Foundling Stories - Stacey Halls and Rose Tremain by Judith Allnatt

In 1747, in a fine room at the splendid buildings of London’s Foundling Hospital, Bess Bright holds her one-day-old baby girl. Alongside other mothers, Bess draws a ball from a bag in a lottery held to decide who will win a place for their child as a pupil. This game of chance is played out under the eyes of invited benefactors, wealthy ladies and gents, who witness the show of human drama. Thus starts ‘The Foundling’ by Stacey Halls. 

In 1850, a baby, wrapped in sacking is abandoned at the gates of a wintry park in London where she is scented by wolves from the Essex marshes. She is found by a policeman, who hears the wolves’ howling and takes her to the Foundling Hospital. Thus begins ‘Lily’ by Rose Tremain. 

A separated family is a powerful engine to drive a story and perhaps the most poignant separation of all is that of a mother and baby. Stories of ‘foundlings’, babies found abandoned by parents or handed over in desperation to foundling hospitals, start with this heart-breaking premise and immediately fire the reader with a strong desire to see parent and child reunited. For me, this desire would probably be enough on its own to keep me reading but the two books above offer so much more in their examining of the relationships of adults caught up in the drama.

Receiving day at the Foundling Hospital. Wellcome Images

https://wellcomecollection.org/works/fgqknntr

In ‘The Foundling’ poverty and the shame of illegitimacy force Bess to give up her baby, Clara. Like other brokenhearted mothers, as well as leaving the baby’s name and details at the hospital she leaves a token to identify her – half of a heart made of whalebone given to her by the baby’s father. All kinds of things were used as such tokens: slips of paper, embroidered ribbons, rings and pierced coins. Then if the mother were able to drag herself out of poverty and also save enough to pay a fee to the hospital for the child’s upkeep (a difficult feat), even when the hospital had given the child a new name they could be sure of reclaiming the right child by describing the token they left with them. 

Token on Marchmont Street, Author: Matt BrownNo changes made https://www.flickr.com/photos/londonmatt/53413014277/

                                  

The story takes a leap and the stakes are raised when Bess, after six years of scrimping, returns to claim her child only to find that a stranger has claimed her the very day after Bess had placed Clara in the hospital’s care. Avoiding spoilers - the exploration of what it is to be a mother deepens as the two women are brought up against each other. The genius of the book for me is the way in which Stacey Halls balances the representation of the needs of the two women so that despite the reader’s natural urge to see mother and daughter reunited there is also feeling for the damaged woman who has claimed Clara. This creates powerful dramatic tension and pulls the reader’s emotions in different directions, resulting in a gripping read that one can’t put down.

The Foundling Restored To Its Mother 1858 painting by Emma Brownlow
  1858. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

In 'Lily', subtitled ‘A Tale of Revenge’, Rose Tremain writes of poverty, cruelty and crime in Victorian London. The infant Lily is first placed in a loving foster family but is then wrenched away and returned to hardship as a pauper at the hospital. Now, as an adult, Lily has committed a murder and lives in fear of discovery. Tremain holds back the nature of the murder and the identity of the victim, masterfully managing the dramatic tension and creating a mystery that kept me turning the pages into the night.
However, the truly fascinating thing for me was the relationship between Lily and the policeman who rescued her as a baby. She feels he may hold the key to her salvation but she dare not confess to him for fear of the rope.

Tremain writes with all her usual subtlety and feeling, imbuing everyday objects with the emotional charge they hold for her characters so that they become powerful symbols of love and loss: a scarf that Lily knits for her only friend at the hospital, a deep, black well at the farm where Lily was happily fostered that comes to symbolise her worst fear of discovery and execution.

One of Tremain’s great strengths is that she looks unflinchingly at human darkness whilst still maintaining a feeling of authorial empathy and understanding. This novel moved me to tears – it is heartrending, compassionate and brilliant.

To find out more about the fascinating history of the Foundling Hospital and see examples of the tokens left by parents, do visit https://foundlingmuseum.org.uk

Magnificent Men and Disastrous Machines. By Judith Allnatt

This is the story of Percy Pilcher, a man who could have beaten the Wright brothers to their record of first  flight in a powered aircraft if only he had made one crucial decision differently.

Born in 1867, Lieutenant Percy Pilcher was a British inventor and a pioneering aviator. He developed and flew several hang gliders, romantically named The Bat, The Beetle, The Gull and The Hawk. Unfortunately, the ideas evoked by these names, of speed, fast directional control, soaring and hovering were incredibly difficult to achieve with the materials and technology available at the time. Percy, a bachelor, was supported by his sister Ella who stitched the cotton and silk wing canopies of his ‘aerial machines’ and assisted at test flights, each one of which must have been a terrifying trial to watch.

Model at Stanford Hall showing the fragility of the construction.

To achieve flight in Pilcher’s hang glider the craft was pulled along by horses with a rope and geared pulley attached to the glider, until it lifted off the ground as a kite would. The pilot's arms rested on leather supports and he held on to two struts to maintain his position. Once airborne the craft was hard to manoeuvre and was prey to the vicissitudes of the wind, which might gust or change direction any time. A flight was typically between 20 or 50 feet above ground -  high enough to be extremely dangerous. As materials were basically cloth and bamboo, there was nothing in the structure to protect the pilot from impact. Nonetheless, Pilcher took the risks and broke the world distance record in 1897, flying 820 feet in The Hawk in the grounds of Stanford Hall, Leicestershire.

