You can this week on the podcast Sunday Tea with V, hosted by Verena Rose. (This is Spotify, but it’s also on Audible and wherever you listen to podcasts.)
It was so fun! I got to talk about my first mystery, Murder at Old St. Thomas’s, as well as the upcoming Murder at the Gasworks. Plus we talked about doing historical research, children and workhouses in Victorian London, an imaginary dinner, The Annotated Alice, and much more. Enjoy!
In 1855, five years after the death of Sir Robert Peel, a statue of him was erected in Cheapside, near St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Peel was a Prime Minister and is known for creating the modern Metropolitan Police, which is famously why constables are called “bobbies”. What I found odd was the location of the statue.
Despite the novelty of police forces in London in the mid-19th century, there were actually two: the City of London Police, who controlled the Square Mile, and the Metropolitan, which covered everything else. The City of London Police, like the City of London itself, was fiercely independent. Even today the local government and traditions of the City, now, as then, the financial heart of London, are different from the rest of the metropolis.
The City Police and the Met were rivals in many ways, as I learned on my visit to the City Police Museum a number of years ago. For example, the City Police height requirement was taller than that at the Met. That museum had a coat rack from the Snow Hill station where the coat rack height was chalked in as a dig.
The higher hook is labeled “For City Police”, the lower “For Met Police”.
Writing my upcoming novel, Murder at the Gasworks, I made use of this rivalry. My sergeant works for the City Police but ends up having to collaborate with an inspector from the Met. It makes for some tension and gave me an opportunity to explore the intricacies of the relationship between the two forces.
So when I recently discovered images of the Peel statue, I had a suspicion that it was facing toward the City. And sure enough, when I looked on maps, that’s where Sir Robert is looking, toward the jurisdiction zone of the rival City Police.
The Met was founded with the intention of serving all of London, and I’m sure the independence of the City force would have stuck in Peel’s craw, so I found the placement amusing and delightful.
And don’t worry, the statue, although no longer facing the City, is ensconced at Hendon, where the Met police are trained.
Generative AI isn’t new to me, but I don’t like that everything we put into ChatGTP (or any other online AI platform) will be used to train it for private corporations, who then profit from my work. So I’ve avoided it, particularly doing things like putting a whole novel in to have it write a blurb.
Now I’ve discovered a more private route, where I can use AI without the internet on my home computer (a MacBook Pro with an M2 chip).
Here’s what I did. I downloaded GPT4All, and installed it. Then I had it fetch me a couple of Large Language Models. I wanted to try the ones not associated with Meta, then I realized that DeepSeek is connected to China. So I’m trying Llama (3 8B Instruct) and Mistral (Instruct). I put the .docx versions of my Victorian mysteries, plus the “bible” I use to keep track of them, in a folder on my Mac desktop, and made those the Local Docs for it to access. Then I turned off access to the internet.
Then I asked it questions, beginning with something factual: the age of my character Tommy Jones. I asked it for each book, but it couldn’t tell me. So I asked it for all books, and it couldn’t do it.
How old is Tommy Jones in these books?
Tommy Jones’ age is not explicitly stated across all contexts provided. However, based on the excerpts:
1 In “Murder on the Pneumatic Railways,” he mentions working as a bricklayer and refers to himself as possibly 25 but looking older, suggesting an age in his mid-20s or beyond.
2 He is described alongside Susie, who is seventeen at some point mentioned (though context suggests she might be younger), indicating Tommy could be either slightly older than her or of a similar age depending on the narrative progression.
Considering their background from derelict houses after their parents’ deaths in the war and their friendship with Samson, it’s likely that Tommy ranges between being a teenager to someone around his mid-20s. His exact age may vary within these bounds across different parts of the story.
Susie is a character so minor I’d forgotten about her, and Tommy’s age is explicitly stated and referenced not only in each book, but detailed in the “bible” to keep track. He was never a bricklayer, and never refers to himself as 25. Not an auspicious beginning.
Then I asked it to write a blurb for my current work in progress, Murder at the Gasworks.
