Historical Novels – A Story that Had to be Told

Painting by William Hardwick from Victoria Art Gallery (Bath) Collection

Drownings in the River Avon were relatively common in Bath in the middle of the 19^th Century. Many were accidental, or at least that’s what the Coroner’s Court often concluded. A substantial number though, were suicides. They were regularly reported as such in the local paper, but were rarely seen as newsworthy by the national press.

The people who had taken their own lives in the River Avon were for the most part un-newsworthy because they were usually poor. They were part of the nameless, faceless masses exploited by the Industrial Revolution, routinely marginalised and vilified in the press. Popular opinion was that they were lazy, ignorant and dirty; given to drinking too much, and begging, or they were itinerants, migrants without roots, who did not want to work and were content to live in squalor.

Yet it was in “The Times” newspaper archive that I first read of the incident that now forms the prologue to my book – an incident so tragic, abhorrent and pitiful that it was reported nationally. On Sunday 6^th February 1850, in the early hours of the morning, Thomas Hunt drowned himself and his young daughter.  The Coroner’s Court determined that Hunt had taken his own life and found him guilty of the murder of his daughter.

I knew when I read the piece that I would include their story somewhere in my book. It seemed somehow to summarise the tragic lives of many who survived in the Avon Street area of Bath. It was the darkness and despair that existed at the heart of the city – the secret that was kept hidden behind the Georgian facades – the lie that lay behind the carefully contrived and protected image.

I had initially intended to use the incident as an anecdote somewhere in the book, perhaps brought up in conversation between the characters, but the story of Thomas Hunt and his daughter, would not leave me. Eventually it became a lynch pin, something that brought the characters together, or drove them apart. It played a big part in determining the plot and came to influence atmosphere and settings, as I tried to explore the two very different worlds that co-existed in the city.

There was nothing in the newspaper records to indicate that Thomas Hunt was in debt (as he is in my book) but debt and loan-sharks were a way of life for the working class at that time, as they are increasingly  now. Their story came almost to define what life must have been like for many of the residents of Avon Street and though prologues are unfashionable and may even put some people off reading a book, their story (or my interpretation of it) now forms the prologue of “Avon Street” – because that’s where it needs to be.

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – True-life Sherlock Holmes

In 1903 Britain was outraged by a  series of brutal attacks on horses, cattle and sheep  in Great Wyrley, near Birmingham. So frequent and sadistic were these night-time attacks that they were reported regularly in the national press.  Local people blamed a solicitor of “mixed race” by the name of George Edalji, claiming he organised the attacks as a part of ritualistic pagan worship ceremonies.

Edalji soon found himself at the centre of a “hate-mail” campaign. The police too began to receive anonymous letters pointing to him as the culprit and claiming that he was the leader of a  pagan sect. Early one morning  they mounted a raid on Edalji’s home and their suspicions were confirmed. In the house they found a damp coat and trousers each with a small blood stain on them. They also discovered horse-hairs on the coat and recovered a pair of muddy boots and four dirty razors with red staining.

The police arrested Edalji and he was quickly tried and found guilty at Stafford Assizes. He was  sentenced to seven years imprisonment. Yet despite his imprisonment, the animal attacks continued. A year after his trial a petition for his release, with over 10,000 signatures (including many lawyers) was sent to the Home Office. But the authorities would not relent and Edalji remained in prison until two years later. Then without explanation  he was suddenly released still carrying the stigma of  the “guilty” verdict.

Hearing of the case, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes) decided to investigate and to re-examine the evidence. He found that:-

• the blood-stains were too small in relation to the brutality of the attack,

• the police notes taken at the time indicated that the coat was damp, yet the blood-stains were dried into the fabric and of some age

•  the marks on the razors that were taken to be blood were simply rust, reflecting their age and lack of use

• the horse-hairs on the coat were commonly used in stuffing furniture and could be expected to be found on most people’s clothing.

Conan Doyle had known from his meeting with Edalji that the man was innocent, just as Sherlock Holmes would have known. He used the same  observational and deductive skills as his fictional creation and it was plain to him immediately that Edalji had,

“not only a high degree of myopia, but marked astigmatism.”

