THE TIMES

Shreveport, Louisiana, U.S.A.

30 June 1929

(pages 46-47)

Fighting America’s Monster Dope Traffic.

by

Joseph J. “Two-Gun” Murphy,

U.S. Narcotic Squad Ace.

SUCCESSIVE STAGES

Four Photos: Intervals of Betty May Loveday, Once “The Loveliest Artist’s Model in Britain,” Who Fell Into the Dope Pit and Dragged Herself Out and Back to Health. From Left to Right; Girl, in the Robes of the “Demonist” Cult, as a Bedraggled Addict, _____ usually, in Robust Health After Her Victory Over Herself.

[ . . . ]

The only instance of a cure that I have ever personally been familiar with was that of Julia Bruns. But Betty May Loveday, a young girl artist’s model who was hailed as the most beautiful member of her profession in England a decade ago, is also supposed to have cured herself of the habit.

Her life was a strange one. She married Raoul Loveday, a frail and delicate young Oxford poet who later became a disciple of Aleister Crowley’s dark “devil cult” creed and who died in Sicily not long after he married Betty May. Mrs. Loveday, to lease Raoul, put on the robes of Crowley’s notorious “demonist abbey” and associated with that company of esoteric dreamers, despite her disapproval of Crowley. After the death of her husband, Betty May began the use of drugs to drown her sorrow and soon was plunged into the darkest pit of addiction. For a year or two her condition was apparently hopeless. Then, to the surprise of her friends and of all those who know the fate of drug slaves, she pulled herself together to wage a determined and finally successful fight against the habit.

[ . . . ]