How Little Lonsdale Street became Melbourne’s cocaine capital

In 1918, Melbourne was celebrating the end of WWI, unaware an insidious new war had just begun. That’s when a new drug – cocaine – was first detected by Melbourne police, and began to wreak havoc.

Little Lon cocaine dealer Lewis Lazarus c.1929. Picture: Public Record Office Victoria.

Little Lonsdale Street, from 1918 until the early 1930s, was the centre of a new and flourishing illicit cocaine trade in Melbourne.

Referred to as “snow”, the substance was prevalent among frequenters of the inner-city slum and red-light district known as Little Lon.

During this period most of Melbourne’s cocaine was dealt from Little Lonsdale Street, in the block between Exhibition and Russell streets.

It was sold from houses and shops, hawked by dealers on the street, and delivered door to door.

Little Lonsdale Street from the corner of Spring Street c.1870. Picture: Macquarie University Collection.

Little Lonsdale Street from the corner of Spring Street today. Picture: Michael Shelford.

In 1919, Chief Commissioner George Steward reported: “The poison referred to is the drug Cocaine, the sale of which came under the notice of the police about 12 months ago, when it was discovered that certain prostitutes in the slums were using it under the denomination of “Snow”. The habit was introduced here by a prostitute from Sydney, and it quickly spread among the prostitute element.”

At the time of this report, police still didn’t consider cocaine use to be a dramatically escalating problem.

They had been noticing strange behaviour from the residents of Little Lonsdale Street for some time, though.

People who seemed insanely euphoric one day, were often tragically melancholic the next.

When inquiries were made, the imbibers would claim their erratic behaviour was the result of drinking “lunatic soup”, the term used for the cheap and dangerous alcoholic concoctions common to the slums at the time.

Little Lonsdale Street. The white building in the centre, 120-122 Little Lonsdale, was used for dealing cocaine in the early 1930s. Picture: Michael Shelford.

Over the next few years, as cocaine use spread to other parts of Melbourne, its main point of sale remained in the same section of Little Lonsdale Street.

In 1923, Henry McEwan was searched by detectives on Little Lonsdale Street and found to be carrying multiple deals of cocaine.

He freely admitted he was buying it in bulk from a chemist and then cutting it to sell to the prostitutes of Little Lon.

His frankness was rewarded with the maximum penalty of six months in prison.

By 1925 the problem in Melbourne had become so bad that the maximum penalty for possession of cocaine in Victoria was increased to 12 months in prison.

The amendment coincided with a crackdown by police on cocaine pedlars in Little Lonsdale Street.

Henry McEwan c.1923, a drug dealer who sold cocaine door to door in Little Lonsdale Street in the 1920s. He bought cocaine from a chemist and cut it up. Picture: The Weekly Times.

USA-born William Briscoe c.1923, another cocaine dealer in Little Lonsdale Street in the 1920s. Picture: Public Record Office Victoria/Victoria Police Gazette.

William Briscoe, a vaudeville artist, was busted just before the amendment was passed, so only received a sentence of six months.

He’d been a cocaine dealer in Little Lon for years and this was his second time in prison for the crime.

Another Little Lonsdale Street cocaine dealer, Lewis Lazarus, had his sentence quashed under appeal.

His solicitor successfully argued that, because he had cut his cocaine down to 20 per cent purity, it was no longer technically a dangerous chemical.

It could be assumed that Lazarus’s customers would not have been impressed when they read the results of the government chemist’s analysis in the newspaper reports.

Lewis Lazarus c. 1922, a cocaine dealer in Little Lonsdale Street in the 1920s. Picture: Public Record Office Victoria.

Lewis Lazarus c. 1929, showing the effects of seven years of cocaine use. Picture: Public Record Office Victoria.

The biggest cocaine dealer in Melbourne in the mid to late 1920s was Charles le Marchant. He too sold his wares in Little Lonsdale Street.

He was a long-term drug addict, his first fine for opium being way back in 1907.

His teen years had been spent as a member of a criminal gang who lived in Melbourne’s Chinatown.

He was fluent in Cantonese, French and Italian.

In 1905 he married prostitute Grace Harris. Grace was regularly sent to prison for wild behaviour.

Charles le Marchant in 1929. He was described by police as the “mastermind" of the cocaine traffic in Melbourne. Picture: Public Record Office Victoria.

Grace le Marchant c. 1907, was married to Charles le Marchant but ended up in an insane asylum. Picture: Public Record Office Victoria.

She was transferred to an insane asylum in 1919 and, sadly, never released.

In 1925, le Marchant was searched by police in Lonsdale Street and found to be carrying four packets of cocaine.

Back at his residence they found a tin containing another 14 grams of 90 per cent pure cocaine.

He was sentenced to one month in jail.

He was sent to prison again in 1926 and 1928, police stating in court that he was the “mastermind of the cocaine traffic in Melbourne” and that “he had ruined innocent girls and killed more men than had bombs”.

Newspaper reports observed that his face and body underwent weird contortions as he testified.

Le Marchant died in 1930. He was 58 and had run all the way.

Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works map c.1895. It shows the section of Little Lonsdale Street where cocaine was sold. Picture: State Library Victoria.

There were plenty to take le Marchant’s place, and the next lot of cocaine suppliers became more organised and professional as the market in Melbourne increased.

By the early 1930s regular “snow parties” were taking place in the Little Lonsdale Street area. The drug was even available under the counter at local grocery stores.

A medical storage facility under the Flinders Street railway viaduct was burgled in 1931, thieves drilling through the wall of a neighbouring building to get in.

They escaped with a haul of cocaine with an estimated street value upwards of £15,000.

The perpetrators were never caught.

Little Lonsdale Street was only a block from Russell Street Police Headquarters.

In 1933 there were allegations that police were involved in blackmail, bribery, drug dealing and standover tactics in the area.

It was also insinuated that officers had been active in discussions regarding the distribution of the drugs stolen from the medical storage facility.

Two detectives and a plainclothes police officer were dismissed from the force as a result, and a public police inquiry was held into their corrupt behaviour.

Ex-Detective Coffey and ex-Detective Lacey turning up to testify at the police inquiry, c. 1933, after they were dismissed from the police force for corrupt behaviour in Little Lonsdale Street. Source: The Sun, Sydney.

Not long after the police inquiry, the Consorting Act was used to clear Little Lonsdale Street of its brothel-keepers and assorted criminals.

In doing so, Little Lonsdale Street’s illicit cocaine hub was scattered to other parts of Melbourne as well.

Michael Shelford is a Melbourne writer, researcher, and creator and guide for Melbourne Historical Crime Tours.

Listen now to an interview with Michael Shelford about Charles le Marchant, the mastermind of the cocaine trade in Little Lon, in today’s new free episode of the In Black and White podcast on Australia’s forgotten characters on Apple/iTunes, Spotify,web or your favourite platform.

Listen to the previous four episodes in the Larrikins & Laneways series on the Chinatown lane labelled Melbourne’s worst street, how sex, grog and gun wars tore apart Fitzroy’s wildest street, how Collingwood’s baddest crime family ruled the streets and Melbourne’s feared slumlord queen.

See In Black & White in the Herald Sun newspaper Monday to Friday for more stories and photos from Victoria’s past.