Dickens and the Ghost at Rockingham Castle by Judith Allnatt

In the summer I visited Rockingham Castle in Northamptonshire and was fascinated to learn that it was a source of inspiration for Charles Dickens. In particular, he drew on its ancient rooms and the story of its resident ghost in his novel Bleak House, a work of Gothic fiction and a satirical treatment of the English legal system. Its plot concerns the long running probate case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce in which, by the time it is brought to conclusion, the lawyers' fees have actually used up all of the money in the estate.  Rockingham Castle, was the inspiration for Chesney Wold, home of Lord and Lady Dedlock in Bleak House. 

 

In a letter, Dickens described Rockingham as “a large old castle, approached by an ancient keep, portcullis, etc., filled with company waited on by six-and-twenty servants” and his time spent visiting as “the dear old Rockingham days.”

Dickens first met the owners of Rockingham Castle, Richard and Lavinia Watson, in 1846 on holiday in Switzerland, discovering shared interests in Liberal principles, art and theatricals. It seems to have been a lively and joyous friendship with reference made in letters to playing Tricks, Charades and Battledore  (similar to badminton). 

When staying at Rockingham he put on plays in the Great Hall  and wrote with gratification of ‘all the household headed by an enormously fat housekeeper occupying the back benches . . . laughing and applauding without restraint.’ On occasion the plays were followed by dancing until three in the morning.

When Richard died at the age of only fifty two, Dickens was shocked and saddened. He wrote to Lavinia “We held him so close in our hearts ... and we have been so happy with him”. He and Lavinia continued to be lifelong friends and correspondents.

 Dickens had a favourite room at Rockingham, on the first floor looking out along the gap between two yew ‘cloud hedges’. 

These enormous topiary creations are known as the Elephant Hedge and are cut to resemble elephants following each other, trunk to tail.  Looking out of his window Dickens claimed to have seen a ghost and the story attached to it caught his imagination.

 

In the Civil War, Sir Lewis Watson was a royalist but his wife espoused the cause of the parliamentarians. In Sir Lewis Watson’s absence, the parliamentarians conquered Rockingham and, so the guide told me, it was thought to be a bit too easy. In Bleak House, Sir Morbury Dedlock thinks that his wife is laming their stabled horses to stop the royalists being able to make use of them and in a physical struggle with her she falls and injures her hip. 

Dickens continues the story thus: 

She had been a lady of a handsome figure and a noble carriage. She never complained of the change; she never spoke to anyone of being crippled or of being in pain but day by day she tried to walk upon the terrace, and with the help of the stone balustrade, went up and down, up and down, up and down, in sun and shadow, with greater difficulty every day. At last one afternoon her husband (to whom she had never on any persuasion, opened her lips since that night), standing at the great south window, saw her drop upon the pavement. He hastened down to raise her, but she repulsed him as he bent over her, and looking at him fixedly and coldly, said ‘I will die here where I have walked. And I will walk here though I am in my grave. I will walk here until the pride of this house is humbled. And when calamity or when disgrace is coming to it, let the Dedlocks listen for my step!’ Bleak House, Charles Dickens.

The character that Dickens uses to tell this story is Mrs Rouncewell, who has been housekeeper for fifty years and  who is reminiscent of the ‘enormously fat housekeeper’ referred to in his letter. On my visit, the tradition of both housekeepers and ghosts was apparent in the comment of the guide to the grounds. She said that she and others had heard the sound of children playing when none were in the castle and that on one occasion when the housekeeper was hoovering, a back door had flown open and the plug was pulled out, as if snatched by an unseen hand! 

 

When being shown around the Long Gallery, I also learned that Dickens had a favourite chair, which is still there in the same position.  I pictured Dickens ensconced in this wing-backed leather chair, musing or writing, taking breaks to gaze down the length of the long room at theItalian glass chandeliers, low hanging and tipped with pink flowers, the red drapes hanging heavy and the busy gold and green wallpaper providing the rich, ornamented interior so typical of grand Victorian taste. Perhaps he would have imagined the shades of ladies past, making their promenade up and down the room, as was their wont when the weather outside was inclement. 

 

This idea of musing makes me think of the famous painting of Dickens  imagining his characters.

The painting, Dickens’ Dream by Robert William Buss, consists of a combination of painted and sketched characters because it was unfinished. However, when standing in front of it, I can’t help seeing it as a visual representation of the creative process of writing – the development of characters first as having the shady outlines of a ghost then filling out with life and colour as the author actually puts pen to paper and the story, drawing inspiration from a multitude of interesting fragments of experience begins to take shape. Rockingham is rich in such fragments and it’s no surprise that its people, atmosphere and legends lodged with Dickens and fed his remarkable creativity.

For those interested in finding out more, Rockingham Castle has lots of Dickens memorabilia  and the castle’s own long history is also fascinating.  https://rockinghamcastle.com

Acknowledgements: My thanks to David Shipton, Head Guide, Rockingham Castle for his excellent pamphlet ‘A Short Account of Charles Dickens, the Watsons and Rockingham Castle’, which is available from the castle, and to Mike Burton and the grounds guides for their help and informative comments.

 

How much history does it take? Cruise ships in the heart of London - Michelle Lovric

For a few weeks in March this year, I culturally appropriated the life of Someone in the City.

I rose at 4am to prepare texts for cross-examinations. I dressed in unaccustomed structured garments with buttons and zips. I galloped up to London Bridge in flat heels to catch a suffocating bus and trotted through swarming streets to an expensive building where I changed to high(ish) heels. One day, I even bought coffee in a takeaway paper cup. Then I descended to a basement in the City of London for a long day of interrogation and legal argument.

While this was a strange new world for me, it wasn’t research for a novel. I was taking part in a Public Inquiry into the proposed Harbour Revision Order (HRO) of the Port of London Authority (PLA). An HRO is a way by which the PLA can change their governing Act without actually going to Parliament. In short, the PLA has been seeking to increase its powers. A number of Thames organisations are strongly opposed to this, and some (including my own) were shocked at the near absence of any provisions, within the proposed changes, to address the climate crisis and rising sea levels.

