brothels are always as discreet as they can be because they're dodging the police. They don't want to attract attention to themselves. So they were mostly in residential spaces above shops and somebody's working out of a flat. And then, of course, there'd be women on the street. If you knew who you were looking for, it's there, but you need to know what you're looking for.

[Dan Snow]

And Soho was. You don't think of it in those terms anymore. Maybe naively, but Soho definitely. When I was growing up starting it, it was sex work and adult stores. That was a big part of Soho's mystique.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yeah. And it has been since the 18th century, really. When you start to get sex workers moving into the area, then the area becomes notorious for it. Then you get things like Harris List of Covent Garden ladies, which is giving out the addresses of where women work. And some of them are in what we'd now call Soho. So it becomes an area that's known for it. And then as you get into the 20th century, you've got theaters opening up which are on the racier side of things, like the Windmill Theater. So it's a couple of decades after the 20s, but the first theater to allow women nude on stage as long as they were stood completely still and pretending to be statues. But you've got sort of like strip clubs start moving in after that. So it's definitely an area that's had that reputation for a good few hundred years.

[Dan Snow]

And you got the heady sound of jazz.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yeah, Jazz came over with the Americans in the First World War when they were stationed here. They exported a lot of American culture. I mean, it must have arrived like an absolute bullet to the brain. If you're. Imagine like, you know, you're a housewife in 1920s London and you've just listened to big band music and all of a sudden jazz has arrived and it's fun and it's fast and it's naughty and people are really worried about it. Like, you know, like, oh, it's. Oh, don't listen to that. It's terrible.

[Dan Snow]

The Nazis hated jazz. Well, yeah, except when they're in private and they all listen to it, I'm sure. But like. Yeah, in public. Yeah, I hated it. So. Disease.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Well, and they did in its earliest, when it starts to get exported and even in America, people thought of it like that. It's this moral degenerate. And of course, because it's associated with black culture, there's a racism that goes with it of like, oh, my God, these black people coming over and infecting our decent white girls. That narrative runs through it the whole time, but it absolutely electrified the entire world.

[Dan Snow]

And so it becomes a center of jazz clubs.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yeah, it does, yeah. Jazz. And you would go and dance. We don't really go and dance anymore. I mean, I know you can go to a club and dance, but, like, dancing at this point in history was a really, really big thing. And if not everyone was going dancing in underground jazz dens, you'd go to your local village hall and have a dance. You'd go. That's the thing that you did for.

[Dan Snow]

Fun, where you met your partner. Right.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

You had a dance. Yeah, it was like the social that you'd go to. But along with jazz, the style of dancing starts to change. You get the flappers coming through with the Charleston, the hemlines are going up, the dancers getting a bit more raucous. It must have felt really dangerous and exciting that particular period.

[Dan Snow]

Again, just come back to that first point. This is a generation of men and women who've, especially the elite, the officer class, suffered disproportionate high casualties. So the people with money, the people with aristocratic connection, they'd have known reams of people that weren't there anymore. So they must just thought, we're lucky to be alive. Let's just party.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Let's just do it. Yeah, sod it. The Roaring Twenties, I think everyone was aware that they'd come through something absolutely horrific and that the world was different. I think it was a lot of anxiety as well, though. You know, a sort of a sense of, what happens now? What do we do now? And there was this moral panic around young girls and around jazz clubs and around drink and drugs and about how society is crumbling and decaying all around us. And Soho was an epicenter for that.

[Dan Snow]

Let's talk about drugs, because, again, you associate that with a later cultural and sexual revolution. But so people are taking drugs.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

They've always taken drugs. People have always. What are you saying? As long as there have been drugs, there have been people that take them. But things start to change in the 1920s because the law starts to get involved and you get this creation of this image of the drug fiend, the drug addict. Up until that point, it was well known that people could abuse drugs. Like in the 18th century, Thomas de Quincey writes Confessions of an English Opium Eater. But there was a sort of a sense of almost like, oh, you silly goose, getting all messed up with that. It wasn't this idea that a dope fiend was an actual thing. Like there wasn't this understanding of addiction that we have today. But that starts to change in the 1920s. And one of the reasons for that is because the government has to crack down on drugs because their soldiers are getting stoned. That's what they're worried about is it's not so much that they are desperately concerned about the welfare of their citizens, it's that they can't afford to have soldiers off their face on opium or unbridled cocaine use. There was also lots of reports coming into the police about how young men had been fed cocaine by nefarious sex workers in Soho and they just couldn't remember anything afterwards. And this kind of. Yeah, of course, of course.

