The Frederick L. Holmes Lecture in the History of Medicine and Science: “Great Acid from America: Murder, Moral Panic, and the Underworld Distribution of Illicit Drugs in Countercultural London"

The Frederick L. Holmes Lecture

The Annual Holmes Lecture was established in early 2003 by friends, family and colleagues of Professor Frederic L. Holmes. This free, public lecture is funded by the Section of the History of Medicine and the Beaumont Medical Club and is part of the History of Science and Medicine's Colloquium series.

On Tuesday September 19, 1967, the body of eighteen-year-old French prostitute Claudie Delbarre was discovered by her landlord in her Chelsea flat. Cause of death, according to the pathology report, was “suffocation following the cerebral haemorrhage and blows to the head.” Detectives found two diaries filled with names, telephone numbers, and photographs, revealing an extensive transnational social network centered upon illicit drugs and sex. Within days, London police had scoured the Chelsea neighborhood, interviewing over two hundred “hippies” and “flower people” along with a handful of “rich and aging ‘sugar daddies’ from whom she had extracted large sums of money,” in search of the perpetrator.

The culprit, like the victim, was not native to the U.K.: It was “great acid from America,” (as described in the ensuing trial), purchased by thirty-six year-old American Robert Lipman, a wealthy drug addict mocked by the press as a “buffoon with a fat wallet,” “trying to be a young hippy.” Both Lipman and Delbarre ingested the LSD in Delbarre’s apartment, at which point Lipman experienced vivid hallucinations that he was “in Hell fighting for my life.” When he regained composure, he saw Delbarre motionless on the bed and fled home. He was later extradited back to the UK on murder charges and was ultimately sentenced to six years in prison.

The Lipman murder investigation and ensuing trial, salaciously covered by the press, captured London in the midst of a moral panic. Previously, LSD had crossed borders freely, shared by research scientists eager to demonstrate the drug’s therapeutic value. But by the 1960s, the drug traveled surreptitiously through the pockets of dealers, infecting the morals of Britain’s white middle-class youth. Sensationalized reports in the popular press noted that it was not merely some working-class “fringe kids” taking drugs for pleasure in West End pubs, but white middle-class youth, as the proportion of drug users under the age of twenty skyrocketed. The Lipman trial appeared to confirm this, but it also provided a scapegoat. The tragedy that ensued on a late September night in 1967 stemmed from suspect outsiders – a wealthy American, a French prostitute, and “great acid from America” – who threatened the very social fabric of British culture. The American drug problem, reflected Lipman’s solicitor, “was exported here.”

Access the lecture here: https://yale.zoom.us/j/2036270588