I won’t pretend that a Public Inquiry isn’t an intimidating process or that it was easy to understand and then learn the rules of engagement. For example, I was not allowed to speak myself but could script speeches for others.

I won’t pretend that I didn’t make mistakes.

But I did attend every single day. I also wrote every day – probably 100,000 words all together in just a couple of months, including the original submissions and the extended Proofs of Evidence. No, it wasn’t a novel, and it certainly wasn’t poetry. But it was all writing, whether detailed cross-examination questions, speaking notes or press releases. One of my pieces caused a colleague to break down mid-sentence, so it wasn’t all dry, legal stuff either.

In fact, all we had were words, which is why this blog is not illustrated - to give a flavour of such intense proceedings conducted almost entirely without pictures or video. Despite large screens in the room, with very few exceptions, the objectors were not permitted to show photos or film of, for example, cormorants wounded by violent wash from speeding Clippers. We couldn't show cruise ship fumes or risky RIB manoeuvres. 

But, as we writers know, it is amazing what you can do with words alone. 

For a very good, succinct overview of the Inquiry, I recommend this piece by Dr Hilary Pereira of the River Thames Society, a fellow-objector. 

My own environmental group is called the River Residents Group (RRG). To the Public Inquiry, the RRG brought a number of issues, some of which have been covered in the press to which I’ll link to at the bottom of this post. The story the press loved most was the one about the enormous charges that the PLA lays on some balcony-owners and the aggression with which the Authority pursues the money. Another was the secrecy and unaccountability of the PLA’s process for granting ‘River Works Licences’, operating as both landlord and Planning authority for the river bed. (‘That’s Uzbekistan!’ former MP Sir Simon Hughes commented in his testimony, in which he called for the PLA’s multiple and sometimes conflicting powers to be disaggregated.) 

Other objectors questioned the way the PLA spends what it calls ‘Stakeholder benefit’ mostly on its own staff and pensions, while the rest of its stakeholders receive very little.

Many important matters were aired. Other issues, however, were evaded by the officers whom the PLA chose to represent their interests at the hearing. The CEO and Chair did not appear.

One issue that was regrettably sidestepped was the RRG’s concern about the increasing number of cruise ships coming into the heart of London, including some of those rated as the dirtiest and least transparent in the world by the Friends of the Earth, which produces an annual report card on the leading companies. The cruise ships moor opposite the Tower of London alongside HMS Belfast and at Greenwich, surrounded by thousands of residents. Air pollution is one worry but there is also the risk of accidents.

The PLA has outsourced the management of central London’s cruise ship arrivals to a consortium that includes the owners of the Thames Clippers. Many cruise vessels are registered in Panama or the Bahamas by Liberian-owned companies, adding to the complexity of what might ensue, should there be a major cruise ship accident in the centre of London. This has always worried us.

For the Public Inquiry, we created a scenario intended to stress-test the PLA’s provisions for such an incident. This was a hypothetical scenario. But each individual event within it drew on an incident that had really happened somewhere, including on the Thames. All we did is combine them in what we understand is a normal process in risk assessment. In the event, we were not permitted to ventilate the full scenario in the Public Inquiry and instead eked out just a colourless paragraph about it as the basis of questions that were in the end passed down the line from one PLA witness to another until time was up – leaving the RRG even more concerned than we were before the Public Inquiry.

I feel that our scenario deserves to be out there. It is a serious document, checked by a member of the Honourable Company of Master Mariners to ensure it was ship-shape. So I am confident of our tech. And very confident of our history. So I thought I’d bring the scenario to this blog, where history is always welcome.

Here is our scenario.

Let’s say the PLA has given the Starburst Celebrity cruise ship a Passage Plan into central London. The Starburst Celebrity does not exist, but ships of similar sizes have been allowed into central London. 

In this scenario, the Starburst Celebrity’s on her way to her berth alongside HMS Belfast, just west of Tower Bridge.

Now this is the stretch of the Thames named as the most dangerous for collisions in London – in a 2016 report commissioned by the PLA and Transport for London (TfL).

The "Assessment of Vessel Traffic Capacity on the River Thames in Central London" states “The Thames Traffic Model was refined and adapted to also calculate collision risk for vessels navigating in Central London. The Level of Safety was measured by estimating the probability of a major incident occurring using the model …The greatest risk is determined to be adjacent to Tower Pier and HMS Belfast where vessels berthing at Tower Pier encounter vessels transiting past the pier – through traffic.” 

In its conclusions, the Assessment states, “The impact of mooring cruise ships at HMS Belfast was analysed and shown to increase the likelihood of a collision adjacent to Tower Pier by between 15% and 30%, which equates to approximately 5% across the whole study area. Half of this increase is associated with transfer vessels between the cruise ship and Tower Pier.”

It really could not be much clearer, could it? 

Nevertheless, the PLA has continued to allow increasing numbers of cruise ships to come in to this area. And no follow-up report was commissioned, as we have verified. 

Let’s say the Starburst Celebrity is 16,800 tonnes, 176m long and 22m wide. Let's say she has 518 passengers and crew.

The Starburst Celebrity’s arriving with tugs fore and aft, and at a slow-to-moderate safe speed adapted to the prevailing circumstances and conditions. She has her SAFE RETURN TO PORT document that shows trials have examined risks, failures and ways of dealing with them.

That means that problems are unlikely but not impossible.

Vessel problems can come from mechanical failure and human error. It’s an accumulation of things, sometimes small things individually, that can suddenly escalate into a dangerous situation.

As I've said, all of what I’m about to describe has happened, some of it on the Thames.

In our scenario, somewhere past Tilbury the Starburst Celebrity has suffered a failure on the main electrical switchboard that breaks the connection between the power supply to the engine and steering controls on the bridge. The emergency back-up runs on a battery that’s depleting fast. Alarms are sounding and flashing, but the crew are suffering from the known syndrome of 'alarm overload'. This is, by the way, exactly what happened with the MSC Opera in Venice in June 2019. None of the crew on the Opera’s bridge – or in the engine room – noticed the alarms until it was too late to prevent the 60,000-tonne vessel crashing into a river cruiser and the Zattere embankment, injuring six and causing millions in damage.