“Murder at the Gasworks” is a gripping mystery novel by Lisa M. Lane that follows Detective Sergeant Cuthbert Slaughter and Inspector Samuel Revel as they investigate the murder of a stoker at the City Gasworks in London. As they delve deeper into the case, they uncover a web of corruption, illegal activities, and threats from trade unions that may be connected to the murder. With the help of their colleagues and members of the community, they must race against time to solve the double set of murders that have perplexed them for months before the killer strikes again. Will they be able to bring justice to the victims and put an end to the dangerous game being played at the City Gasworks?
OK, well, that’s wrong. Inspector Revel is off the case for most of the book. Slaughter works with Inspector Martin, his mentor. There are absolutely no threats of any kind from trade unions — two of my characters just happen to belong to them, and one is an organizer. The race against time is pretty mild, and it’s only been about a month. The City Gasworks is only one of the two gasworks involved. When I tried again in the other LLM it used the same wording: gripping, web of corruption, race against time.
Fine. Since I will be writing Reading Group questions for Murder at Old St. Thomas’s, I asked it to do that.
Write ten reading group questions for Murder at Old St. Thomas’s
1 What is the setting of Murder at Old St. Thomas’s and how does it contribute to the atmosphere and mood of the novel?
2 Who are some of the main characters in the novel and what motivations do they have?
3 How does the author use historical details about the hospital and its era to add depth and authenticity to the story?
4 What themes are explored in the novel, such as loyalty, betrayal, and medical experimentation?
5 How does the author use literary devices like foreshadowing and irony to create suspense and build tension throughout the novel?
6 What role do detective work and forensic science play in solving the murder at Old St. Thomas’s?
7 How does the character of Tommy Jones evolve throughout the novel and what lessons does he learn about taking on important responsibilities?
8 What is the significance of the use of anesthetics and hygienic practice during this era, and how does it relate to the murder at Old St. Thomas’s?
9 How does the author use dialogue and inner thoughts to reveal character and advance the plot?
10 What is the ultimate resolution of the murder at Old St. Thomas’s and what implications does it have for the characters and the world they inhabit?
These are extremely general questions, and don’t mention any of the characters other than Tommy. They could apply to any mystery. They are the sort of thing I would have never written for the classroom, and would lead to lousy discussion in even the most enthusiastic book group.
One more try, about craft and style:
What shows that Murder at the Gasworks is based on character rather than plot?
Murder at the Gasworks is based on character rather than plot in several ways. First, the novel focuses heavily on the motivations and personalities of the characters, particularly Detective Sergeant Cuthbert Slaughter and his colleagues. The investigation into the murders is driven by their desire to solve the case and bring justice to the victims, but also by their individual beliefs and values.
Second, the setting and atmosphere of the novel are heavily influenced by the personalities of the characters. For example, Ellie Slaughter’s neighbor Mrs Gross is portrayed as a gossipy and nosy person who is always meddling in other people’s lives. This helps to create a sense of tension and unease throughout the novel, as the reader becomes increasingly suspicious of her motives.
Finally, the plot of the novel revolves around the relationships between the characters rather than any overarching mystery or crime. The investigation into the murders is largely driven by personal connections and alliances between the detectives, as well as their individual beliefs and values. This helps to create a sense of depth and complexity in the characters and their motivations, making the novel more about character development than plot twists and turns.
It’s sort of true, though “individual beliefs and values” is simply a definition for character. And the only specific example is wrong: Mrs. Gross is a good friend and not gossipy in the slightest. She is there for comfort, not to create unease. She has no ulterior motives whatsoever.
And, of course, the plot does revolve around the crime. This isn’t literary fiction.
I also tried these prompts with the internet connected, just in case the models needed to fetch something from outside (like how to write good reading group questions). The results were very similar. The tool simply couldn’t process the full content of the novels.
So far, I am less than impressed. I shall keep working at it, of course. Stay tuned.
Lady Emily Peel (neé Hay) was raised in aristocractic style, raced her beloved Borzoi dogs, and was tracked by the paparazzi when she went on holiday. She’s also, in her fictional form, a character in my upcoming book. Here’s the real Lady Emily in a photograph made by Camille Silvy:
Those dogs, Yasva and Ulaloi (I have no idea which is which) are in photographs with her several times. She acquired them on a trip with her husband, Robert Peel, to visit the Tsar in Russia. No, this is not the Robert Peel who founded the Metropolitan Police and lives in legend as well as fact, but rather his son, the 3rd Baronet.
