The Case of the Cottingley Fairies by Katherine Webb

Back in 2009, I wrote my second novel, The Unseen. It was set in Berkshire during the long, hot summer of 1911, when England was poised on the brink of the huge social changes the First World War would bring. The fight for women's suffrage was already well underway, and my central character, Cat, is an intelligent young woman from London who is forced, by her low birth, to work in service - and to take a job in a rural backwater when her political activism makes her all but unemployable. Her struggle to make life better for herself and her fellows draws her, reluctantly, into the sphere of a charismatic spiritualist, and into a series of strange misadventures that lead, ultimately, to murder...

The story, which also deals with the influence of spiritualism and new eastern philosophies like Theosophy on established religious thought forms - these latter embodied by a very naive young vicar - was partly inspired by the case of the Cottingley Fairies. In 1917, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, two schoolgirls living in Cottingley, West Yorkshire, took a series of photographs of what they claimed were real fairies. These famous pictures had always fascinated me – when I was younger because I liked to think that the fairies were real, and as I grew up because the hoax (or alleged hoax!) lasted as long as it did, and managed to convince several prominent and well-respected figures of the age, including the leading theosophist Edward Gardner and, most famously of all, the author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Elsie Wright, pictured in 1917 with one of the 'fairies' at Cottingley

So why were these rational, intelligent men so prepared to accept that the pictures were genuine? To sceptical, modern eyes, the photos look very staged indeed. Rather than appearing to be wild, elemental creatures, the fairies have neat, fashionable hair styles and slip dresses; they appear two dimensional, perfect, and doll-like. Photography experts at the time confirmed that the pictures had not been taken as double exposures, and that nothing had been painted or printed onto the negatives after exposure. One even testified that in one picture of the fairies dancing, they seemed to have moved during the exposure – proof positive that they were real, and animated. Or perhaps, that a light and flimsy paper figure had shifted slightly in a breeze…

Leading theosophist, Edward L. Gardner

The answer to why the photos convinced these men becomes evident when you read the letters that passed between Edward Gardner and Conan Doyle, the articles about the case which Conan Doyle wrote for Strand Magazine, and his later book The Coming of the Fairies. They believed because they so desperately wanted to believe. For Gardner and Conan Doyle, fairies were part of a hierarchy of nature spirits and ethereal beings, in turn a part of the ‘universal soul’ that lies at the centre of theosophy. Only the truly enlightened, or the naturally clairvoyant, would be able to see these pure beings. As such, their existence proved the tenants of theosophy, or the ‘Divine Truth’, to be true. 

But sightings of fairies didn’t always fit the theosophical model so neatly, and in The Coming of the Fairies, Conan Doyle clearly wrestles with the details of some reported cases. One Mrs Hardy, living in New Zealand, described seeing fairies riding around her garden on little fairy horses. This was not the only account of fairy horses that Conan Doyle had come across, but he admitted that such descriptions made things “more complicated and harder to understand.” If they had miniature horses, then, as Conan Doyle writes, “why not dogs?” At this point, the fairies stopped being the essence of nature made visible in bodies less dense than air, and became the ‘little people’ of childhood stories. So perhaps what made the Cottingley fairies so attractive, from a theosophical point of view, was that they had been seen by virginal young girls, often thought to possess a natural clairvoyance; that they were seen in an area of unspoilt natural beauty; and that they showed no complicated behaviour or equipment that interfered with the idea that they were indeed manifestations of pure natural energy.

The number of ghost and fairy sightings, and the popularity of theosophy and spiritualism from the late Victorian era right the way through the Edwardian, shows that people at the time were very keen to believe in an ‘other world’ of some kind – either the world of the spirits of the dead, with which a medium could communicate; or on a grander scale, in a whole pantheon of spirits of various types and powers. Perhaps, as some writers believe, these beliefs came to fill a void that was left behind at a time when new discoveries were encroaching on religious faith. Darwin’s theory of evolution was gaining ground, and undermining the traditional Christian explanation of the origins of mankind. Science, medicine and rationalism had left some people with serious doubts about the church’s teachings, and yet the world was still full of wonders – from electricity to anaesthesia – that remained beyond most people’s understanding. Spiritualism stepped into this gap. In short, people still wanted to believe in something – in some supernatural driving force; and if that were no longer God, then they would look for alternatives.

The fairy 'sunbath' or 'bower' photo, which Frances insisted, to her dying day, was genuine.

It was this desire to believe that was my starting point as I began to shape the story of The Unseen. I started to wonder why different people might believe, and what their various reactions to the possibility of fairies living at the bottom of the garden might be; and also why somebody might be prepared to assemble a hoax to help convince the sceptics. Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths admitted in later life that their photos had been faked, and taken with the help of paper cut outs. The high-profile attention they received had made it impossible for them to confess at the time.  But to her dying day, Frances insisted that there had been fairies at Cottingley, and that the final picture they took, of the fairy bower, was genuine. Using a fake to prove that something is real…a fascinating idea that I carried into my book!

Frances Griffiths with 'the leaping fairy'.

A Lesser-Known Blitz by Katherine Webb

In May last year a friend of mine, and several hundred of her neighbours, were evacuated from their homes in the northern streets of Bath. The reason: the discovery of a five-hundred pound unexploded bomb beneath the playground of a school on Lansdown Road, leftover from World War II. A three-hundred metre exclusion was put in place at once, as the bomb disposal team sought to disable it. Eventually, they managed to move it safely to the Torr Works quarry, where it was blown up, 74 years after it had been dropped.

So, people who live near Bath certainly know that the city was bombed in the war, and I'd known it for some time - it was bombed as part of the Baedeker raids, so called, after the famous travel guides, because the targets were chosen for their cultural importance and beauty, rather than because of any military or strategic significance. Lately, I've been researching the Bath Blitz in more detail, for my next book, and it turns out I'd had no idea of the scale of the bombing.