Pilcher was determined to invent a tri-plane capable of powered flight and, with the help of motor engineer Walter Wilson, developed an internal combustion engine to power it. On 30th September 1899 his plan was to demonstrate its flight to potential sponsors in the grounds of Stanford Hall but sadly the engine’s crankshaft had broken. Having dined with those who might support his work and allow it to move forward, and finding hundreds of people had turned up at the estate to see his flying attempt, the pressure on him to provide ‘a show’ must have been immense and he considered flying The Hawk instead. 

Despite windy conditions, he had managed several flights successfully in the morning that day, but in typical British style for September, the afternoon had been wet and stormy. In the crowd were other military men whom he wanted to impress and even local school children who had been given the day off to see the flight. When the weather improved, he decided to go ahead, not realising that the sodden fabric of the wings was putting awful strain on the bamboo structure. Two attempts were unsuccessful because the line attached to the machine broke, the third achieved lift off. The local paper, the Rugby Advertiser, reported the accident that ensued: 

Crashed 

"The Hawk moved forward and took flight but crashed when a “cross-bar” behind him snapped in a sharp gust of wind as Pilcher moved his body, in standing position, to one side or the other to navigate . . . the apparatus was seen to collapse in the air, turn over and fall to the ground – a distance of about 20 feet – with a thud, Mr Pilcher being under the wreckage. His devoted sister was one of the first to reach the scene . . ."

Pilcher had broken both his legs and was concussed. He died two days later having never regained consciousness. 

Had Pilcher lived to fit his engine to his tri-plane during the following weeks as he’d intended, experts expressed the view that he would certainly have been the first man to achieve engine-powered flight. Instead, no one was crowned with those laurels until the Wright brothers flew the first powered ‘heavier- than-air’ craft in 1903, achieving an impressive distance of four miles, and were credited with inventing the first successful aeroplane. 

Pilcher’s death, four years earlier, robbed him of that more elevated place in aeronautical history but we must salute his creativity, tenacity and courage. As the inquest reported: ‘. . . he had lost his life in perfecting what, if he could have proved a success, would be some good to the world’. 

hj

To see actual models of Pilcher’s amazing aricraft, visit the Percy Pilcher museum at Stanford Hall, Leicestershire. https://stanfordhall.co.uk To see video of the National Museum of Scotland's model being made visit https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1847730085237041

Anne Boleyn's Book of Hours by Judith Allnatt

 On 19th May this year I visited Hever Castle, Anne Boleyn's childhood home. It was on this day in 1536 that Anne was beheaded at the Tower of London following charges of adultery, incest and plotting to kill her husband, Henry VIII. Modern historians regard these charges as fabricated: the couple had failed to produce a male heir; several miscarriages had followed the birth of their daughter Elizabeth and Henry had begun to court Jane Seymour. In memory of Anne, on the 19th of May 2023, her precious Book of Hours was brought out from the archive and put on display at Hever, along with fascinating historical details that could be deduced from it.

A Book of Hours is basically a Christian prayer book designed to guide the spiritual life of a secular person. It often contains psalms, hymns, extracts from the gospels and prayers to be read at the canonical hours of the day from Matins to Compline. Affluent owners often had their books lavishly illuminated and sometimes they were wedding gifts given by a husband to a wife.  The books were  sometimes personalised through having the owners  themselves featured in the paintings or through featuring local saints; some have notes written in the margins, some were so much a part of daily life that they were hung from a woman's girdle, like her keys. In the case of Anne Boleyn's Book, the prayers in English show more wear, from kissing or rubbing the pages, than the Latin prayers. It is tempting to see in this the enthusiasm Anne had for promoting an English Bible for all to be able to read, as shown by her protection of those working on English translations. However, the Hever exhibition points out that after Anne's death the Book was owned by various Kentish women who may not have known Latin and whose use of the book would have left its mark. 

The English Schoolhttps://thetudortravelguide.com/2019/09/21/hever-castle/

Anne was originally a maid of honour to the Queen, Catherine of Aragon, but by 1527, the year of the book's printing, Henry was hotly pursuing Anne and was considering the annulment of his marriage to Catherine. Assistant creator Kate McCaffrey explains in the Hever exhibition that books from this printing were commissioned for the English court, including both Catherine and Anne, but that their copies are of different quality.  

The vivid colours used in illumination were made from sources such as charred wood (black)  lapis lazuli( blue) gold, cuttlefish ink (sepia), crushed insects ( crimson)  or limonite (ochre). Anne's Book of Hours is decorated with gold borders, red and blue corner patterns and oval borders with inscriptions, whereas Catherine's is plainer. Whether this was perhaps due to Anne, full of confidence as she moved towards becoming Queen, commissioning the books herself, or whether the books were gifts from the King  that reveal his  coldness to  Catherine and his passionate interest in Anne is a matter for speculation.

The rivalry between Anne and Catherine is further shown in a tiny illumination in Anne's music book in which her emblem, the falcon, is shown pecking rather viciously  at Catherine's emblem, the pomegranate.   

Leaving aside the machinations of Court, I was also intrigued to see an inscription in Anne's own hand at the foot of one of the pages of her Book of Hours.

In June 1528, when Henry was still married to Catherine and pursuing Anne, a 'sweating sickness' occurred in London that sent the court, in action all too reminiscent of the last few years,  scattering to the countryside to quarantine. Anne and her father at Hever became dangerously ill and Anne's brother-in-law died of the virus. Kate McCaffrey's research suggests that the inscription was written at around this time, possibly while Anne battled with the death-dealing illness. 