Back in London … Just as the Starburst Celebrity reaches Tower Bridge, the emergency system’s back-up batteries run out. The Starburst Celebrity experiences an uncontrolled power surge, something like what apparently happened when the Oceandiva allided with a stationary barge at Erith in June 2023.

The Starburst Celebrity’s tugs – like the tugs of the MSC Opera in Venice – are unable to stop her in time. The Starburst Celebrity veers under Tower Bridge, across the Thames and allides with Tower Millennium Pier.

On the way, she runs down her own fore tug and the battery-hybrid Earth Clipper that is waiting at the Pier.

As she passes it, the Starburst Celebrity also clips Tower Bridge, damaging the bridge’s structure – as happened when HMS Jupiter crashed into London Bridge in 1984 … or as happened in Baltimore in March 2024 when the container ship Dali clipped one of the tiers of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. In that case, the whole bridge came down, and there were fatalities.

Even at low speed, the impact with Tower Bridge has opened a 5-metre gash in the cruise ship’s starboard hull. The Starburst Celebrity does polar cruises so she’s “Ice Class”, meaning a stronger hull. But she was built in 1993 and doesn’t need to conform with post 2010 rules for bunker tanks within secondary hulls. So the gash ruptures a full tank of fuel.

Cruise ships are not like cargo ships in that they still have very significant power requirements even when alongside (moored up). This is because they run as hotels 24 hours a day. That takes a lot of fuel. Potentially, a single bunker tank on the Starburst Celebrity could hold 100,000 gallons or even up to 250,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil or – best case – gas oil with a bit less sulphur. The tide immediately spreads the spill upstream and will then bring it back downstream in a few hours.

The Friends of the Earth 2024 Cruise Ship Report Card rates the (notional) Starburst fleet (the Celebrity's parent company) as F when it comes to both transparency and scrubber use. Open loop scrubbers allow ships to use high sulphur fuels by rinsing exhaust into sea, in other words converting their air pollution into water pollution.

On November 1 2023, a power outage on the cruise ship Carnival Magic caused a scrubber sludge dump inside Grand Turk port waters.

Starburst isn't telling, so we don’t know what kind of scrubber system the Starburst Celebrity uses. Maybe she is one of the rare cruise ships that hasn't chosen the cheaper scrubber solution over the environment ... maybe she has no scrubbers at all and uses better fuel. But potentially, if there are scrubbers, the accident also releases into the Thames half a million litres of hot sooty scrubber wash, containing acids, carcinogenic Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons, heavy metals and black carbon.

Water has rushed into one of the watertight compartments via the gash in the hull, causing the Starburst Celebrity to list 5% starboard. Unfortunately that pins the damaged Earth Clipper beneath her, like the Bowbelle pinned down the Marchioness party boat just down the Thames near Southwark Bridge in 1989.

So both vessels, the cruise ship and the Clipper, are wedged diagonally in the mud between HMS Belfast and Tower Millennium Pier.

Water entering the Earth Clipper reaches the power banks, compromising the Lithium-ion batteries. Escaping gases deflagrate and there’s an explosion, as seems to have happened on July 25 2022 aboard the river cruise ship the Viking Gymir in Amsterdam.

But this is summer in the heart of London, and there are thousands of people nearby. A toxic vapour cloud engulfs 50 people dining outside at Club Coppa, 500 visitors inside the Tower of London, the residents inside the165 apartments in Sugar Quay, 200 people picnicking in Potters Field, as well as patients and staff at London Bridge Hospital on the south side of the river. It doesn’t spare the people in office buildings north and south – latest estimates are that 625,000 work in the City.

Because of the vapour cloud, soon buildings up to 200 metres inland will need to be evacuated.

Fish, birds and seals are poisoned by the diesel spill and the scrubber wash, some dying immediately. Others will die slowly as the diesel corrodes their internal organs.

The Starburst Celebrity and Earth Clipper are stuck, a 176m obstacle blocking the Thames. It took three years to raise and drag away the wreck of the cruise ship Costa Concordia after its allision with rocks off the Isola di Giglio in January 2012. The Dali blocked the harbour in Baltimore for nearly three months. The economic impact was estimated at $15 million per day. How long would the Starburst Celebrity split the Thames in two? In that time, waste could not leave the city on the Cory tug and tows. Nothing could get past into the city either.

But the crash has only just happened. People have died on the cruise ship, on Tower Millennium Pier and some are being suffocated by the vapour cloud.

There are people in the water, choking on diesel, being dragged down by the current. The RNLI lifeboats are scrambled but are unable to deal with the number of people in the river.

That’s not all.

We’re not saying that it is, but what if the Starburst Celebrity were one of the cruise ships equipped with ‘magic pipes’ that allow oil-contaminated waste water to be secretly discharged against environmental regulations? If it were, survivors in the river would also be gulping on that.

If you think that this could never happen - hundreds died in raw sewage on the Thames in 1878 when the Princess Alice pleasure steamer went down after a collision.

Back in today’s world, the Starburst Celebrity has destabilized Tower Bridge’s northern shaft. The bridge is declared unsafe. Traffic is gridlocked down to Chelsea on the north side and backing up to Peckham on the south side. Nothing can get across Tower Bridge and the remaining bridges are soon blocked. Emergency services are overwhelmed and many cannot get to the site.

I know it sounds like a rather bad Hollywood disaster movie and I know that this should never happen. But I need to keep reminding the reader that, separately, all of these things have happened, some them not far from my desk.

One final factor, the Starburst Celebrity, like so many cruise ships, is registered in the Bahamas. Starburst Cruises, which owns the vessel, is a fully-owned subsidiary of another household name Group which is incorporated in Liberia.