Lady Emily was from a high-ranking family, married the son of a famous man, and was expected to have children. I wanted to have her appear in the story before that particular responsibility. The novel Murder at the Gasworks takes place in 1860.
While it was natural to find her on Wikipedia, the list of her children steered me the wrong way.
It turns out some of this is correct and some isn’t. In fact, Robert, being the only son, is the only one whose birth is verifiable through multiple sources. The more I researched, the more contradictory lists appeared. This is from Geneanet:
Now instead of bearing twin daughters in 1860, she’s got a first-born child in 1860 and the twins, if they were twins, afterward. The Peerage also lists Victoria first.
Interestingly, when you follow the links for Evelyn and Agnes, it says Evelyn was born in Camden, London, and Agnes at Drayton Manor, the manor house they had near Birmingham. If they were twins, that’s a helluva carriage ride.
Geneaology sites are of questionable reliabilty, but sometimes it’s all you have. FamilySearch, it’s true, lists Victoria’s birth incorrectly as 1860. But it has Evelyn born in 1863, and Agnes not until after her brother, in 1870.
So I tried to track Victoria, who’s likely the real problem here. The citation for Lady Emily’s Wikipedia page points to ancestry.co.uk, with a dead link. For Geneanet, it points to Ancestry.com, which on my reliability scale is about equivalent to Geneanet. So I tried searching birth registrations, and found Victoria’s, for 1865, at FreeBMD.
Now, it’s true that not all births are registered right after the birth, but five years is a long time if she was born in 1860. Then I found a notice of her christening. She was named after Victoria, and the Queen was her godmother.
She was an infant. The average time to baptism after birth during this era was 14 days. She was born in 1865.
I don’t want readers worried that Lady Emily is six months pregnant while doing deeds of derring-do (which she does) in the book with social censure.
My conclusion is that she wasn’t.
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.
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| 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.
What I wanted was a fight between two of my characters: Gareth (a gasworks stoker) and Mr Mortimer (the manager of the gasworks).
First (as always), the setting.
It is the summer of 1860. The City of London Gaslight and Coke Company is on the north shore of the Thames River, next to Blackfriars Bridge. The gasworks supplies the City (London’s financial Square Mile) with gas for homes and businesses.
Gas is created by burning coal in large retorts. Stokers shovel the coal in. It’s a tough job, so Gareth is a big guy. It’s not a terribly skilled job, so Gareth is not a well-educated man. Mr Mortimer is a manager, so he’s got what we’d call a grade school education: he can read and do enough numbers to keep an eye on the company’s bookkeeper.
The by-products of gas production include chemicals like ammonia, coal tar, and coke. Ammonia could often be sold to farmers, since it supplies nitrogen. Coal tar is sticky and disgusting, although it has some folk use for skin conditions (until recently it was the prime ingredient in dandruff shampoo). Coke could be used to provide cleaner fuel than coal for household use, and cider ash was sold to brick makers. But none of these markets is enough to take up all the waste. There is always more than can be disposed of.
Dumping these by-products is common, despite laws passed to prevent it. In a way, dumping toxic waste into the Thames was a time-honored tradition. The river received runoff rain water from the filthy streets, untreated animal and human waste, and industrial waste products such as dye for cloth, tannin for leather, turpentine, and more, and had done since Roman times. The Thames is a tidal river, limiting its “flush it out to sea” capability.
Gareth and Mr Mortimer are engaged in illegally dumping the by-products of gas production into the river. It would obviously be best to do this under the cover of darkness, and as the tide was lowering.
Unfortunately, Thames tide records of the granularity I need didn’t start till 1870, so I have to use that year. In July, low tides are around 4am and 4pm. High tides are around 10am and 10pm. Since the sun doesn’t set until after 8:30pm that time of year, the two men only have a few hours after it gets dark before the tide turns. These tides in particular would be very high and very low, because it was a full moon the day before. There had been a solar eclipse.
