Sensational Novels

As the media moral panics of the early Twentieth Century started to gather momentum as a response to the deaths of the Yeoland Sisters, Billie Carleton and the nightclub dance instructress Freda Kempton, writers and filmakers came to the realisation that the theme of drug use was a big seller. Movies such as 'Human Wreckage' played heavily on the tragedy of the heroine who sucumbs to the temptation of drug use. In turn, novels were churned out, penned swiftly by authors who were keen to capitalise on the growing market for sensationalism and expose. The slideshow exhibition below details some of the best examples from the drug sensationalist genreof novel.

'Reckless thrills - and the wild love of boys and girls on the city streets'

In line with the media moral panics illustrated throughout newspaper reports on drug use during the Twentieth Century, the genre of sensationalist novels captured the zeitgeist throughout the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s in both the United Kingdom and America.

In many of the novels the role of women is exemplified as either protagonist and vice. In some cases the women leads are portrayed as the unsuspecting victims, lured into a world of drugs and vice through a nieve and unrepressed curiosity. In other novels women are the catalyst for drawing either their female peers or for luring men to the murkey depths of society's underbelly, much as the Sirens of Greek mythology lured sailors to the hidden rocks beneath the sea.

Popular titles linked issues such as jazz music, sexuality, counter culture including the beatniks and hippie movements, and communism to the perils of drug use. The warning to America and the world at large was clear, drug use would lead to an irreversable corrosion of all that decent, law abiding society held dear.

'She loved Men, Money and Marijuana'

'A cheap and evil girl sets a hopped-up killer against a city'

'When marijuana means murder'

'She lusted in sin, orgies and reefer brawls'