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cover of episode The Dark History of London’s Drug World

The Dark History of London’s Drug World

2025/3/11
logo of podcast Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society
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K
Kate Lister
T
Toby Seddon
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Kate Lister: 1920年代的Soho是一个充满享乐主义和堕落文化的中心，夜生活由可卡因和鸦片推动。尽管表面上看起来光鲜亮丽，但背后隐藏着黑暗的毒品交易网络。Soho的俱乐部和鸦片馆成为社会名流和普通人的聚集地，毒品的使用和交易在这里蓬勃发展。 Toby Seddon: 1920年代标志着英国药物文化的形成，尤其是在第一次世界大战后，社会对毒品的态度发生了显著变化。可卡因和鸦片的使用从医学用途逐渐转向娱乐用途，尤其是在艺术家、诗人和社交名流中流行。女性在这一时期的药物文化中占据了突出地位，反映了战后社会性别角色的巨大变化。

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Chapters
Explore the vibrant yet dangerous nightlife of 1920s Soho, driven by club owners and drug dealers.
  • The 43 Club on Gerrard Street was a central hub in Soho's nightlife.
  • Notable figures like Kate Merrick and Brilliant Chang supplied drugs to the nightlife scene.
  • The era was marked by a dangerous mix of jazz, drugs, and social excitement.

Shownotes Transcript

Travel back to post-WW1 London, when sex, drugs and music was exploding in Soho... causing a national moral panic.

The drugs of choice? Cocaine and morphine. Still used by doctors for questionable medicinal reasons (cough syrup anyone?!) but now also taken in nightclubs and opium dens by socialites around Soho.

This week, Kate is Betwixt the Sheets with Professor Toby Seddon to talk about the history of drugs, the people who were selling and taking them, and how the government attempted to crack down.

Historic Soho has been brought to life in the new BBC show Dope Girls, which tells the story of Soho when female gangs ran the nightclubs after the First World War. You can watch it on BBC iPlayer now.

All music from Epidemic Sounds.

Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.