Knowing that 1860 featured high levels of tide variance due to storms, and that the summer of 1860 was one of the coldest and wettest on record, the scene takes place in nasty, drizzling rain.
So they start a fight. Gareth is mad because a detective has been questioning his girl, thinking he is a murderer. Mr Mortimer is mad because he believes his wife has left him rather than just visiting her mother, and he’s sick of dumb oafs like Gareth. But Gareth is bigger, and even after he slips in the mud with Mr Mortimer pummeling him, he manages a full-on punch to Mr Mortimer’s jaw.
Mortimer is still, lying in the mud. He doesn’t move.
Oh no, oh no, I’ve killed him (this is both me and Gareth together – I am as surprised as he is). That would complicate the story, and not in a good way. Gareth’s been a good guy, friend of the victim. What would he do next? Dump Mortimer’s body in the river? Be a good man and notify the police? Claim it was an accident? Go home, leaving the body in the mud for someone else to find? Is he a murderer after all? Any of these would take the story in a whole other direction, a way I don’t want it to go.
I must revive him! Get up, Mr Mortimer. Gareth gives him a kick in the ribs. “Get up, you bastard!” And slowly Morrison turns on his hands and knees in the mud, and Gareth helps the poor sod to his feet.
Thus it was that I killed Mr Mortimer on accident and saved him, on a rainy night during high tide in 1860 London.
On July 18, 1860, there was a total solar eclipse. It was the first eclipse to be photographed, by British astronomer Warren de la Rue, in Spain. (Being Victorian, he wrote a whole book about it.)
I am writing a scene of bonding between two characters: the 10-year-old Tommy Jones and recently fired Sergeant Slaughter. Tommy is interested in all sorts of things, and the eclipse has caught his fancy. He has forced Slaughter to explain it many times before it happens. And now the day is here.
Because I am the author, the scene must be set with historical accuracy. We are in the City, in London. Checking the calendar, July 18 is a Wednesday, so most people are at work and the area would be fairly busy.
So would Tommy be able to see the eclipse at all in the UK? The newspapers report that all the European astronomers went to Spain to view it. In America they went to Oregon, Washington, and Alaska (apparently Secretary of State William Seward’s first trip to the place he would later make part of the U.S.).
What was its trajectory? Here’s a graphic by Fred Espenak of EclipseWise:
I am not an astronomer. How far away is that from London, in big sky terms? Harpers Weekly’s anticipatory map (Saturday, June 14) makes it look like it might be visible.
I go looking for latitude. London is 51.51 N. The eclipse at its height (about 2:30pm London time) was at 52.28 N. Is that close? Is it not? What would the partial look like from there?
Then there’s the weather. I know from here and many eyewitness reports that the summer of 1860 was one of the UK’s coldest and wettest on record. What if it was clouded over or raining and Tommy couldn’t see anything? Unfortunately, the Met Office didn’t keep daily records until September of that year. So that’s no help.
Often in desperation I turn to the Illustrated London News, a publication so fine I’ve had one of my characters work there. And there were all the answers. It reported this in its July 21 edition:
And pictures! They drew diagrams of how it looked from London.
Why didn’t I start my search here? Good heavens. Now I can write the scene.
I was looking for something else, of course, something about the Bank of England in 1860 that I could use in my fourth mystery, Murder at the Gasworks. My tome for this is The City of London, Volume I by David Kynaston. And in it I found a description of something at the Bank called Dividend Day, as noted by David Morier Evans in 1845. He anonymously wrote a book that Kynaston relies on quite a bit, The City; or, the Physiology of London Business; with sketches on ‘Change, and at the Coffee Houses. He described an old man with a wooden leg sitting all day waiting for his dividend.
[An aside: I’ve learned a bit about the coffee houses in the City, especially Garraway’s, which was near the Exchange (the ‘Change). Some actually served coffee during the day. Garraway’s at one point was a wine place, and it laid out sandwiches sliced up on a side counter for lunch. Many of the coffee houses used their ground floor as exchanges where products like coffee and tea were bought in bulk. Some kept collections of all the newspapers, which could become large archives. Deacon’s Coffee House kept files with every issue of the Times, so I’ve set a scene where my detective goes there to do research and overhears something interesting.]