We know that ships are required to have

- Hull & Machinery insurance to cover sinking,

- Protection and Indemnity insurance for injuries and damage

- Wreck Removal Liability

- Bunker Pollution insurance

But the incident would stress-test the most well-prepared of organisations. And at this point, everything is urgent and lives depend on speed.

For the Public Inquiry, we had prepared fourteen questions about how long it would take to remove a wrecked cruise ship from the Thames, who would be liable for the damage, who would take overall financial responsibility, whether a desktop exercise was done annually to manage the risk of a cruise-sized major pollution incident at Greenwich or the Tower of London with loss of life and effect on London’s infrastructure? We wanted to know if the PLA invests in live exercises for a climate/pollution or collision disaster? We wanted to know if the PLA was planning to dredge the estuary and river to allow even bigger cruise ships to come to Tilbury.

Most of all, given their own report showing cruise ships increased the likelihood of a collision adjacent to Tower Pier by between 15% and 30%, we wanted to asked why the PLA still gives these vessels Passage Plans to the same site.

All those questions remain unasked (except here) and unanswered.

And the very day I drafted this blog, a large three-masted Mexican training ship, the Cuauhtémoc, lost power and crashed into Brooklyn Bridge, resulting in two fatalities.

This seems the place to pause and ask ... 

How much history does it take to make a difference to the future?

At the date this blog is published, we're still waiting for the Inspector's conclusions from the Public Inquiry. They are due next month. There are three possible results: that the HRO should be scrapped, that it should be passed as the PLA wishes or that amendments should be made. We understand that we objectors will be consulted in the third case. 

In the time between the Public Inquiry and now, my writing life has changed. There's a publisher and publication date in sight for The Puffin, the long-gestated sequel to my novel The Book of Human Skin. I have an inspiring agent who loves the book and a publisher who is a poet. The Puffin is teaching me how not to be afraid of Instagram. 

I still spend a great deal of time writing about the Thames and the Venetian lagoon, not as a novelist but as a campaigner for NoGrandiNavi and the River Residents Group (Join us! it's free and you don't have to live on the Thames; you just have to care about it). We're all interested in commodification of liquid public realms and in legal personhood for bodies of water that have not been protected by those charged to keep them safe. The comradeship is wonderful. The learning never stops.

But I admit that it's good to feel like a novelist again and to wake up thinking my characters' thoughts. 

Michelle Lovric's website.

Some links to press coverage of the Public Inquiry into the PLA's HRO:  

Liberal Democrats Call for End to Balcony Charge “Racket” - London Post

Balcony wars: residents' concerns grow over fee hikes for riverside balconies and decorative cranes | The Standard

https://bermondseystreet.london/port-of-london-authority-new-powers-resisted-by-shad-thames-residents/

We're being hit with bills for thousands of pounds because our flats have balconies | Daily Mail Online

Thames public inquiry begins amid outcry from riverside residents over planned changes – Southwark News

Thames flat owners hit out at 'extortionate' five-figure balcony charges | The Standard

The Nuclear Option: Love Spells and Curses in the Ancient World by Elisabeth Storrs

Popular culture is rife with examples of humankind’s fascination with magic whether malicious or benevolent. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a world-wide phenomenon which spawned countless TV series with fantastical elements. The Harry Potter books continue to introduce new generations of kids to the realm of wizards. Harry and his friends are schooled in the three unforgiveable curses: the Cruciatus Curse which causes the victim excruciating pain, the Imperius Curse which makes the victim totally obedient to the caster, and the Killing Curse, which instantly kills the victim.

These three dark charms are reminiscent of the types of curses levelled in Greco-Roman times. The practice of ‘Defixio’ involved using a ‘curse tablet’ Tabella Defixionis (Roman) or Katadesmos (Greek) to damn a victim or cast a love spell on a subject of desire. The tablets consisted of thin pieces of lead sheet upon which script was scratched. Often the defixiones were then folded, rolled or pierced with nails to contain the incantation. To empower them, you needed to place them underground. Many were buried in graves and tombs, thrown into wells or cisterns, or nailed to the walls of temples of Chthonic deities such as Demeter and Persephone. The fact so many examples of these tablets exist is due to the fact placing a lead tablet in the ground preserves it.

Defixio is derived from the word for ‘to pierce’ or ‘to bind’. The tablets were used to ask the gods to bind a victim to an act that either condemned them to misfortune or compelled them to do something against their will. These invocations fell into various categories such as hindering a competitor, thwarting an opposing litigant in a court case, or forcing someone to fall passionately in love or punish their unfaithfulness. There was also the extreme option of seeking your enemy’s torture, death and the downfall of their family line!

Here is an example of vicious curse against a competitor. ‘I implore you, spirit, whoever you are, and I command you to torment and kill the horses of the green and white teams from this hour on, from this day on, and to kill Clarus, Felix, Primulus, and Romanus, the charioteers.’ Tunisia C3rd CE

This imprecation is less malevolent, seeking a comedian’s routine to fall flat: ‘Sosio must never do better than the mime Eumolpos. He must not be able to play the role of a married woman in a fit of drunkenness on a young horse.’ Rauranum in western France C3rd CE.

The first examples of defixiones were discovered in the city of Selinus in Sicily. The majority of the twenty-two tablets were concerned with court cases. There are also examples of small effigies, sometimes referred to loosely as Voodoo dolls. Three such dolls were found in Athens at around the end of the C5th BCE. Each figurine lies within a casket with their hands lashed behind their back and their feet tied together. The curse scored into the casket implores the gods to bind the victim so they will perform poorly in court. The elaborate nature of these defixiones suggests the hand of a professional magician (paid by a wealthy client) compared to the more common DIY lead sheets found in their thousands in Athens.

Christopher A. Faraone, professor of classical languages and literature at the University of Chicago, posits there were an extraordinary number of curse tablets found in late Classical Athens because lead was a convenient by-product of the silver mines that contributed to the wealth of that city. As such, lead was a very cheap and reusable medium useful for business communications. After the silver mines were exhausted, however, the stockpile of lead was soon depleted. Curses were then written on wax and papyrus which did not survive burial underground.