[Dan Snow]

That's what you tell the wife when you get home.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Exactly. So the first drug laws start to be passed under the Defense of the Realm act, which was basically that stop taking drugs was the sort of the big one. And the police could start to raid places, they could start to confiscate it. And then you get this weird legal landscape because doctors could still prescribe it for pretty much anything. Toothache, headache, flatulence, opioids.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, okay. And cocaine as well.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Cocaine as well? Yeah. Cocaine becomes really, really big. And it's, you know, when they first start using it, it was this sort of medical miracle drug of it's gonna fix everything. Cause it peps you up and it makes, you know, things seem a bit more exciting. And so it's touted as this medical panacea. And then eventually people start to realize, oh, oh, hang on a minute. It's not quite as good as we thought it was, but it's still prescribed for loads of stuff.

[Dan Snow]

You're listening to Dan Snow' this is all about Soho. More after this. Does opium cure flatulence? Asking for a friend.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

There were medicines containing opium that were marketed to do that. I am not a medical person, but I think it would probably take everyone into room to the point where they didn't care.

[Dan Snow]

So would that help if you all take opium, it would cure my say or my friends.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yes, exactly. Because no one would care anymore. But you get opium dens cropping up all over the place and they're in this kind of weird legal limbo of, well, can we arrest them? Can we not? Is it medicinal? Is it not? This thing comes into force where if you're poor and you're caught with drugs, you'll be arrested. If you're rich, then you have a medical issue.

[Dan Snow]

Drugs wise, opium, some cocaine and cannabis.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Cannabis was around, but it wasn't as prominent you don't get the first tightening of UK laws around cannabis until it's like 1928. And then that becomes this sort of marijuana menace idea that comes in a little bit later. So it was in the mix, but it wasn't as much cause for concern.

[Dan Snow]

It's always a good sign if they're tightening up laws. You know that in the years preceding it, there's something going on.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yes. Somebody has been doing something that they shouldn't have been doing.

[Dan Snow]

That's always the red flag for historians. Were there any famous bars and clubs?

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Oh, yeah. If you were in 1920, Soho, you would want to go to the 43 Club, which was run by the queen of nightclub life, Kate Merrick, who was born in Dublin. So she's an Irish woman, and she marries a doctor. She's separated from him, and she ends up in London with eight kids that she has to support at the age of 43, which is not a great situation to be in. And she sees an advertisement that somebody needs some help running, like a tea party or a tea dance or something. So she gives that a go, and then she thinks, sod this, and she decides that she's Gonna open the 43 Club on Gerrard street in Soho. But that wasn't an easy thing to do because of the Defense against the Realm act, saying we can only sell alcohol for two hours a day and until 8pm and she just did it anyway. She did it without a license. She did it without a venue license. She just opened it. She spent loads of money building this club, and then it became the go to. Like, Tallulah Bankhead went there, Evelyn Waugh went there. The bright young things, beautiful set. And it was raided repeatedly, like, constantly. Just bam, bam, bam. And she went to jail several times. And she becomes this celebrity in her own right, and the public can't get enough of her because every time she's in the dock, she's there, like, draped in furs and diamonds and coming up with things like, well, if you win a nightclub, this is what you have to expect. It's like people just adored her. And the worse she got, the more they loved her for it. I think one of the worst things, that she bribed police officers in the end to tell her when there was gonna be a raid. And she got caught doing that and sent to jail again. But, yeah, she became London's nightclub queen and made a ton of money doing it. Sent all of her kids to private schools, but just was repeatedly arrested, raided. And then her health suffered. I think she was like 59 when she finally died. But she was legendary for it.

[Dan Snow]

And tell me about the real life dope girls.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