So, the Bank. I search for “dividend day bank of england” and find this artwork:
George Elgar Hicks created this in 1859, the year before my novel, and it looks like fun. All those different kinds of people at the Bank! The dog! The child! I know they aren’t just customers, because the Bank of England wasn’t that kind of bank. They didn’t take ordinary deposits and they didn’t pay interest. So what is Dividend Day, anyway?
Evans describes the scene:
At least fifty clerks are sitting in a circle in a high vaulted saloon, well provided with a cupola and lanterns. They do nothing whatever but pay and weigh, and weigh and pay. On all sides, the rattling of gold, as they push it with little brass shovels across the tables. People elbowing and pushing in order to get a locus standi near the clerks; the doors are continually opening and shutting.
It turns out that it was the way for ordinary people to invest in the Bank of England and the government. According to the National Trust, “‘Consols’, as the Consolidated Government Annuities yielding an unvarying interest of 3% per annum were known, were the only investment permitted to the trustees of widows, orphans, and the like…” Even these days, I can see why people would be excited about 3%.
Kynaston says this was a half-yearly event, but in trying to find the exact date for 1860, I discovered it was more likely quarterly. Why is the date important? Because my book takes place between June 9, when Eliza Feltham stole doilies from Lady Emily Peel’s table at the Crystal Palace, and July 9, when she was tried at the Old Bailey*. I’d love to have a scene take place during Dividend Day and yes, as near as I could tell, this was always on July 5.
There is a subplot about a spy in the Bank, you see, so this will fit.
* Both Lady Emily Peel and Eliza Feltham were real people, and these were real events
Sometimes your characters just need a drink or meal. Mine is about to go to the office of the London Times, trying to find out about recent legislation on gasworks in 1860. My character, Sergeant Slaughter, recently fired for insubordination, needs to know about reports on Parliament. I need to know what the place was like, the people, the buildings, etc.
Looking for the history of the London Times wasn’t an easy task. I did much better looking for the place, Printing House Square. I knew approximately where it was located, but it doesn’t show on the several maps I have of 1857 or 1860. But I found this map on Wikipedia, from 1886:
I was also able to find some etchings of the square at all those places that take public domain art and charge you for it, and a photograph at Lee Jackson’s brilliant online Dictionary of Victorian London.
And at that same site were several wonderful descriptions, this from a German observer in 1853:
The young reporters take the upper house, the old guard do duty in the House of Commons, whose sittings are longer, while its motions and speeches are of greater importance, and its debates more intricate. In either house it is a rule that reporters relieve one another by turns, from half-hour to half-hour. Mr. H., for instance, takes his seat at the commencement of the sitting with Mr. C. who comes next by his side. The first thirty minutes over, Mr. H. retires; Mr. C. takes his seat, and Mr. Ft. takes the place which has just been vacated by Mr. C. The summary-man takes a position in the rear. To-morrow evening the turn commences where it left off this night, so that each reporter has an equal share of the work.
Apparently the place was hard to find. From George Augustus Sala in 1859:
The best way to reach the office is to take any turning to the south side of London Bridge, or the east of Bridge Street, Blackfriars, and then trust to chance. The probabilities are varied. Very likely you will find yourself entangled in a seemingly hopeless net-work of narrow streets; you will be jostled into chandlers’ shops, vilified by boys unctuous, black, and reeking from the printing-machine; pursued by costermongers importuning you to purchase small parcels of vegetables; and, particularly after sundown, your life will be placed in jeopardy by a Hansom cab bouncing up or down the narrow thoroughfare, of course on its way to the “Times” office, and on an errand of life and death; the excited politician inside, frantically offering the cabman (he, even, doesn’t know the way to the “Times,” and has just asked it of a grimy cynic, smoking a pipe in front of a coal and potato shed) extra shillings for speed.
That’s so good that I may make Sala a character, hanging around the place and taking notes. Turns out he was quite a character, and even wrote a pornographic book at one point.
But I digress. Take a look at the Wikipedia map. There are two places on Printing House Lane that look to be marked as restaurants. Can I find out which restaurants, and whether one was there in 1860 for my character to have a beer?
