Billie Carleton

Her first breakthrough came when impresario C.B. Cochran promoted her from the chorus to a role in his 1914 revue Watch Your Step. Although her voice was weak, her stage presence and delicate beauty charmed audiences. Cochran later fired her when he learned she was attending opium parties, but he gave her another chance in 1917, when she took over the leading role from Gertie Millar in Houp La! Despite little impression in that part, she went on to appear in André Charlot's revue Some More Samples! and then landed the role of Joy Chatterton, a flapper, in the hit musical farce The Boy at the Adelphi Theatre in August 1917. In May 1918, she played a maid in Fair and Warmer, and by August she had taken the starring role in The Freedom of the Seas at the Haymarket Theatre. This made her the youngest leading lady in the West End at the time.

On 27 November 1918, Carleton attended the Victory Ball at the Royal Albert Hall, wearing a daringly diaphanous outfit designed by her friend Reggie de Veulle. The next day, she was found dead in her Savoy Hotel suite. A coroner's inquest ruled that she died of a cocaine overdose, and de Veulle was charged with manslaughter and conspiracy to supply a prohibited drug. He was acquitted of the first charge but pleaded guilty to the second and was sentenced to eight months in prison. Ada Song Ping You, who had supplied opium to Carleton, was sentenced to five months with hard labour. Some later analysis suggested that Carleton may have died from legal depressants rather than cocaine. Despite the scandal that surrounded her private life, she was largely seen as an innocent victim. Her death, along with the trial that followed, contributed to the passing of laws that made possession of cocaine and opium illegal for the first time in Britain.