Erotic curses could be adjusted for different situations such a ‘separation’ spell (known as a ‘Diakopai’) to drive away rivals by making them hideous to the subject of unrequited affection. An ‘Agogai’ curse sought to bind the person to the caster. Some were passion-inducing while others sought only to encourage affection. One example of a milder spell is ‘Bind Helen, so that she is unsuccessful when she flirts or makes love with Demetrius.’ In comparison, this incantation wishes harm on a rival and implies the lover could have been either male or female: ‘May he who carried off Vilbia from me become as liquid as water. (May) she who obscenely devoured her (become) dumb, whether Velvinna, Exsupereus, Verianus, Severinus, A(u)gustalis, Comitianus, Catus, Minianus, Germanilla (or) Jovina.’ (Aquae Sulis)

The use of magic in Classical Athens does not appear to be illegal. Athenians would most likely have seen it as a chthonic religious ritual connected with those gods who lived in the ground and were very closely connected with ghosts and the dead. The Ancient Romans were not so tolerant. Under the Law of the Twelve Tables (the first codified set of laws established in 451 BCE), the use of incantations to cause dishonour or disgrace attracted capital punishment. However, clearly the threat of death was insufficient to deter the use of defixiones given the number of curse tablets found across the Roman world over the centuries.

Defixiones seeking justice were useful where a crime was senseless and the perpetrator unknown to the victim. A number of curse tablets were discovered in digs in Roman Britain. One trove of 130 defixiones is known as the Bath Curse Tablets found at the site of Aquae Sulis. All bar one sought restitution of goods (evidently theft was rife in bathhouses).

Here’s an example of a bathhouse curse: ‘Docimedis has lost two gloves and asks that the thief responsible should lose their minds and eyes in the goddess’s temple.’ Somerset 2nd -4th CE

And here is a nuclear option. ‘The human who stole Verio’s cloak or his things, who deprived him of his property, may he be bereft of his mind and memory, be it a woman or those who deprived Verio of his property, may the worms, cancer, and maggots penetrate his hands, head, feet, as well as his limbs and marrows.’ Frankfurt C1st CE

By the end of the Hellenistic period (circa 323 BCE), magical handbooks began to appear which continued to be used into Roman Imperial times which provide evidence magical practices were done by professionals. Different languages were used, and different gods were implored, including the Jewish Yahweh or the Egyptian gods. The increasing commerciality of the Defixio practice is evident given tablets could be prepared in advance, with a space left for a customer to insert the name of their victim.

'Bind the tongue and the thoughts of ____________, who is about to testify against me.'

Interestingly, the playwrights of Ancient Roman and Greek literature attribute the primary use of magic to women, but archaeological evidence shows men to be the principal practitioners. In a series of over 400 tablets found in Roman Britain, over two-thirds of those inscribing the curse/spell were males.

Learning about curse tablets inspired me to create two of my own as a major plot device in the A Tale of Ancient Rome series. In The Golden Dice, a soldier risks capital punishment by not only damning his rival to a grisly fate but also inscribing an enchantment to entice his lost love to return by ‘hammer [ing] both desire and curse into the brickwork with one long iron nail—to remain there forever potent and terrible, guarded by ghosts.’ If you want to know whether such defixiones were successful, you’ll need to read the trilogy.

Elisabeth Storrs is the author of the A Tale of Ancient Rome series. Now she is obsessed with twisted Germanic history with her upcoming release, Fables & Lies, set in WW2 Berlin. Learn more at www.elisabethstorrs.com

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons as follows: 

-Magic curse written on a lead figurine in a lead box, found in the enclosure of Aristion, and dating 420-410 BCE Kerameikos Archaeological Museum (Athens). Photographer Giovanni Dall'Orto.

-Roman Curse Tablet, North Lincolnshire Museum. Photographer Martin Forema.

-Ancient roman lead tablet inscribed with a curse from the Baths of Diocletian in Rome – Photographer Bari' bin Farangi.

-Roman lead curse tablet Kent County Council. Photographer Andrew Richardson.

-Well in which lead scroll fragments were intentionally thrown for magical practices. C4th CE Israel. Photographer Mikey641.

Creating Characters out of history by Wendy Dunn

 

For fiction writers to write successful fiction, we must know the characters driving our stories like the back of our hands. No – more than that. We need to be able to embody our characters – feel what they are feeling, see the world through their eyes. We need to understand their motivations for every decision they make in the story we create. I often suspect one of the real causes of writer’s block is not understanding our characters well enough to narrate their story. This results in our stories reaching a stalemate when we cannot move forward. 

Creating three-dimensional characters is vital if we want to build the bridge of empathy between our characters and our reader. If we fail to make our readers feel for our characters, we fail in writing our stories. 

Character construction is the beating heart of writing fiction. I am especially aware of the importance of shaping character through engagement with historical context to write successful historical narratives. I craft character through appreciation that character/or identity is a product of the context of history, culture and gender. 

I want to show you in this column an example of a powerful and fun tool I use to get deep into my character’s motivations, and mindset. So, what's my tool? I interview the characters in my stories. Believe me, interviewing our characters is a great way to ‘hear’ their voice. I also learn a lot about my characters when I interview them. Every time I have used this tool, I have come away from the experience surprised by what my characters confide to me. I especially love how interviewing them reveals more about their backstories. It is also a great exercise to solve the problem of ‘writer’s block’. 

Let me now provide you with an example of one of my interviews. I gave voice to María de Salinas in All Manner of Things, the conclusion of Falling Pomegranate Seeds: The Duty of Daughters, my Katherine of Aragon story. 

Of course, there was a time during the drafting process that I had to interview María to be better able to write her story… 

WJD: Thank you for giving me your time, María. Can you tell me why telling this story is important to you?

María: I need to tell it. I must tell it. I am dying. All the signs tell me my heart is failing. My ankles are swollen, and I can no longer wear any of my rings. Even a short walk leaves me breathless. I sit in this chair before you, feeling the pain of my heart. 

