Pageturners: The Streetwalker - where the hero beats the system.

She is arrested for streetwalking. She denies it, but INSPECTOR MUNCEY tells her “Malthusian appliances were found in your handbag.”

This week I’m sharing with you an example to demonstrate a hero defeating the system. It’s called The Streetwalker. In traditional stories and films she would have ended up in the gutter.

It was an abortive project I originally wrote decades ago, with a production company who submitted it to Channel 4. It also shows how a drama would be presented with broad brushstrokes and emotional beats.

And—most important if you’re wondering how to condense your own complex story into a short synopsis—it shows you how. It amounts to three A4 pages, typed with single spacing. A production company would normally want no more than three pages. Today, especially, no one has the time or attention span to read more. Less is more. In fact, if you can make it three pages with double spacing that would be even better. 

It begins with the infamous true story in 1922 of three sisters who were found, semi-naked, in a drug-induced stupor in bed with a dead Chinese man—Yee Sing—in a Cardiff Chinese laundry. That three white girls could associate with a Chinese was deemed disgraceful and they were sent to the workhouse to recover. The case ‘scandalised the nation’ (well, it scandalised the Daily Mail,  at least). There was a mysterious, ‘sinister’ smell of geraniums in the air, which led to all manner of wild and racist theories of oriental drug use. Trying to keep the Daily Mail off its back, the Home Office reluctantly banned the use of cannabis. Even though the girls and Yee Sing were using opium rather than cannabis, and Yee may have died of a heart condition. Those are the known facts of the case. Everything that followed in The Streetwalker I imagined, including the explanation for the mysterious smell of geraniums.

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The Streetwalker

November 1922. Cardiff. Room above a Chinese Laundry. The three Paul sisters in their twenties GWEN (the leader), ROSE and FLORENCE, semi-clothed, lie in a drug-induced stupor in bed with a dead man YEE SING. A kettle of opium tea close-by. INSPECTOR MUNCEY and his female assistant DAWES burst in. MUNCEY is ex-India police, more comfortable wearing a pith helmet than a bowler. MUNCEY suggests DAWES averts her eyes from the shocking scene, but she reminds him she used to patrol Bute Park during the war. They recognise GWEN as a streetwalker.

The girls are dragged off to the grim Cardiff workhouse where stern female MATRON takes charge of them. They’re given strychnine to keep them awake or they could die. Wearing workhouse uniforms, they’re forced to march round  the women’s yard. GWEN is defiant and MATRON slaps her

MUNCEY, enjoying the media attention over this scandalous case, tells a REPORTER from The Imperial News about his years in India and the insanity caused by Indian Hemp. The REPORTER asks if the drug could be responsible here? MUNCEY hints it might. He noticed the mysterious, heady perfume of geraniums in the air.”You see, traditionally, harem women, guilty of infidelity, were killed by being placed in a room full of flowers which emitted lethal fumes.’ THE REPORTER writes “A Yellow Peril” drug article.

At the workhouse, GWEN and her sisters stagger on. FLASHBACK as GWEN recalls 11TH JUNE 1919 when she was a Cardiff bus conductress. There’s a race riot with white ex-soldiers attacking anyone with a different ethnicity “taking our jobs”. GWEN sees YEE SING pursued by the mob. GWEN tells YEE to jump aboard. She yells at the mob to leave YEE alone and protects him with her body. She urges her driver to speed up and they escape. YEE smiles, “You are a jazz of a girl”, and jumps off.

At the depot, she is sacked because the men want their jobs back after the war. Her SISTERS help her get a job as a lady’s maid to arrogant LADY JESSICA BOWLES.

So GWEN with her SISTERS are servants in attendance on aristocratic FLAPPERS at Grand Peace Carnival at Cardiff’s Sophia Gardens July 9—12,1919. It’s fancy dress. The FLAPPERS are taking cocaine.

Handsome IVOR NOVELLO arrives to the band playing ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’. GWEN considers a fancy dress hanging up, waiting for a late arrival. ROSE says, “You wouldn’t dare!” FLORENCE: “Don’t say that! You know she’ll do anything for a dare.” End of Flashback.

November 1922. Back at the Workhouse. The girls are still walking round—for 50 hours - to keep them awake. But there’s a smile on GWEN’S face as she mutters “There’s a silver lining, through the dark clouds shining…”

FLASHBACK to Victory Ball. GWEN has donned the fancy dress and enters the ballroom. She looks stunning and dances with IVOR NOVELLO. Another servant asks FLORENCE if GWEN is doing the dare under the influence of cocaine?

FLORENCE smiles “No. GWEN has always been crazy.” LADY JESSICA is furious. 

GWEN, in her beautiful gown, spins around the ballroom faster and faster until … she collapses back in the workhouse yard.

