Shrines of Gaiety

Content Warning: These Chapter Summaries & Analyses contain descriptions of alcohol addiction, drug overdose, capital punishment, death by suicide, abortion, and sexual assault. They also include quotes from the source text that use stigmatizing language about mental health conditions.

A crowd of people waits outside of Holloway, a London prison. The year is 1926. A 13-year-old newspaper boy asks, “Is it a hanging?” (3). The crowd isn’t there to see a hanging but to see Nellie Coker released from prison. The newspaper boy marvels at the diverse crowd of people, which includes monied revelers from the previous night: “He was surprised that they were happily rubbing shoulders with lamplighters and milk-men and early shift-workers, not to mention the usual riff-raff and rubbernecks who were always attracted by the idea of a show, even if they had no idea what it might be” (3). Upon her release, Nellie is escorted away by some of her children to the Amethyst, one of the five nightclubs she owns. They drive away in two black-and-cream Bentleys.

Also watching in the crowd is Detective Chief Inspector John Frobisher. Frobisher is determined to bring down Nellie’s empire of nightclubs, which are home to illegal drinking and gateways to sex work, gambling, and drugs.