WJD: But you have studied the healing arts. Surely there are treatments you could use to help you.

María: Perhaps. But I do not believe so – and I have no desire to drag out my life for one day longer than it will take me to write my letter to my Catalina. 

You ask why telling this story is important to me. 

I need my daughter to understand that life gave me no other choice but to give her wardship to Suffolk. Do you think I would have given my only surviving child to others to care for if I had any choice in the matter? I was widowed and had only the queen’s support. When Will, my beloved husband died, the queen’s influence with the king, her husband, had waned to hardly anything at all. My daughter’s uncle was like a wolf at our door. He was determined to rob my daughter of her inheritance. I knew Suffolk as a friend, and I believed him a good man. As a duke, he had the necessary power to protect her. He promised to marry her to his son when they were of age. 

How was I to know it all would go wrong?

WJD: You are saying you’re estranged from your daughter?

María: Yes – since her wedding to Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk. I had hard enough time understanding why Suffolk decided to marry my daughter only weeks after the death of his wife, Mary Tudor, the White Queen. As soon as I received his letter telling me of his plans, I left my residence in London and rode to his estate. I arrived the night before the wedding. My daughter began weeping as soon as I managed to get her alone. She was distraught – and confused. She had been raised to be the wife of Suffolk’s son – not the man she had been encouraged to call ‘Father’ since but a small child. She was grieving for the death of Mary Tudor, and grieving for the boy she believed would one day be her husband. She thought I had the power to talk Suffolk out of the marriage. I thought so too, but the man was crazed with grief. He had not only lost his wife, but his physicians had now told him his son had lung disease and was not likely to survive another winter. My daughter had been trained to be the duchess of Suffolk – and was of an age to give him sons. We began our talk still with some semblance of our long friendship in place, but by the end of our conversation we were close to enemies. Then I had to face Catalina again and tell her of my failure. If I had been left raw from my talk with Suffolk, Catalina’s words soon had me bleeding. I will never forget how she said she hated me and called me wicked. She hides this in public, but I know she has not forgiven me.

WJD: So you think telling your story will help you restore your relationship with your daughter?

María: It must restore our relationship. Catalina is all that is left to me in this world. She is all that is left of her father. I love her with all my heart. I cannot die knowing she hates me. 

WJD: So, by telling your story, what do you want her to understand?

María: I want her understand many things. I want her to understand that women make the best of the hand dealt to them in life. I want her to understand that all through my life I had tried to live the best life I could. I want her to understand that I am not a woman who would give up her child if she had any other option open to her. 

I want her to know that I believed Suffolk would keep her safe. He vowed to me he would keep her safe. I was not to know he would decide to marry her. He betrayed me, betrayed his son, and betrayed my daughter. I thought him my friend – but, like other men I have known in my life, he proved a man unworthy of all trust. 

There are other tools you can also use as a writer to help construct your characters. We can do profiles of our characters and include things like their age, height, ethnic heritage, likes and dislikes – and even their birthdate, which will give you their astrology sign. All these things help construct the point of view of our characters. Even a simple thing like height can be important to consider when building up a profile of your character. For example, Katherine of Aragon was no more than 160 cm or five-foot-tall, which means she was far, far shorter than her 1.88 metre or almost 6 foot 2-inch husband, and far shorter than many at the English court. That fact gives me a lot to think about when constructing her character. 

I want to leave you with one more quote from Kundera: 

“Indeed, two centuries of psychological realism have created some nearly inviolable standards: (1) A writer must give the maximum amount of information about a character: about his physical appearance, his way of speaking and behaving; (2) he must let the reader know a character's past, because that is where all the motives for his present behaviour are located; and (3) the character must have complete independence; that is to say, the author with his own considerations must disappear so as not to disturb the reader, who wants to give himself over to illusion and take fiction for reality” (Kundera 2003, p. 33).

Works Cited:

Kundera, M  2003, The Art of the Novel, Reprint Edition, Harper, Perennial Modern Classics, New York.

The Gifts of the Greeks: Democracy, Demosthenes and dick jokes? By L.J. Trafford

I have written four novels, three short stories and three nonfiction books about Ancient Rome. It was after completing the last of these, Ancient Rome’s Worst Emperors that I was struck by a feeling of fatigue that I had never known. I looked at my bookcase brimming with books on ancient Rome and I could not be arsed to pick a single one off the shelf and have a flick through. This is most unusual behaviour for me, generally I can’t get through a day without picking up Pliny the Elder’s Natural Histories and seeing what Pliny’s take was on whatever the hot topic of the day is (see my previous History Girls article The Curious Roman for Pliny’s views on the hottest of topics). The stark fact was I was all Romaned out.
  

Fate then knocked or my door or rather pinged into my inbox, it was an email from my publisher – did I know of anyone who could write the Greek version of my book Sex & Sexuality in Ancient Rome? I didn’t, but I dutifully posted it on a couple of Facebook groups for historical fiction writers. Not a nibble. Which was when a small voice from deep within me piped up, ‘you could write it.’

My outer voice supposed I could, I had studied ancient Greece alongside ancient Rome so I had a reasonable understanding of ancient Greek society and history. It might actually be fun to revisit the ancient Greeks, to dig a little deeper than I had been able to do as an undergraduate back in the days of Britpop and Alcopops. Maybe I had been wrong to turn my back on them post university and concentrate only on Romans. Here was the chance to find out….



What I found out

Two years and 88k words later what I had found out is that, yeah sorry, I do prefer writing about Romans. Chiefly this is because I get Romans, I get how they think. Not that their culture is anything like ours; it’s not but I understand what underpins those differences. Ancient Greece on the other hand is a very strange place which still mystifies me even after having spent two years immersed in its people, its history and its culture.

 

Four men at a symposium. An 18th century copy of an original Greek vase design, Wellcome Collection.

