Cocaine has a reputation as a modern party drug, but it was among Victorians that it became ubiquitous – as an essential in medical science. In fact, before cocaine’s invention the Victorians had already developed an obsession for chewing the coca leaves from which cocaine is refined.
Coca leaves had been a central feature of Incan cultural life centuries before Europeans adopted the substance in the late 19th century. But the key moment in the popularisation of the coca leaf in Britain came with the rise of competitive long-distance walker Edward Payson Weston.
Weston was an American participant in the spectator sport of pedestrianism who established his celebrity when he walked nearly 500 miles from Boston to Washington D.C. in 1861 in a little over 10 days.
“He came to dominate the world of this very strange Victorian sport, essentially competitive long-distance walking,” says Dr Douglas Small on Dan Snow’s History Hit podcast. “This sounds remarkable to us now but the Victorians absolutely went mad for this.”
Women gathering leaves of the coca plant (Erythroxylum coca) in Bolivia. Wood engraving, c. 1867.
Image Credit: Wellcome Collection / Public Domain
When he visited Britain in 1876, some 5,000 people watched him compete in a 24-hour championship race against Englishman William Perkins. After winning the race, Weston revealed that his doggedness had been fuelled, in part, by munching on coca leaves.
“That’s actually what really moves coca for British people from being something that’s occasionally discussed in travellers’ tales, something that’s mentioned every now and again in accounts of life in South America, to being something that people are really interested in,” explains Small, a historian and author of Cocaine, Literature, and Culture, 1876-1930.
“[It] almost becomes for a while like tea and coffee, something that people really want to use in their daily lives.”
By this point the use of steamships across the American continent and the Atlantic meant that the transport and supply of coca had become easier. With new demand, people began to acquire and use coca leaves in a way they hadn’t previously.
Pep in your step
As a result, Victorians started chewing coca leaves as the Andeans had been doing for centuries. Coca consumers even filled Mincing Lane, the centre of London’s 19th century tea and spice trade, looking to purchase what had so recently been a rarity.
“Very quickly after Weston popularises their use they catch on amongst all kinds of sportsmen,” says Small.
“They start being advertised for bicyclists, other pedestrians. There are accounts that are written in the British Medical Journal that talk about how great it is for shooting parties because they apparently help to stabilise your nerves and give you a bit more pep and confidence which people say makes them much better shots.”
Illustration from ‘The Sportsman’s Cyclopaedia’ by TB Johnson, 1848.
Image Credit: Wellcome Collection / Public Domain
They were even given to difficult race horses before races.
A boom emerged in chewing coca leaves in the 1870s and 1880s. Yet this was mere foreshadowing for the later prevalence of cocaine, which commenced a few years later in 1884 thanks to innovations in the European chemical industry.
Cocaine is stronger in its effects than raw coca leaves. Sigmund Freud was among its advocates for use as a stimulant and therapy for morphine addiction. But it found lasting use as an effective local anaesthetic, an essential in medical science for decades. A century later, cocaine is one of the most criminalised substances on earth.
Listen to Dan Snow’s History Hit now or sign up to History Hit for advert-free listening, with early access and bonus episodes for subscribers.