The real life dope girls. It was probably a case that the media spoke about them and made them into more of a thing than they actually were. But it was symptomatic of a panic of drug abuse, basically, of drug addiction. And you have to remember the 1920s, no one's really spoken about addiction and drugs in this level of a prominent way before. Now we're so used to people talking about drugs and addiction, it can still shock us. But it doesn't have that novelty that every single paper will be running stories for months and months and months and months. The dope girls did that. They became symptomatic of post war crisis. And really what it is is it's young women coming to London to try and make their name and getting caught up in drugs and wanting to take loads and loads of drugs. And they were centered around Soho. Some of them were working in some of the nightclubs, some of them were dancing. Soho also attracted the aristocrats. So you get some people from quite wealthy backgrounds. Drugs are absolutely everywhere. And you do start to get stories emerging in the press of overdoses, of deaths occurring. And then every single time that happens, it blows up again as like dope scared, dope girl fiend, degenerate. And you can imagine, like everybody you know who isn't in Soho and off their face, just little housewives and their husbands just sat reading the papers going, oh, God, absolutely terrible. And they're kind of like living vicariously through that. So they were definitely there. And it was. How can you say it in any more succinct way? It was young women who were off their faces in the 1920s. The flapper age, the fast set, jazz, it girls before it girls, it girls before it girls. And they really were. They could dominate newspaper columns. People were fascinated by them. One of the first it girls to be known more for her addiction than anything else was Brenda Dean Pole. And she started out as an actress. She kept trying to act all throughout her life, but she was basically more famous for being an addict than anything else. Cause the police would keep arresting her and then it would be in the press, then she'd get taken to court and then it would be in the press. And she fed on it. She would. She published an autobiography, which is just basically how much drugs she takes. Do you remember, like, the press were at its worst when Amy Winehouse was clearly very ill and they were obsessed with that. And they're just everyday running stories about her. That was exactly what was happening with Brenda Dean, but in the 1920s. So recognizable, so recognizable, so recognizable. That same level of obsession and oh my God, what's she doing to herself? It's absolutely terrible. That same obsession about this excessive life that she's living. But also the papers can't stop writing about it and we can't stop reading about it.

[Dan Snow]

And presumably they're all young, glamorous, associated with rich and powerful. You can see why it's a great story.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yeah, you can. It's got everything in it. And Brenda Dean, Paul was. She was very beautiful as well. She had that real chiseled look and she never lost a look, she was always beautiful. So you have super glamorous. She comes from not quite an aristocratic background, but her mother was a composer, I think. So quite a well known background. And then there's this young woman who's been attracted to booze and jazz and drugs and men and isn't it terrible? Yeah, that was her story. One of the first stories of the dope girls to really capture the press's attention and horrify the nation was of a young actress called Billy Carlton who died in 1918 just as the war is drawing to a close. She was only 22 years old and Billie was quite a successful actress. She was sort of the darling of the stage. She was really popular. The press were already writing stories about her. She dies of a suspected cocaine overdose, Body's found and then the inquest for that, it comes out about the lifestyle that she had been living and the people around her had been living. And how much of it is true and how much of it was press hysteria. But by the time they were done telling the story that there'd been cocaine fueled orgies and absolutely awash with drugs. And there was a link made with the Chinese immigrant community in London. Just one guy who was married to the woman who might have given Billy the drugs. And that was enough to create this image of the Chinese immigrant opium den. Always a man preying on young, innocent white women, which was how Billy was portrayed. Being seduced, being force fed these drugs and then meeting a terrible, terrible end. And it becomes this image that the media absolutely runs with of these Chinese opium dens drawing in innocent white girls. And that was all linked to the Billy Carlton case.

[Dan Snow]

So it's a story about celebrity, but also drugs, race and migration as well.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

It's fascinating. Yeah. And you get the Fu Manchu novels that were written by Sax Roemer were based in Part on what was happening in Soho, presenting Chinese men as these sort of evil degenerates who are preying on unsuspecting young women. It became a real. A real thing.

[Dan Snow]

Just sounds like a classic moral panic in a way, doesn't it? So nice. White women, young women from good families, disappearing into that London, into a den where they're preyed upon by foreigners experimenting with new drugs. I mean, it just feels like it's got all the elements that now are very recognizable.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

It does. And it was for the first time. So this is all very new. The novelty of it keeps it going for years and years. And of course, unchecked racism kept it going as well. The threat of Chinese opium was known as the yellow peril in the press at the time. And yes, it was a story that they ran and ran with it. It was a moral panic.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, it's just a classic moral panic.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

It is. And they had characters in and around Soho that they used to fuel that. So one of the most notorious characters in the drug trade was a guy known as Brilliant Chang. He'd come from Canton originally, I think, born in, like, 1885 or something like that. He comes to Britain and originally starts working in restaurants. He owns restaurants and quite quickly realizes that you can make a lot more money selling drugs instead of food. So he starts selling drugs, cocaine, predominantly to his customers. Some accounts say that he would only sell to pretty white women. How accurate that is, not entirely sure. But he becomes this enfant terrible in the British press of, like. Every time he gets mentioned, it gets worse and worse. There's some dispute about how involved in drugs he actually was and how much the British press. Cause by the time the British press were done, they were calling him Britain's dope king. And it's like he might have been Britain's dope king or he might have been dealing out of his restaurant. But he became the focal point for the British press. He became everything that they hated. And he had a very colorful love life. Women loved him, it would seem. He was very charming. And he was implicated in a few deaths from overdoses, but nothing was proven.