With such bad eyesight Conan Doyle argued, how could Edalji on a moonless night have walked across miles of broken ground, climbed innumerable walls and found his way through gaps in hedges and walls to reach his prey.

Conan Doyle presented his evidence in “The Daily Telegraph” in January 1907. He traced the anonymous letters to a man called Robert Sharp and found enough evidence to publicly accuse him and his two brothers of the crimes.  One of the brothers immediately fled the country.

Under pressure of publicity, the Home Office agreed to review the case through  a three-man inquiry. One of  those men coincidentally, happened to be related to the Chief Constable who had undertaken the initial investigation.

Needless to say they upheld the original conclusion that Edalji was guilty and that the Sharp brothers were innocent. The Law Society though, exonerated Edalji and reinstated him as a solicitor and readers of “The Daily Telegraph” raised £300 for him to help with his legal costs – all on the basis of Conan Doyle’s investigation – which they trusted more than the judgement of the legal system.

Conan Doyle like his creation, Sherlock Holmes, believed in the primacy of hard evidence. He assessed that evidence dispassionately and objectively in the belief that everyone is innocent until proved guilty. The police and judicial system, on the other hand, had largely judged George Edalji long before he even came to trial, on the colour of his skin and local prejudice and rumour.

I think it’s fair to say that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle lived up to the example of his fictional creation, Sherlock Holmes, not only in terms of his methods, but also in his belief in justice.

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Cosmetics Rip-Off of the Century

Had Madame Rachael stuck to her true criminal vocation as a confidence trickster and charlatan, she might now be fondly remembered as the founder of a cosmetics empire. But Rachael got greedy and diversified into theft, blackmail and extortion.

Madame Rachael was an un-attractive, middle-aged, and rather coarse looking woman when she opened her first beauty salon.  But each line and wrinkle on her face had been hard earned, for Madame Rachael was actually Sarah Rachael Leverson, born into poverty in the North of England. She could neither read nor write, yet she was street-wise and bright enough to hide her roots.

Little is known about her past other than that she was married for a while to an apothecary’s assistant in Lancashire. Rachel moved to London in the late 1850s and sold old clothes for a while, and then fried fish, before dabbling in fortune-telling.

She must have done reasonably well, because she got together enough money to open a beauty salon in Mayfair. Rachael had learned a little about mixing chemicals from her former husband and she certainly had a flair for sales and marketing. She also had a personable and confident manner and a lot of “face.” Soon her parlour was the talk of Mayfair, yet it was bankrupt within a year. Perhaps Rachael’s lack of education let her down, or perhaps she was just under-capitalised, but she ended in the debtor’s prison.

For anyone else that might have been the end of the story, but Rachael was too persistent to give up.  As soon as she was released from prison she opened another salon in New Bond Street, with the slogan, “Beautiful for Ever.” No one knows where the money came from, nor given the fact that she could not write, who translated her ideas into the very effective advertising campaigns that she mounted.  The person who wrote the popular “house-magazine” promoting Madame Rachael’s exclusive beauty products, also remains a mystery.

By 1867 Madame Rachael had a handsome coach and pair, a house in Mayfair and retained a box at the Opera House at the cost of £400 per season. All this had been achieved by selling cosmetics, like the famous “Magnetic Rock Dew Water,”

“In the heart of the Sahara, or the Great Desert is a magnetic rock, from which water distils sparingly in the form of dew, which is possessed of an extraordinary property. Whether a latent electricity is imparted by magnetism, or an additional quantity of oxygen enters into its composition, it is not easy to say. But it appears to have the property of increasing the vital energies…and it gives the appearance of youth to persons of considerable antiquity. This water is brought to Morocco on swift dromedaries for the use of the court, and its virtues are much extolled by their physicians.”

Madame Rachael had also bought additional adjoining properties by then and was offering “Arabian Baths” and various health and spa treatments. Then she diversified further, offering rooms for “extra services” and private rooms for “dangerous liaisons” which were also highly lucrative until she began stealing jewellery from her patrons and blackmailing them over their clandestine meetings.

In the end, Madame Rachael ended up back in prison – if only she’d stuck to marketing fake beauty products she might have been a millionaire and her Cosmetics Empire might still be with us. Many of her marketing ideas certainly still are.

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