It reads:

 Remember me when you do pray

that hope doth lead from day to day

 - Anne Boleyn 

It  made me shiver to think about what lay ahead of her only eight years later. I reflected on the relief she must have felt on her recovery, the determination to seize the day and her opportunity to become Queen and how fragile human hopes can be. 

 

 

The Finger in the Fly Trap - Barbara Kingsolver's 'Unsheltered'. By Judith Allnatt

Barbara Kingsolver’s most recent novel, ‘Unsheltered’ explores the acrimonious debate between evolutionists and creationists in the 1870s, alongside a contemporary ‘state of the nation’ narrative  revolving around a downwardly mobile family living in a collapsing house. The historical story, which I found fascinating, features the renowned female biologist, Mary Treat, whose dedication to scientific observation extended to holding her own finger in a Venus flytrap for hours to test the strength of its insect-dissolving juices.

Mary Treat corresponded with Charles Darwin, providing him with observations of American plants from the Pine Barrens, an area of virgin woodland near her home in Vineland, New Jersey. Although she had little formal education she studied, observed and experimented, becoming an expert in her field. No doubt, given the usual lot of women at the time this was only made possible by the absence of her husband, from whom she was separated, and by the happy chance of being a woman of independent means.

In ‘Unsheltered’, Kingsolver invents a neighbour for Mary: Thatcher Greenwood, who on his first visit discovers Mary surrounded by glass jars full of flowers. Closer inspection reveals that each contains a cobweb built in the shape of a tower . . . and the tarantula that built it. Mary has used the flowers as a disguise to avoid alarming the ladies who visit her, who would disapprove of her interest.  

Thatcher also has to resort to subterfuge in his work as a biology teacher at the local school, trying to circumvent the strictures of his headmaster, Cutler, who abhors the new theory of evolution and is prejudiced against both scientific method and rational argument. 

The ‘utopian’ town of Vineland was the brainchild of the historical figure, Charles Landis. He is presented as an authoritarian figure who uses his wealth and power to further his own ends. This seems a fair assessment of his character given his history. His arrogant sense of entitlement was such that criticism in a local newspaper led him to shoot the editor in the head, a case that came to be referred to as the murder on Main Street and for which Landis was excused on the trumped up grounds of ‘temporary insanity’. Cutler has the support of this city father and attempts to frustrate and humiliate Thatcher at every turn. 

Kingsolver brings the fictional characters Greenwood and Cutler together head- to-head in a public debate on evolution versus creationism, which is chaired by Landis. Through this climactic scene she explores some of the responses to evolution of the time: ranging from reluctance to consider it, to a ‘flat earth’ fervour to discredit it. 

In the face of Cutler’s bluster and the audience’s scepticism, Thatcher illustrates his argument for genetic modification by using examples of natural selection in a wolf pack and of the whitening of the coat of the Arctic hare, over time.

The debate is entertaining, with a fine sense of the ridiculous. Cutler brings the Bible to his aid but is unable to explain how, if Noah took only one pair of each kind of animal onto the ark and then burnt some of them on the Lord’s alter, the species could have reproduced. He then claims that the development of varied species on different landmasses despite all creatures having been brought to Mount Ararat,  occurred through God parting the seas to allow creatures to cross to other continents. Thatcher points out that for a prairie hen, walking at four miles an hour, even the leg of the journey from Europe to America would take two years – quite a time for the ocean to be parted.

Thatcher cites Occam’s Razor which contends that a simple explanation (ergo evolution in this case) is more likely to be correct.He moves the debate to  Mary Anning’s fossil record, showing that beasts such as the plesiosaur have existed and no longer do so. Cutler is willing to discount the evidence of his own eyes, dismissing the fossils as a hoax. He believes that God creates only perfection so He cannot have made a creature for it to be extinguished. ‘God doesn’t make mistakes!’ he roars. 

As well as claiming that Man is above the animal world and not part of it, Cutler muddles society and science, drawing extensively on the notion of order, creating his own version of the medieval ‘chain of being’ which he perceives as threatened by the notion of racial equality, or even women wearing trousers, which he rates as ‘turning against God’s domestic harmony'. The strongest driver for sticking to the status quo of belief in a Divine order is revealed to be vested interest in the existing societal power structure.

In choosing the title ‘Unsheltered’, Kingsolver refers not only to the imminent collapse of the decaying house in the modern story but to the choice to forego comforting beliefs and instead consider experiment, evidence, rationality, enlightenment. The crumbling house becomes a metaphor for, among other things,  old beliefs being stripped away. Kingsolver has her character, Mary Treat, identify a silver lining of clearer vision saying : ‘Without shelter, we stand in daylight’. In 'Unsheltered' Barbara Kingsolver has   transformed her historical research into a compelling and thought provoking novel. 

Pigeon Post by Judith Allnatt

Communication was no easy matter during World War One. There’s an old joke about a message that originated as ‘Send reinforcements; we’re going to advance’ but which eventually arrived as ‘Send three and fourpence; we’re going to a dance!’ Although admittedly amusing, the joke has a dark side when one thinks of the consequences of inaccurate communication when applied to crucial military messages, and the difficulties of passing on messages verbally were by no means the only ones encountered.

Signallers using flash lamp near Bouzincourt, 10th July 1916.

Where military positions were established, messages could be sent to and from HQs telephonically once Signallers had laid down cables along trenches or buried them in the ground. This was dangerous work in itself and wires often needed repairing, leading to loss of life. However, when attacking, it was difficult to keep pace with an advancing force and impossible to connect sideways to other battalions moving forward in parallel. As a result, some ingenious communication methods were adopted.