I searched the words “Printing House Lane London pub”, and ended up at the wonderful pubwiki, where I’ve been before. Lists and lists of London pubs with who owned them when, if known. I know the parish is St. Ann’s from the larger version of the map, I know it’s near Blackfriars Bridge (where for some reason my characters always end up), and I know the street name. So that’s Printing House Lane, St. Ann’s Blackfriars.
I found one, called the Lamb & Lark. Run by either Alfred Munby (1857) or James Peal (1861)–I’ll have to do some more research. But it has an address: 5 Printing House Lane. Took me a minute to see the house numbers on the map above (they’re on the street–it looks like the 3-1/2 and 4-1/2 might be the number of floors). But there it is!
It’s always nice to find a place to have a drink after archival research. I think I’ll join Sgt. Slaughter in a pint.
One of the best things about writing historical novels is deciding the location of things. Which police station for the inspector? where should he and his wife live? where did the murder take place?
The joy of this is in the tangle of old maps and sources to be sought out and studied. Sure, a street in London may look like this now, but what about then? You can’t set something on Shaftesbury Avenue when the street didn’t exist in 1860.
[My first mystery, Murder at Old St. Thomas’s, was actually based on a question involving location. Old St. Thomas’s hospital had existed quite nicely in Southwark, not far from London Bridge, for many years. Then it was forced to move because of the railway, and spent 9 years at Surrey Gardens before a new hospital was built on the Embankment, where it now stands. What dislocations and confusions would that cause? Traditional histories skipped right over the Surrey Garden period, and I was curious.]
So now I’m working on the fourth book, a prequel. I needed Sergeant Slaughter and his wife Ellie to reside in the City, because doing so was required for everyone working on the City of London police force. I read about the City then, and I “walked around” in Google street view, because I like to use buildings that still exist when possible (one of the joys of abandoning the medieval era for the Victorian). Much of the area is banks and businesses, but I needed a home, and one you could have for a sergeant’s pay. I liked the look of Philpot Lane, then I found this entryway:
It leads to Brabant Court, so I looked it up to make sure it was still named that. Then I found several current ads for flats on Brabant Court and Philpot Lane. I read that one building had recently been converted into flats as “its original use” after the private 18th century home had been divided up. A good place, then. I had read somewhere else that there there had been a wine merchant there. So I started writing a scene where the sergeant’s wife is sick of the smell of sour wine drifting into their lodgings. Then later I wrote a scene where she is out of kindling, and goes downstairs to borrow some straw, figuring straw would have been used in crates for wine bottles. So I needed the name of a wine merchant.
And the London Directory (thanks, Google Books!) helped me out. Now of course I couldn’t find one for 1860 (whatever year you really need, you won’t find it) but I could find the 1852 and the 1862 versions. I began with 1862. Google wouldn’t let me download it (oh I do miss Google Books Downloader) but I could search, so I put in “Brabant”:
Hard to read, I know, but in 1862 we have a Frederick John Duckworth and Co., wine merchants in Brabant Court. Were they there back in 1852 also? I searched for Brabant Court and read each listing, and found not one, but quite a few wine merchants (and a solicitor, and a tea merchant). And yes, he’s one:
He’s moved from #2 to #3 but it’s the same one. So I can be pretty sure that if Ellie goes downstairs, it can be to Mr. Duckworth’s business. Plus I can have the solicitor and tea merchant there as well. And at best guess there were at least three wine merchants in the court, so yes, it would smell like musty wine.
I confess I am struggling to write my current mystery, and when this happens I sometimes allow myself to disappear down rabbit holes of historical research, following a trail.
Deciding that my victim was to be poisoned instead of garroted (which would have been unlikely for the accused to have achieved), I began researching poisons. Arsenic would be the obvious choice, but I was tired of arsenic: in 1860 it was in everything from wallpaper to rat poison, and there had been an accidental case of poisoning in commercial candy in Bradford two years before. The more I read about it, the more I realized it was appropriate for a slow poisoning, given in small doses over time to look like a natural illness. I needed a quick death. So, cyanide. It turns out many people cannot detect the trademark “burnt almond” smell, and it was quick and easy to obtain as “prussic acid”.