[Dan Snow]

It sounds like sometimes these people enjoyed the press tension, almost leaned into it.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

It does. Bit for someone like Brilliant Chang, the press intrusion. So he gets put on trial because he's implicated in a case involving a woman called Violet Payne, where she's caught with drugs. And the police say that he's the one that gave them to her. He's found not guilty of it, but the press focus on him Makes it almost impossible for him to live his life in London. It certainly makes it very difficult for him to deal any drugs in London, because now everybody knows who he is, everyone knows his restaurant, he's got this awful reputation. And eventually he is arrested for drug possession on slightly. Not jump Trump's charges, but it's almost like the police went, oh, my God, there's some cocaine. Quick, arrest him. And then he gets put in and then he gets deported and we don't know what happens to him, really. Yeah. And he was the supposed dope king of Soho.

[Dan Snow]

Does the government act.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

The government acts eventually. So they're using this Defense against the Realm act, which covers an awful lot. It was basically brought in so the government can go, if anything might be upset in the war effort, we can do something about it. But eventually that gets crystallized into the Dangerous Drugs act of 1920, which then makes possession of cocaine and opium illegal. But also you are still allowed it for medical use. So it's a slightly gray, weird area. And the British way was that was slang for the fact that your doctor just could just prescribe anything to you. So that was still how most people could get hold of it quite easily.

[Dan Snow]

And do you see? Is there an attempt to clean up Soho?

[Dr. Kate Lister]

There's always attempts to clean up Soho. There's always attempts. And it becomes like Soho becomes this repository of everything that's wrong in the country. Everything's been projected onto it. So there's constant efforts to shut down the nightclubs. The MPs, politicians are always trying to say, we're gonna clean up this menace. But of course, people really like going to the nightclubs. So it was always gonna be an uphill struggle for them. But, yeah, there's always attempts to clean it up and they usually fail.

[Dan Snow]

One of the amazing things about the modern day is that now people talk with nostalgia about nightclubs. They're closing because everyone's just sitting at home on their devices. All the politicians like, we should be out dancing and drinking like we were when I was young.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yeah. The MPs from the 1920s would've loved that. If only they'd known. They just had to give people iPads. That was all that had to happen. And they could have fixed it all.

[Dan Snow]

So Soho survives. The government cannot shut it down. It remains exciting and seedy and fun all the way through to the late 20th century.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

It does. But the thing that does for it eventually, because if you walk around Soho today, it becomes immediately obvious there aren't any opium dens or illegal nightclubs or the flappers have long since moved out. And it's quite gentrified. The thing that did for it in the end wasn't the repeated police crackdowns or it wasn't them trying to change the laws or bring in drugs. It was money. It became the trendy area to be. So people start buying up the property. This is what happens. You see this replicated all over the place. An area becomes, like, super cool because it's kind of edgy. It's kind of like, cool. And, you know, this is where the naughty stuff happens. So then it becomes a popular area to buy in, and then people start buying it. You see that in Notting Hill, that's happened there as well. That used to be quite a sort of edgy, like, urban area. And then until the yummy mummies moved in. So what happened in Soho is it gets gentrified and then because there's more money in the area, more people are living there, it's easier to pass laws about, you know, residential committees and people saying, well, you can't have that and you can't have that. And Soho was forced to clean up its act. It hasn't completely cleaned. It's still got that twinkle.

[Dan Snow]

It's got a twinkle inside.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

And I guess the population collapsed in the 19th century to the mid 20th. Like some 17,000 people used to live there. It got down to 3,000 people living there. Is it. Are people moving in again or is it all cool artistic studios?

[Dr. Kate Lister]

I don't think. I mean, I think you can still buy property if you wanted to, but it would set you back a lot. This is a long time since you could just afford some dives above an opium den for a bag of raspberries and a shilling.

[Dan Snow]

You're thinking about the big move south. I see you as a Soho.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

I would love to live in Soho, but you need. You need so much money to do it. But I think now it's mostly businesses. I don't think it is mostly residential Soho anymore.

[Dan Snow]

Well, thanks, Kate. You give me all the context I need now to enjoy my binge watch. Gonna check out dope girls on BBC iPlayer. Well, a huge thank you to Dr. Kate Lister of the Betwixt the Sheets podcast. As I say, you can check out dope girls on BBC iPlayer now. And don't forget to hit Follow in your podcast app to get more Dan Snow history wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time.