In addition to the use of rare and cumbersome radios and runners who may or may not survive a journey fraught with mines, artillery fire and snipers, vast numbers of pigeons were housed in mobile pigeon lofts so that they could be moved around the field of conflict. A smaller number could then be carried in a wicker basket on a man’s back to a position in the line and released to return ‘home’ with messages in tiny cylinders attached to the bird’s leg. 

The Royal Engineers Signals Service on the Western Front, 1914-1918
A former London double-decker bus camouflage painted, used as a travelling loft for carrier-pigeons. Pernes, 26 June 1918.

 Pigeons have a ‘sixth’ sense – the ability to detect and navigate using the earth’s magnetic field. Although the mechanism for this homing sense was not understood during the Great War, in the 1980s researchers discovered tiny crystals of magnetite inside nerve endings in the upper part of the beaks of pigeons which detect the strength of the earth’s magnetic field. Others found that chemical reactions induced by light entering the bird’s right eye allow awareness of the direction of the magnetic field. These two together enable the bird to ‘see’ the magnetic field and find their way home.

As well as taking messages from the trenches to the rear, pigeons were taken up in planes being used for reconnaissance to bear messages from aviators to HQ. Even more ingenious was the practice of fastening a small camera to the bird’s chest and releasing it at a pre-planned time. Aware of the route the bird would take to get home, the camera could be attached to a timer that operated the shutter, thereby collecting aerial images – literally a bird’s eye view!

Sergeant of the Royal Engineers Signals Section putting a message into the cylinder attached to the collar of a messenger dog at Etaples, 28 August 1918. McLellan, David (Second Lieutenant) (Photographer)

Dogs were also used to carry messages or sometimes even to carry other messengers, as pigeon baskets could be strapped onto their backs.

Before basic radio transmitters, communication from a plane, to inform on the fall of enemy artillery for instance, was initially by dropping messages inside weighted streamers over the side. Kite balloons were also used for reconnaissance over enemy lines. Two observers went up in the wicker basket fixed beneath. One cable was used to tether the balloon to a lorry and the other to relay telephonic messages. The balloons made easy targets and, under fire, men ‘bailed out’ with parachutes. 

Disembarking from a kite balloon

Despite these resourceful methods, communication difficulties must have hamstrung officers making decisions on the ground. Once an attack had started there was no quick, reliable way to contact troops to redirect them or to call for reinforcements. There may be other reasons underpinning the epithet ‘Lions led by Donkeys’ but the lack of timely, dependable communication must have been a contributory factor in many decisions that turned out to be bad ones and resulted in an incalculable number of casualties.

Parlour Games for Christmas by Judith Allnatt

Like many people in these difficult times, I've turned to light reading as a bit of escapism and my most recent choice  has been to reread The Diary of  a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith, published in 1892.  The 'nobody' in question is Mr Charlie Pooter, Edwardian bank clerk: a comic creation who tells  terrible jokes yet takes himself rather too seriously.  He dutifully records his household woes, for instance his threat  to walk out if the same blancmange is served up again after seeing it 'for every meal since Wednesday'. He and his wife Carrie are often visited by two friends: Cummings and Gowing (of course he makes a joke about that). Their entertainments include cards, singing, and impressions but also parlour games such as Cutlets.

Cutlets involves one person sitting down, and everyone else being asked in turn to sit on the lap of the person before them until they are arranged one on top of another in a pile, provoking general hilarity. Then, they are asked 'Are you a believer in the great Mogul?' to which they have to answer all together 'Yes, oh yes!' when unexpectedly,  the person on the bottom gets up, resulting in a toppling of the pile.  The game was clearly perceived as a little risqué, as Grossmith presents the husbands as insisting that the wives sit on their spouses' laps and not anyone else's! 

This made me think about how grownup  'play' often involves  a challenge to the propriety of the day: the rules of the game  temporarily replacing the normal rules of staid adult mores to allow behaviour that, in the parlance of the day, is a little 'naughty' or 'daring’.

Readers may remember playing Blind Man's Buff  as a child at parties. My memory of the game includes being spun around until you were dizzy when being the 'blind man' and the aim of the game being to catch one of the kids who were calling out and poking you, so that they would have to take over the role and you could escape. However, for centuries the game has clearly been played not only by children but by adults. Tennyson mentions playing it in 1855 and the painting below, by Pietro Longhi  shows it being played in an eighteenth century scene. The original version of the game had a further element that our childish version lacked, which is that the blind man  has to identify, by touch, the person they have captured, before they are allowed to swap roles. Like Cutlets, Blind Man's Buff involves physical contact normally outside the realm of polite behaviour, providing both humour and flirtatious opportunity.

Reverand Crawley's Circle demands that all the players hold hands, but not with the people immediately next to them. The resulting knot then has to be untangled by twisting, turning and stepping through gaps, without letting go, resulting in contortions much like the modern game of Twister. The identity of Reverand Crawley has long ago been lost. Was he even a real person? Or was the name chosen to give a spurious permission from religious authority to get 'up close and personal’?

Sardines is another game that involves close physical contact. The game is a back-to-front version of Hide-and -Seek. Only one player hides, then as each seeker finds them they have to join them in their hiding place so that it becomes progressively more 'cozy' or 'cramped', depending on one's attitude to the person  in close quarters next to you. 

