Truth in fiction and the Brabant Court stairway

Like many authors, I enjoy visiting the sites used in my novels. London is a very big place, and its lesser known areas hold hidden treasure for the novelist.

Brabant Court is one of these treasures. It’s off Philpot Lane in The City, that legally defined section managed separately from the rest of London. It has its own government and its own police force, in the 1860s and now.

The City Police in the 1860s were required to live within The City rather than commute. Thus my protagonist, Sergeant Cuthbert Slaughter, has to live there, and I needed an inexpensive but comfortable flat for him and his lovely wife Ellie.*

I selected Brabant Court because, like many of the other sites I choose, it still exists in about the same form as during the Victorian era. Since I was writing in America at the time, I used Google Street View to explore it. Brabant Court is, as the name suggests, a courtyard accessed through a small carriageway, and throughout its history has featured both residential flats and businesses. I researched who owned what buildings, and what class of people occupied the site.

Several scenes of my Work in Progress take place in the Slaughters’ flat, which I situated overlooking the courtyard. Factually, a wine business was located at ground level in the court, so I added that to the story and had Ellie interact with them, and deal with what must have been the most awful smells.

In May I had the opportunity to physically go there. Murder at the Gasworks takes place at the City of London Gaslight and Coke Company, which is next to the river. I was exploring the City to see all the sites I feature so far in the novel. The carriageway was there, the court exactly as I imagined. The building actually faced Philpot Lane, and the nameplate said PFA Business School on that side. But I didn’t care about that side. The courtyard was the heart of my setting.

But as I stood in the courtyard looking up at the place where the Slaughters would live, I saw a horrible thing.

Not a monster, not an egregious assault on Victorian architecture, but a stairway. Through the windows. Instead of rooms with windows looking out on the courtyard, the stairway was on the courtyard side. The flats would have faced Philpot Lane in that building, as the business does now, not the courtyard.

This was the building I’ve imagined for the Slaughters to live in. (Behind it, unfortunately, is the newest monstrosity, Skygarden).	It’s hard to see because of the glare, but it’s a stairway to the flats behind the courtyard window.

So all my scenes with Ellie Slaughter looking out the window into the courtyard are factually, historically, WRONG. I corroborated this with a photo I found at the London Archive website of, yes, that exact stairwell.

As with most historically inaccurate things I find, others will say, “So what? No one will know. No one will care. It’s fiction!”

I know. I care. But I like what I’ve done with the courtyard in the novel. So the big question is: can I live with it? Or maybe: should I change it? I have a strong feeling I’ll be turning some things around, physically at least.

*If you are a fan of the Tommy Jones mysteries, you may be surprised at Slaughter being a sergeant and the couple being relatively down at heel. That’s because it’s a prequel to Murder at Old St. Thomas’s.