Later, interviewed by MUNCEY and DAWES with THE MATRON present, the police want to know what devilish drug Yee gave her? And why the mysterious scent of geraniums? GWEN mocks them with her replies. GWEN is reminded that the authorities can keep her and her sisters in the workhouse indefinitely, unless she cooperates. Protective of her sisters, GWEN agrees and tells how she met YEE and what really happened. 

FLASHBACK to some months after Victory Ball. GWEN has been sacked and in desperation becomes a streetwalker. She goes to BREWSTER’S the Chemists to buy some condoms. BREWSTER has a bottle of  her sister ROSE’s “usual’ for her stomach trouble”: Chlorodyne. Ingredients: morphine, ether, cannabis, treacle and chloroform. BREWSTER sells other addictive drugs including laudanum. “Sold 400 gallons last year,” BREWSTER tells her proudly. 

GWEN endlessly walks the streets high-heeled shoes, dealing with punters. YEE has been following her and fights and rescues her from a dangerous customer. YEE clutches his heart but he makes light of it. He asks what happened to her job on the buses? She replies: “The boys came home.” She goes back to his laundry, takes off her shoes, and puts her feet in warm water. YEE tells her he has something that will make her feet feel a lot better. He goes to get it as other working class GIRLS turn up at the laundry wanting their regular opium tea. 

These GIRLS are besotted by their drug dealer. GWEN disapproves and YEE tells her that the British forced opium on China. YEE only has eyes for GWEN. She’s not interested. He tries hard to persuade her, so she accuses him of just wanting control over her. Like everyone else. He offers her drugs. She turns him down. “I’ll lead meself astray.” If he’s interested in her, then it’s strictly business. He backs off because he tells her she means more to him than that.

GWEN returns to the rooms she shares with her SISTERS.  She takes off her shoes and puts her feet in water. She’s brought money for her SISTERS who blame her for losing their jobs, No one will give them a reference.

Why did she do it? GWEN smiles dreamily “Because no matter what happens to me, they can never take away the night I danced with Ivor Novello.”

ROSE needs more Chlorodyne. GWEN is worried—that’s four bottles a week she’s drinking. ROSE: “So what? Bethan drinks three bottles a day.” FLORENCE reminds her: “It never did us any harm. We were brought up on Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup. Well, how else was Ma going to keep us quiet?”

ROSE and FLORENCE think they should go on the game, like GWEN, but she is fiercely protective of her siblings. She’ll take one more turn on the block tonight.

She is arrested for streetwalking. She denies it, but INSPECTOR MUNCEY tells her ‘Malthusian appliances were found in your handbag.’ GWEN looks blank. DAWES explains ‘Contraceptive devices.’ MUNCEY winces. GWEN: ‘Johnnies.’

YEE pays her fine. He’s besotted by her. He writes her name in Chinese. In Chinese it means ‘Princess’. He knows he’s a sick man and he wants to spend the short time he has left with her. He has a Chinese love potion prepared. They make love. YEE has money stashed away and wants to leave it to someone special like her. She turns him down. She strokes his cheek lovingly and sadly. “You can’t help it. You’re a wrong un, love.”

Returning to her streetwalking, she recoils from BREWSTER the Chemist’s, which is being smashed open by a gang of desperate EX-SERVICEMEN—addicted to Forced March—raiding it for drugs. Back home, her SISTERS are being evicted. ROSE is hanging out for Chlorodyne, but BREWSTER’S has been destroyed. They have nowhere to go and ROSE is desperate for her drugs. GWEN has only one option.

They go to YEE’s rooms above the laundry. YEE: “I’ll put the kettle on.” A defeated GWEN takes off her shoes. Her SISTERS lie on the bed.

November 1922. GWEN is freed from the workhouse and attends YEE’s funeral. Chinese in attendance. THE REPORTER is also present. He describes the Chinese reciting “some weird incantation”. Still obsessed by the yellow peril, the REPORTER asks GWEN more questions. What about the mysterious geranium perfume in the room?  What fiendish drugs did the Chinaman supply her with? She responds that everyone is taking drugs, why single out Yee? Her BROTHER died on the Somme. He was taking Forced March (cocaine tablets with rum ration). “That’s how they got the poor bastards to go over the top. But you won’t print that, will you? Rum and coke.”

GWEN writes her name in Chinese characters in the snow around the grave and exits. A Chinese man runs after her. It’s YEE’s BROTHER.  He says how much GWEN meant to YEE. He said if anything happened to him, “I should give you this.” He hands her a big roll of pound notes.

1924. A chic GWEN now owns a popular, genteel tea shop assisted by her two SISTERS.  The gramophone is playing Ivor Novello’s ‘Land of Might Have Been’. 

Then, in a backroom, GWEN takes off her elegant shoes and  puts her feet in a bowl of  water. She takes out a bottle of Chinese Geranium Oil and squeezes some drops into the water. She sighs with contentment.

Next week: No Human’s Land!