Some games, rather than making mischief with polite gender norms, allow a playful expression of aggression. Where are you Moriarty? is a game that presumably makes reference to the longstanding enmity between Holmes and the criminal mastermind. It requires two players, both blindfolded, and each holding a rolled up newspaper, to lie on the floor head to head, with a gap of around a metre between them. One asks the question and when the other answers 'Here!' the first attempts to hit them with the newspaper whilst they roll about trying to avoid getting bashed.

More modern games sometimes have elements of older ones. Killer is a game played at Christmas in our household because it works for almost all age groups, including the elderly, who might prefer to sit. It starts with everyone receiving a piece of paper, only one of which has the word 'Killer' written upon it. The players then sit in a circle while the killer seeks to catch a person's eye and 'kill' them by winking. The victims have to count to twenty before they expire, to give the killer the chance to perform a further massacre before anyone can accuse them. The winner is the person who manages to level a correct  accusation before being winked to death and a wrong accusation results in exclusion from the game. The Victorian game If you Love me Dearest, Smile worked on a similar principle but was far more innocent. It required  a nominated person to smile at the other players to get them to smile in turn, the winner being the last one to hold out against smiling - a gift to a young lady  looking for an excuse  to catch the eye of a particular gentleman . . .

Parlour games may seem rather tame to us today when we're used to more sophisticated entertainment. However, over a Christmas that, at the time of writing, may well be constrained by Covid regulations, they have something to recommend them as a way to entertain the members of a single household, who may have a wide spread of ages. What they all have in common is that they tend to end in one thing - laughter - and we could all do with some of that.

Chat with me about this post @JudithAllnatt or read more about my writing and more blogposts here

What's in a Name ? by Judith Allnatt

What's in a name? Well, often quite a nod to history. Our own names often tell us something of the occupations off our ancestors, as in Potter, Shepherd, Smith (blacksmith) and Whitaker (white acre).  Some, of course, would be difficult to guess. Who would have known that the first name Gary means 'spear-carrier',  Kimberley 'a wood clearing' or  Everard 'strong boar'?

Some names have suffixes that suggest the nature of an occupation. 'Wright' means someone who makes something, as in Wheelwright or Wainwright, 'wain' being short for 'wagon'. Suffixes can also imply gender. The surname Webb was commonly used for a male weaver. The suffix 'ster' was often added for a female labourer, as in 'Webster'. Words on this pattern have even entered the language as nouns.  'Spinster' no doubt originated from an occupation commonly taken up by single women needing to support themselves. Prefixes can also be revealing. 'Fitz', from Old French,  means 'son of', as in Fitzpatrick or Fitzgerald, or in the case of Fitzroy the (illegitimate) son of the King (Roi).

When choosing names for characters, novelists generally think carefully about the nature of the character and the impression they want to create. Thomas Hardy, in Far from the Madding Crowd, introduces his character, Gabriel Oak, through his robust clothes and steady nature but his name also underpins this impression. A man named after an archangel and the sturdiest of English trees must surely be a moral benchmark and a reliable, all round solid chap.

Sometimes historical research can lead a writer to a name that chimes with their idea of a character.When I was writing The Silk Factory, set in the early 1800s, I drew on the history of John English, the overseer in the silk manufactory in my Northamptonshire village. He was described by the outraged schoolmaster of the time as 'an inhuman taskmaster'. Like Gabriel Oak, John English seemed far too traditional and forthright a name for a character who was to cruelly exploit and mistreat his workforce. I would have to rename him. In researching the industry, I read about weaving  workshops in Spitalfields in London and how nets would sometimes be set up on the rooftops  to catch songbirds to sell. A bird catcher was known then as a 'fowler' - the perfect name for the silk master overseeing a workforce trapped in a stuffy attic working sixteen-hour days.

John English also had a mysterious past. An advert in the Northampton Mercury offered a reward of ten guineas for his capture as he was accused of several felonies, including theft and cruelty. It said: 'He has many wounds upon his head and in different parts of his body, wears a wig and the general turn of his conversation is directed to Travelling, Voyages, Mechanics and discovering Mines and the North-West passage.' Because  of this, I wanted a first name that had elements of mystery and exoticism. I chose 'Septimus', the name used for a seventh son, a role imbued with mystery in fairy tales through the ages. 'Septimus  Fowler', I felt would be a character that the reader would recognise as villainous from the moment of his introduction.

We don't tend to think about the origins or meanings of names as we use them in everyday life. They've become commonplace over the generations through their frequent use. However, I think perhaps we sometimes have an unconscious awareness of their associations. When writing A Mile of River, which features a farmer obsessed with expanding his land and controlling his family, I drew a blank for his name. After a night sleeping on it, I came up with the name 'Henry Garton'. It seemed to click although I couldn't have said why. Looking up the meanings I found "Henry - head of the household" and "Garton - a fenced farm, a walker of boundaries". A salutary lesson on trusting one's writerly instincts!

No wonder many peoples have superstitions about telling a stranger their names. Perhaps they have a sense that to do so is to part with more information about themselves  than they would like to give. What's in a name? Quite a lot it would seem.

Shot at Dawn. By Judith Allnatt

Private Henry Burden, a Northumberland Fusilier, was shot at 4 a.m. on 21st July 1915 having been found guilty of desertion. He was just seventeen years old.

Like many young men keen for adventure and caught up in the patriotic rush to war, he had lied about his age in order to join up. Once sent overseas, he lost friends at the Battle of Belwaarde Ridge, experienced nerve shattering barrages of shelling and was sent to a military hospital to recover. On the same afternoon that he was discharged, he was sent forward with his battalion to the front line. Burden left his post, he said, to visit a neighbouring battalion to see a friend who he had heard had lost a brother. Two days later he was arrested and two days after that he was tried by a court martial. He had a record of going absent without leave, which went against him and he had no one to defend him as those who could have spoken up for him had all been killed. He wasn't asked about his age and he didn't raise it. He was found guilty, not of the lesser charge of going AWOL, but of desertion, and condemned to death.