A bottle lying around the victim’s flat? Perhaps. If so, finger-prints would be nice. But everyone knows 1860 is too early for that; it wasn’t until 1887 that finger-prints were part of police methods. As a historian, however, I’m aware that things are often known earlier than we suspect. So what was the state of forensic science in 1860? Wikipedia mentioned that Sir William Herschel was doing it in 1858:
I followed that footnote and sure enough, I found The Origin of Finger-printing by Sir William Herschel, explaining how he knew that finger-printing ideas were much older, and that there had been isolated cases of a handprint or even a tooth being used to verify identity.
Sir Francis Galton, however, has pointed out that in our own times the engraver Bewick had a fancy for engraving his thumb-mark, with his name attached, as vignettes, or as colophones, in books which he published. As a boy I had loved Bewick on Birds: I regret that it is not now to be found in our library. Galton’s remark has reminded me that I used to see a thumb-mark there, as well as I recollect, in an ornamental title-page.
So naturally I had to find Bewick on Birds, in my library of the web. They had a copy of A History of British Birds (1832) at Google Books and I looked through the first few pages, but no luck. Certainly it wasn’t on any title page. So I image searched for “Bewick Bird thumb-print” and found two images. The Cleveland Art Museum said it was on page 180, so I went to look at a prettier version, at the Wellcome Collection, an 1847 edition. Not in the title pages nor on page 180, so I began scrolling through every single page.
Bird after bird scrolled by. Each bird had his/her portrait at the top of a section, then at the bottom of each section was some other illustration: a house in the snow, a team of oxen ploughing. Some of these images were rather strange, like one man carrying another, or a funnel in a bottle. But on a page about the Wagtail, which had no bird image at all, it was at the bottom:
A lovely thumb-print which, I must assume, was Thomas Bewick’s. (I have a bit of a soft spot for Bewick anyway, not because I know his bird books but because I’m very fond of the Bewick’s wren. One nested on a counter outside my kitchen, and I accidentally flooded her out watering a plant, and since then I watch for them and am more careful, understanding that they nest a few feet from the ground and sing the most lovely song.)
Obviously Sir William’s memory was a bit off as to the thumb-print’s location, but there it is.
So now I have every intention of working Herschel and Bewick and finger-prints somehow into my mystery. When writing fiction, research rabbit holes are rarely traversed in vain.
Now, about that prussic acid . . .
You know you’re in sympathy with your protagonist when you need to put him in a workhouse, and the one to hand has horrible conditions and you want to move the whole plot to a borough with a better workhouse so he’ll be more comfortable.
I’m researching my fourth mystery, which is a prequel to the first one. It’s 1860. I’ve already set up that the character spent time as a boy in a workhouse, and that he was allowed to work in a gasworks, where the murder occurs. I’ve also set up that the policeman on the case is a Detective Sergeant who’ll make Inspector by the end of the book. So it all becomes about location: the Detective Sergeant’s station house, the boy’s workhouse, and the gasworks all need to be in proximity to each other.
Because the boy’s father is in Queen’s Bench Prison for debt, I initially looked at Southwark, and was able to find the Phoenix Gasworks on the river and St. Saviour’s workhouse less than a mile away. The Division M station, hard upon the prison, was a wonderfully rowdy place where the young constables living there raised a ruckus and were often told to pipe down by the police court next door, and likely frequented the brothel on the other side.
But that puts me in Southwark, where my first mystery is already set, and half the fun for me is exploring new parts of Victorian London in each book. And in 1860 most (possibly all) detectives were run out of Scotland Yard, north of the river in Westminster, so likely detective sergeants were too, although the whole detective division had actually begun in Bow Street, near Covent Garden. I just got some books on police history, so I’ll have an idea soon how it was set up.
As it happens, my first book puts the inspector’s old home in Covent Garden (it’s not published yet — I can change it). Covent Garden would be a new area for me, but the workhouse near there is St Martin’s in the Fields, which was so horrible that the Lancet ran articles about it and it was shut down a few years later. Children died there of preventable diseases because of the filth. I can’t put the boy there, can I? Especially once I found out that in Kensington there was actually a good workhouse, with a school and medical facilities . . .
Let’s just say it’s very strange when you start worrying this way about a character.