I suspect that this is because unlike ancient Rome ancient Greece isn’t one homogenous mass with a singular centre of power. Ancient Greece was made up of hundreds of city states who were governed in very different ways, ranging from totalitarian military states, absolute monarchies, oligarchies all the way down to the world’s first democracies. These city states had differing laws, variations on religious beliefs and vast differences in culture. This makes them very hard to pin down and make generalized sweeping statements about what the ancient Greeks thought or did, your average Athenian man in the 5th century BCE is going to be wildly different in his views from the average Spartan man living only 150 miles away. This causes many headaches should you have happened to volunteer yourself to write a general history book on a very general subject, sex and sexuality and what the entirely generalized ancient Greeks thought about it, Ooops.


I don’t mind admitting that Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Greece was a difficult and cumbersome write. All of which is fitting for a group of city states who between them gave us the twelve labours of Heracles, one of which involved decapitating the Hydra of Lerna. The Hydra not only had nine heads that needed detaching from her neck by Heracles but also, just to make things unnecessarily complicated, for every head slashed off by the hero, the Hydra would grow two new heads. It’s also a collection of cultures from which sprung Odysseus, a man who took ten years to travel from Troy to Ithaca despite it only being a week’s sailing maximum.

Ancient Greece and the ancient Greeks are unnecessarily complicated, tricky and take unexpected routes when you least expect it. That is their charm, their twinkle and if I should never write about them again let me leave you with something that took me completely by surprise about the ancient Greeks. Those clever men with beards who brought us democracy, philosophy, tremendous works of art and the backbone of medicine also handed to us a far greater gift, one that I believe has enriched our culture immeasurably: the knob gag.



Is that a javelin in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?

As the person who invented the, then Twitter now X, hashtag #phallusThursday I am not new to images from antiquity of male genitalia. There are very few I haven’t seen, mainly because people still send them to me over social media with the accompanying comment. ‘I saw this and thought of you.’ I am the go-to classical penis woman, which I am fine with.

 

Phallus pillars in front of the Sanctuary of Dionysos, Delos shot by Anna Apostolidou. Wikicomms

However, until I started writing my book I was unaware that the ancient Greeks not only perfected the art of depicting individual penises in very complicated group sex scenes on pots the size of gravy jugs but also the knob gag. As a child of the 70s/80s I grew up watching Carry On films and That’s Life, a magazine style TV show that devoted a whole segment each week to vegetables that had grown into amusingly rude shapes. I had a primordial soup of an upbringing that means I am pre-programmed to enjoy a good knob gag. Ancient Greek comedy is pleasingly bursting, or rather erupting with some tremendous knob gags.

The king of the Greek knob gag is undoubtedly the legend that is Aristophanes. Should anyone be of the misconception that Greek theatre was all heavy weight tales of incestuous marriages, patricide, suicide and gouging out your own eyes (and that’s all in just the one play) I would urge them to pick up a copy of any of Aristophanes’ plays and prepare to have your mind blown and your nipples shoot across the room.

The plot of any Aristophanes play lends itself to at least a dozen decent knob gags, in Lysistrata the women of Greece stage a sex strike to try and end the Peloponnesian War which is the set up for a series of gags revolving around that classic of the knob gag, the embarrassing erection.

‘[Enter the Spartan herald. He, too, has a giant erection, which he is trying to hide under his cloak.]

Spartan Herald: Where’s the Athenian Senate and the Prytanes? I come with fresh dispatches.

Cinesias [looking at the Herald’s erection Are you a man,or some phallic monster?

Spartan Herald: I’m a herald, by the twin gods. And my good man, I come from Sparta with a proposal, arrangements for a truce.

Cinesias: If that’s the case, why do you have a spear concealed in there?

Spartan Herald: I’m not concealing anything, by god.                

Cinesias:  Then why are you turning to one side? What’s that thing there, sticking from your cloak? Has your journey made your groin inflamed?

Spartan Herald: By old Castor, this man’s insane!

Cinesias: You rogue, you’ve got a hard on!

Spartan Herald; No I don’t, I tell you. Let’s have no more nonsense.

 Cinesias: [pointing to the herald’s erection] Then what’s that?

 Spartan Herald: It’s a Spartan herald’s stick.’

 

An assumingly shaped croissant

The Assembly Women sees the women of Athens take over the running of the city (the satirical point being that women couldn’t make any more of a mess of it then the then Athenian council) and institute a law that ’decreed that if a man desires to fuck a young woman, he may do so only after he fucks an old one. Further, should this young man refuse to obey by this statute, the older woman shall be authorised to drag the aforesaid young man by his cock, without any legal ramifications to her person or property!” ‘

In Women at the Festival, Mnesilochus disguises himself as a woman to infiltrate a mass protest by the women of the city. The scene where Mnesilochus’ deceit is uncovered by the women particularly stands out. 

‘Cleisthenes: Stand up straight. What do you keep pushing that thing down for?

First Woman: peering from behind
There's no mistaking it.

Cleisthenes: also peering from behind
Where has it gone to now?

First Woman: To the front.

Cleisthenes: from in front
No.

First Woman: from behind
Ah! it's behind now.


There are perhaps a few things I should mention about Greek comedy at this point, firstly the actors were all male thus all the female characters would have been performed by men. Secondly these male actors all wore costumes, comedy costumes. The images below depict comedic actors, note that thing hanging between their legs. No, your eyes are not deceiving you, it is a costume penis. Generally made from leather these were sewn onto leotard style outfits and they served as a useful prop. Read the scenes above but this time with the floppy, leather costume phallus in your head. You can picture the physical comedy of it better now, can’t you?
 

Comic actors. Terracotta calyx-krater (mixing bowl) attributed to the Dolon Painter, Fletcher Fund 1924, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA 

Terracotta statuette of an actor, Rogers Fund 1913, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA. 

The knob gag deserves to be included amongst all those great things ancient Greece bequeathed us. It is in the cradle of civilisation, snuggled somewhere between medicine and art, for without it our society would be very different. Would any of us want to live in a world where an amusingly phallic shaped vegetable or indeed croissant did not elicit a smile? Absolutely not.

L.J. Trafford writes books about Romans and now the Greeks! Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Greece will be published next year (probably).  You can find details of her other books here

Trading Standards 16th century style by Margaret Skea

 Trading Standards 16th century style.