Photo credit: Harry Mitchell [CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)] 

In the British Army, discipline was harsh. The offences for which a soldier could be executed were many and various. They included: cowardice, casting away of arms, disobedience, striking an officer and desertion. Falling asleep on sentry duty could also carry the death penalty as it endangered a whole section of the line. Soldiers on duty at night stood with head and shoulders above the parapet, rather than using a periscope, so that they could get a good field of view. (There being less chance of being hit in the dark other than by a random shot). It was therefore very obvious, if a sentry slumped, that he had fallen asleep and those who did so were easily caught. Standing at their posts for hours, dealing with mind-numbing boredom and body-numbing cold, it was all to easy to be overtaken by exhaustion. Fear of the consequences resulted in the practice of using matchsticks to prop their eyes open.

Around 3,000 soldiers were executed for offences such as those listed. There is a strong sense of the authorities using the ultimate punishment to 'set an example', a stark warning to re-assert discipline. Before facing the firing squad, the soldier's General Service buttons were removed from his tunic as a mark of his shame. Blindfolded and manacled, he was led to a stake and a target such as an envelope was pinned to his chest. Often, the firing squad was chosen from the soldier's own unit, presumably to hammer home the lesson that breaches of discipline would not be tolerated. One can barely imagine the horror and mental anguish that this practice must have caused both the man and his comrades. Apparently, the traditional belief that one of the bullets used would be a blank so that each soldier was left with the moral let-out that his shot may not have been the lethal one, is actually untrue. The whole squad were, in fact, given live ammunition.

The man's disgrace often continued after death: there were relations who chose not to talk of the relative who had brought shame on the family and memorials in towns and villages that omitted their names. Not until the 21st Century, when it became clear that many of those found guilty had suffered what we now know as Post traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) , was there any attempt to give them a memorial.

At the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, this shift in understanding and attitude found expression. The memorial Shot at Dawn, by Andy de Comyn, consists of a larger-than-life sized statue of Henry Burden, blindfolded and with his hands tied behind his back. Before him, the firing squad is represented by six juniper trees and behind him are an array of wooden stakes representing 309 other victims, each one individually named. These are the men who were posthumously pardoned by the British government in 2006. The pardons were granted not to imply blame for the officers who had acted in line with army regulations and without the understanding of PTSD that we now have, but in a spirit of mercy and in recognition of the battle trauma experienced by many, often very young men, and the suffering of their families. The Director of the Arboretum said that  "over 80 years of medical, psychological and sociological advantage (was) denied those who sat on the court-martial boards that passed sentence."

So, what of Henry Burden? As always, it is the small human details that suddenly pierce the heart. I think of his body taken down from the stake to be prepared for burial and the tattoos discovered upon it of "clasped hands" and "Love Lilly".  I am glad that his statue is placed at the eastern end of the arboretum where the sun's first rays strike.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

Laurence Binyon 1914

A Victorian Scandal: The Peer and the Dancer by Judith Allnatt

In 1851, the Spanish dancer Josefa Duran, known as ‘Pepita’ caught the eye of Lionel Sackville-West, a member of the British aristocracy (2nd Baron Sackville). She was slim and beautiful and was known for the airiness of her dancing, for her luxuriant, waist-length dark hair and for the kiss curls she wore on each cheek. She had what we would now call ‘celebrity status’ and young men were said to have plucked flowers from their own wives’ hair to cast them at her feet on the stage. 

Born in a Málaga slum to a barber father and a clothes-seller mother, Pepita’s background couldn’t be further from that of Lionel’s family, who owned Knole, one of the largest and most important of Britain’s Great Country Houses. They met a week or so after Lionel had seen her at the theatre; Lionel visited and they soon became ‘intimate’. A further obstacle to the lovers, beyond the chasm between their social classes, was that Pepita had in fact married another dancer, Juan Antonio de Oliva, only the previous year. They had separated swiftly in circumstances that Oliva maintained were ‘not honourable’ to Pepita and she had left Spain to tour abroad.

The Cartoon Gallery, Knole

Their relationship was intermittent in nature. As first attaché in Berlin, Lionel was able to visit Pepita in the cities and towns in which she was dancing but there were inevitably spells when they were apart. Pepita was certainly no angel; she appears to have had other liaisons with Prince Youssoupoff in Munich and Duke Maximilian Joseph in Bavaria. After Lionel and Pepita’s daughter Victoria was born, they separated for two years but Lionel returned to her after hearing that she was desperately ill. She had lost a baby and refused to say who the father was, but nonetheless they were reconciled.

In 1866, having given up dancing, Pepita had luxurious clothes, beautiful jewels and a house bought for her by Lionel in the French coastal town of Arcachon. Nonetheless, she was isolated by her situation. Unaccepted by society because she and Lionel were not married, she was unable to mix socially in Lionel’s circle. When they stayed in Paris, Pepita was reduced to tears because she was unable to go with Lionel to a fete in the Tuileries that he was visiting. His colleagues at the Foreign Office knew nothing of his liaison or the fact that he had children. He had never mentioned that part of his life. Now at Arcachon, her children were short of playmates as the children in the neighbouring villa had been told by their parents not to play with them. When entertaining, it was reported that no ‘ladies’ ever attended, that her guests were young men and that she drank. 