Or… what’s in this meat pie? 

For those of us in Britain the cost of food has noticeably increased over the 18 months or so and has become a hot topic of conversation both privately and in the media. One of the largest price increases relates to beef. Shepherd’s Pie made with beef mince used to be considered an economical standby. Technically, of course, ‘Shepherd’s Pie’ should be made from lamb mince – the hint is in the name – but as beef was cheaper than lamb, most folk, in Scotland at least, weren’t bothered about the technicalities. 

However, beef, in any form, is fast becoming the most expensive meat, and it requires careful reading (often with a magnifying glass) to work out the (often small) beef content of many ready-meals. Some years ago there was a Europe-wide crisis when horse-meat DNA was found in many supposedly beef ready-meals, burgers etc; with Food Standards inspectors testing everything in sight in an attempt to discover the scale of the fraud. Perhaps unsurprisingly it spawned a host of jokes, including, given the coincidence in timing of Phillipa Langley’s discovery of the body of Richard III, my favourite. It was suitably historic: ‘After finding Richard III under a Leicester Car Park, scientists have found his horse in a Tesco burger.’

But is the mis-labelling and / or adulteration of food a new problem? 

Definitely not. The first records in Scotland of national standards for food date back to the reign of David I - 1124 - 1153. There were clearly problems then, as now. However, my interest in food regulations relates specifically to the 15th and 16th centuries, and how they impact on the characters in my Scottish trilogy. 

   

                                                                      David I of Scotland 

Nowadays we think the aim of food standards is purely to protect consumers. In the 16th century it was a little different. Consumers, yes, but also the interests of sellers and to prevent disorder. There were strict market regulations governing what could be sold, where and in what form. Some regulations came from the burghs themselves, others by statute - with correspondingly harsh penalties for breaching them.

                                       

Take bread, for example. Scotland, in common with most of Europe suffered from ‘bread riots’, with one significant difference – the rioters in Scotland were not the poor, desperate for reasonably priced food, but the bakers or ‘baxters’ themselves. They were protesting about price restrictions imposed by the burgh authorities, in response to regular Acts of Parliament. 

Most bread was made from wheat, though the poorest households probably made their own flat and fairly indigestible barley bannocks. The price and weight of bread was set, but fluctuated according to the price of wheat. Burgh records describe Bailies (those contracted to ensure compliance with regulations) taking flour ground from a firlot – roughly equivalent to an imperial bushel – to a baker and watching as the bread was baked. The resulting loaf was the standard against which all other loaves were measured. Any baker selling underweight bread risked, at best, a fine and confiscation of his stock, or at worst, his oven being broken and forfeiture of freeman status.

Freeman status was important, as often the sale of bread, and other regulated foodstuffs was restricted to those with burgess status.

‘Outlanders’ coming in from outside were sometimes given permission to trade, but only if they paid the burgh for the privilege. One unusual regulation was the '8 day rule' of 1526 - local residents without freeman status were only allowed to buy enough food for 8 days - to avoid them setting themselves up as small retailers.

Quality was also controlled – different grades of bread being classified as ‘white’ or ‘gray’ – not the most appealing of labels, but all was to be ‘good’ and ‘dry’, which probably meant well-fired and risen – nothing worse than a ‘soggy bottom’ as Prue Leith would say! 

While it is hard to imagine parliament today legislating for the size and price for a loaf;  the price of alcohol is the subject of current regulation. The same was true in the 16th century, with the price of malt and the quality of the ale determining the price. Tasters or ‘conners’ were appointed by the burghs on annual contracts, and having graded a brewer's ales, chalked set prices on the shutters or doors of his premises, so that they could be clearly seen. Anyone found to be over-charging could have the bottom knocked out of his brewing vessels. There is one significant difference between then and now - the modern debate relates to minimum pricing, the 16th century burgh authorities were concerned with imposing a maximum price.

Photo by Fabian Burghart on Unsplash

As now, horse was not a normal part of the 16th century Scottish diet – they were much too valuable to eat. There is however plenty of evidence of the consumption of beef, mutton, pork and goat in the burghs,

and of animals being over-wintered to maturity.  This was supplemented in coastal areas with salmon, herring and seawater fish. The main thrust of meat regulation was quality – for example the sale of meat from ‘longsought’ (lung-diseased) animals was banned - as was the sale of damaged, or badly butchered meat. 

Interestingly, there was no regulation of cheeses, butter, oatmeal or salt. 

There has been much recent discussion on the length of our food 'chain', with meat being shipped from all round the world before landing on a British table. Back then the food chain was, by regulation, extremely short – animals were to be slaughtered outside, in public view and most importantly, at the point of sale. One way of ensuring the customer knows what they are about to buy. 

This particular regulation helped in the prevention of dishonest practices designed to improve the appearance of meat - for example, blowing air into an entire carcass - which plumped it up.  The modern equivalent is likely the addition of water. Bleeding of animals immediately before slaughter was also prohibited, as it masked last minute feeding.

Not everyone was so well-protected. A rather shocking regulation stated that putrid pork or fish must be removed from sale, but not thrown out or destroyed. Instead it was given to lepers. 

But to come back to the meat pie in the sub-title. 

One of the most interesting restrictions on the activities of butchers, or ‘fleshers’ as they were known, is found in the Ancient Laws and Customs of the Burghs of Scotland – prohibiting them from trading as pastry cooks. Was it an attempt to stop them from disguising poor-quality meat by putting it into pies? Perhaps. Which triggers the sobering thought – four hundred years on, little seems to have changed…

There are many sources available for further information; however, here is one article, for starters, for anyone who might be interested: 

March M S (1914) ‘The trade regulations of Edinburgh during the 15th and 16th centuries.’ Scot Geog Mag 30 (1914) pages 483-488

Margaret Skea is the award-winning author of short stories, a biography, and five historical novels, including the 'Munro' trilogy set in the context of the 15th and 16th century clan feud called the Ayrshire Vendetta.