At Arcachon, the house was named ‘Villa Pepa’: a name that may show Pepita’s egocentricity or may reflect a sense of defiance at her exclusion and the desire to make a world separate from the stresses of the ‘society’ around her. The desire to create another ‘world’, is perhaps echoed later in the haven from the public sphere made by her grand daughter Vita Sackville-West and her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson, in their gardens at Sissinghurst.

What was the truth about Lionel and Pepita’s relationship? Were they ever married? It became important decades later because of question over who should inherit Knole. For years Lionel was steadfast in putting up objections to signing the register of his children’s births. Later, when pressed to do so by Pepita for the sake of her reputation, he signed for two of his children but later claimed that he had no memory of doing so. One of these was Pepita’s youngest living child – Henry – who was later to feel therefore that he had a claim to be Lionel’s true heir.

In Arcachon society there was gossip that her children had several different fathers including the Prince of Bavaria and Count Henri de Béon, alongside Lionel. One can see how these rumours might arise as Pepita appointed Henri de Béon as her superintendant at the villa and gave him a bedroom next to hers. Lionel seemed to know about Béon living there but didn’t send him packing. Whether this was because he held no suspicions or because he was extremely tolerant of his mistress’s amours is not clear.

At forty, Pepita gave birth to another son, Frederic, but both mother and baby survived only a few days. According to Vita’s account in her book ‘Pepita’, Lionel broke down at seeing Pepita and the baby laid out together. He blamed himself for her death, sobbing that he had killed her, presumably because he had fathered the child when Pepita was an older mother. As if fuelled by guilt, from that point on Lionel seemed to refer freely and publicly to Pepita as his wife; she is named as such in the funeral invitations, letters and in the notices in the local paper. Ironically, only in death did Pepita receive the acknowledgement of their relationship that she had craved through their many years together. She was buried, as Lionel’s wife, in the municipal cemetery above the town. Béon and his mother took care of the five children, supported financially by Lionel, who referred to him at the time as a ‘dear friend’.

The consequences of Lionel and Pepita’s unconventional liaison rumbled on decades after Pepita’s death. Lionel’s nephew (confusingly another Lionel) had inherited Knole in the absence of a ‘legitimate’ son. Henry brought a case that sought to prove that Pepita had been secretly married to Lionel, that he, Henry, had been registered as Lionel’s child and that he was therefore the male heir. The scandal caught the public imagination to the extent that a drama was shown, catchily named ‘The Marriages of Mayfair’ that was a thinly veiled reference to the Sackville-West affair. For Henry and the court case however, it was impossible to cast doubt on the legality of Pepita’s marriage to De Oliva, that had in fact continued throughout Pepita and Lionel’s affair. Henry lost the case and Knole continued in the hands of the accepted line of Sackville-Wests.

To find out more about the Sackville-Wests:  'The Disinherited' by Robert Sackville-West
 'Vita - the Life of Vita Sackville -West' by Victoria Glendinning

 Visit Knowle (National Trust)

 Visit beautiful Sissinghurst (National Trust)

Beyond Bedlam - by Judith Allnatt

The word ‘bedlam’ conjures up images of chaos and madness. This is hardly surprising since the word is derived from ‘Bethlem’, after London’s Bethlem hospital, notorious for most of its 600 year history for the harsh treatment of its inmates, including the insane. Hogarth’s image from ‘The Rake’s Progress’ shows the Rake being manacled by two attendants whilst one lady visitor whispers to another behind a fan.

The image neatly demonstrates two major elements of the early treatment of the mentally ill. Firstly, that the emphasis lay with custody rather than cure and secondly that sufferers were dehumanised and treated as ‘freaks’ to be viewed for the frisson of shock, pity or sheer amusement. When the hospital was rebuilt in the 1670s, galleries were constructed partly ‘lest such persons that come to see the said Lunatickes may goe in danger of their Lives’. Physical restraint through the ages included manacles, chains, head collars and strait jackets. Although restraint was said to be used to stop patients tearing their clothes or harming themselves or others, it was also for the convenience of the keepers who performed a role that was more custodial than medical. A regime that commonly included cold baths, purges to induce vomiting and ‘voiding of the bowels’, bleeding and blistering seems as likely to have originated in a desire to cow and exhaust inmates into submission as to treat or cure them.

It was against this background impression of brutality and voyeurism that I began to research the treatment of John Clare’s madness for my novel, The Poet’s Wife. What I discovered was a complete surprise.

 

In 1841, John Clare entered what was then known as ‘Northampton Lunatic Asylum’, where he was to live as a patient until his death in 1864. I was fortunate enough to be able to visit what is now known as St Andrew’s Hospital and to be given a tour by its superintendent. The building was brand new when John Clare was brought there; it is built of white stone in a symmetrical  style and is set in extensive gardens. Clare’s maladies included hallucinations (he is reported to have seen ‘devils in a ceiling’), delusions (he believed he was married both to his real wife and to his childhood sweetheart) and at times a fragmentation of personality (adopting the persona of Admiral Nelson, Byron or Shakespeare). In general, his condition was harmless, although occasionally he would see himself as Jack Randall, a prize fighter of the day, which made him a little pugnacious. Yet, far from being restrained, Clare was allowed to wander down into the town where his favourite spot was a seat in an alcove of All Saints church. Here he would write verses in return for a drink of ale or a twist of tobacco to chew upon.

The superintendant explained that during the nineteenth century a large scale change in the care of the mentally ill occurred, thanks to the work of various reformers who, since the late eighteenth century had been championing a new approach that came to be known as ‘moral treatment’. The Enlightenment had brought a new focus of social welfare and individual rights. Perhaps by treating patients as rational beings who could make choices, interventions could be made that would be therapeutic; perhaps, for some patients, a cure might be possible after all.

A founding father of this approach was William Tuke, a Quaker, who created a small community of 30 patients in York in a quiet country house. Patients were given manual work to perform to provide a sense of purpose. His grandson, Samuel Tuke, wrote a treatise on the method, which involved close supervision by staff who were more nurses than ‘keepers’. Good behaviour was rewarded and patients who behaved badly were distracted or lost privileges.

Latterly, John Clare’s illness worsened and sadly disorderly behaviour led to his freedom to roam in the town being curtailed. John struggled with this. He wrote to his sons warning  them not to visit him in case they were 'captured'. Erroneously believing that the superintendent could ‘see’ for a three mile radius all around, he didn’t attempt to escape as he had from an earlier stay at an asylum in Essex but complained volubly that he lived ‘amongst the Babylonians’ where ‘people’s brains are turned the wrong way round’.

 

By W.W. Law - Bonham's, Public Domain

However, moral treatment offered other freedoms. He was allowed to work as a gardener, a role that would have suited him well as he had a great love of nature and the outdoors. (Close scrutiny of the image of the asylum above, reveals a man trundling a wheelbarrow downhill). 

Even more importantly, both for his wellbeing and for posterity, he was given pen, ink and paper and encouraged to write. We would not have the great body of his poems today if the superintendent had not followed the tenets of moral management and supported him. John Clare wrote perhaps his most famous poem ‘I am’ during his time at the Northampton Asylum – a poem that expresses his feelings of bewilderment and exhaustion with his illness and which cannot fail to touch the heart.

Text of 'I am' by John Clare

Hearts, Flowers and Handfasting - more about John Clare's delusions

More about 'The Poet's Wife'.

King’s Residence or Riot Control? - by Judith Allnatt

In the Northamptonshire village of Weedon, where I live, there stands an imposing garrison that shipped out arms to Wellington’s forces in the Napoleonic wars. As well as the massive storehouses still in existence for canon, muskets and gunpowder, there were once barracks, hospital, chapel, and three spacious white brick buildings known as the ‘Pavilion’, which are said to have been built as a retreat for George III, should Old Boney invade.

Other Ordnance Establishments nearer the coast, such as the Tower of London or Faversham Powder Mills, risked being destroyed or captured, whereas Weedon is pretty much in the centre of England and is about as far away from the sea as one could possibly get. Therefore, it seems plausible that the decision to build here could have been influenced by a need to spirit the king away to the safer Midlands.

He would have been well defended. Five hundred soldiers manned the place (suddenly the village had thirty pubs!) and vast quantities of firearms and ammunition were constantly being shipped in and out by canal (barges being smoother carriers of barrels of gunpowder than carts).

On the other side of the case, it has been mooted that the King’s retreat theory is just a Royal Rumour, suggested by the palatial appearance of the white buildings on the hill, which were only ever intended for the Governor and his Principal Officers.

Adherents to this argument point out that a site where every second ‘blast house’ was filled with earth in case an explosion should occur and bring them all down like dominoes seems an unlikely haven. In government plans outlined by the prime minister on Christmas Day 1803, it was stated that, in the event of an invasion, the king would lead his army and move to Chelmsford if the enemy landed in Essex, or to Dartford, if they arrived in Kent.

When researching for my novel, The Silk Factory, I became fascinated by the question of why the massive garrison had been built here, in Weedon. If it was not for the purpose of putting distance between the King and Bonaparte’s invading armies, why choose the Midlands? It didn’t seem practical that Arms stored here would have to travel long distances to port in order to reach their destinations abroad. I started to look at what was going on in the area at the time and to form a new and somewhat more sinister theory of my own.

At that time, there was terrible poverty and government fears of revolution were sharpened by events in France. Textile workers in the Midlands were dreadfully exploited: children started work as young as six, and men and women laboured long hours for starvation wages. On top of that, employers were bringing in new machines that were putting men out of work, some of which produced inferior quality goods. (The word ‘shoddy’ originally meant the thin, low-grade silk stockings that wide frame machines produced). In desperation, textile workers broke into premises and smashed the looms.

The Frame Breaking Act of 1812 made it a hanging offence to damage an employer’s looms, yet poverty was so extreme that the crime was almost commonplace. Lord Byron, prompted by pity for the weavers, spoke in parliament against the bill, saying: ‘Can you commit a whole country to their own prisons? Will you erect a gibbet in every field and hang up men like scarecrows?’

In the centre of the Midlands, an area where textile workers were starving and turning to violence and rebellion, the fact that 500 men and a reserve stock of 1,000 small arms were always kept at the garrison at Weedon is unlikely to be coincidental. Its force was well placed to crush any riot or insurrection and, sure enough, it was reported in 1816 that the cavalry rode out from Weedon to quell an ‘uprising of ribbon weavers in Coventry.’

The walled garrison on its hill overlooking the village and silk factory must have seemed horribly intimidating to the inhabitants and impoverished weavers below. Perhaps the rumour that the garrison was to act as a royal retreat was started even at this early point, as propaganda to make the building of the massive military complex seem more palatable. Writing on location, literally in the shadow of the huge buildings, helped me to channel the sense of might and authority of the Establishment over the populace.

Find out more at  The Depot Visitors Centre  A leaflet giving a guided 'Silk Factory Walk' is also available on site.