Bomb-damaged Georgian houses in Bath

Across two weekend nights, from the 25th to the 27th of April, 1942, one hundred and fifty or so German bombers flew over Bath in three bombing raids, two the first night and one the second night. Hundreds of high explosives of various sizes, and incendiaries designed to start devastating fires, were dropped; the exact number will never be known - it is known that many fell into the River Avon, and were swallowed by the mud. One has to assume that they're still down there... The Baedeker Raids, which included attacks on Canterbury, Norwich, York and Exeter, were in revenge for RAF attacks on Rostock, the location of important German factories and shipyards. As well as dropping bombs and incendiaries, some planes dive-bombed to as low as fifty feet, and raked the streets with machine gun fire. The damage can still be seen today - notably in the walls of the old labour exchange on James Street:

Bullet and shrapnel damage in the walls of the old labour exchange

The idea of setting a book in the Bath blitz has been niggling the back of my mind for a long time, and as luck would have it I stumbled across this pamphlet a few years ago, at an antiquarian book fair in Bath:

Produced by the Bath & Wilts Chronicle and Herald later on in 1942, this booklet gives a great overview of the raids, and their effect on the city. It's also a wonderful snapshot of the language and attitude of the press at the time:

'Dr Goebbels may now weep his slimy crocodile tears over "the destruction of historical and art treasures in Luebeck, Bath and Canterbury... Did not Goebbels once boast, "When I hear the word culture, I push back the catch of my revolver"? 

The author, Mr Claude Wimhurst, goes on to describe the grit and spirit of the city, and, in a fine example of stiff upper lip, to declare that the purpose of the booklet is not to 'harrow feelings',  but to 'steel the hearts' of those fighting the good fight, and to serve as a warning to future generations of the horrors and modern warfare. A timely reminder, likely to be ignored, in these days of turbulent global politics. Nevertheless, the history of the raids is harrowing. Of course it is. Four hundred people lost their lives, over a thousand more were injured, and many thousands lost their homes. And whilst this is small number compared to the 32,000 or so souls who lost their lives in London, the human stories that come from those two terrible nights in Bath are every bit as heart-breaking.

Some of the dead from the first night's attacks were laid out in a temporary mortuary in the crypt of St James's church, only for the church to be hit itself on the second night, and badly burnt. In putting out the flames, the fire service inadvertently destroyed all the identification papers on the dead bodies, so that nobody knew who they were, and many had to be interred anonymously. On May 1st, 247 people were laid to rest in a mass grave.

Bath Blitz victims are laid to rest on May 1st, 1942

There are devastating personal histories, described in the Bath Chronicle booklet and in the statistics listed on the excellent Bath Blitz memorial website, bathblitz.org. At no. 3, Howells Court, William and Beatrice Rattray were killed along with their seven children: Christine, 7; Donald, 5; George, 13; Joan, 8; Pamela, 10; Shirley, 2; and William, aged 10. What an unimaginable scene. Sergeant Clifford Ford, a serving soldier, returned on leave to find that his wife, Emily, and their six children had all perished at no. 7, New King Street. A baby girl was found in the wreckage of one house, and taken to Bristol Infirmary, where she died. Of her, the Chronicle records:

'Who she was no one knows. All that can be said about this unknown child victim is contained in the following terse official description which has been preserved: "Age, about two years; hair, fair; eyes, blue-grey; division between top row of teeth; no other distinguishing features." '

One can only assume that whoever was looking after the little girl that night was also killed, and never identified. What a sad end to a tragically short life.

It's easy to spot the gaps in Bath's architecture where Georgian splendour gives way to some 1960s built block of flats or carpark. Often, buildings were not rebuilt until much later, and there is still a ruddy great bomb crater in the lawned centre of The Circus. The famous Assembly Rooms, which had been visited and written about by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, were badly damaged by an incendiary. They had only re-opened in 1938 after a £50,000 program of refurbishment, and the Chronicle laments that they probably can't or won't be rebuilt again. They were, however, and are now back to their original glory:

The tea room in Bath Assembly Rooms today

The same room shortly after the blitz

Other buildings were beyond saving. One of the oldest mansions in Bath, the Abbey Church House in Sion Hill, was destroyed. Mainly Tudor, the building had foundations dating back to 1138, when a leper hospital stood on the site. Another medieval leper hospital, attached to the Mary Magdalene Chapel on Holloway, was also damaged. Today, it's easy to see, on a walking tour of the city, where the gap left by a bombed-out building has been filled with something more recent - with varying degrees of architectural grace. It's as fascinating to me as peering behind the Georgian facades and finding the medieval, Tudor and Stuart origins of many of Bath's buildings.

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth came to visit, and stood high on Beechen Cliff, in the south of the city, to have a virtual birds' eye view of the damage that had been done. There are familiar stories of making do, of mucking in and not being dismayed. I have always wondered how far that was genuinely the case, or how far merely a statement of intent perpetuated by the media. It must have been utterly terrifying, and the effects of that terror long-reaching in the hearts and minds of the survivors. But the city did mend itself. On April 25th, 2008, Willi Schludecker, then aged 87, came to Bath to lay a wreath during the annual memorial service to the Bath raids. Willi, who died in 2010, was one of the German pilots who'd flown on the raids.

Willi Schludecker, who flew more than 120 sorties for the Luftwaffe during WWII, in Bath in 2008

Cowboys and Indians by Katherine Webb

Yesterday, I finished reading Sebastian Barry's Days Without End, one of the books I was given for Christmas. It is simply breathtaking. The book recently won the Costa Novel of the Year award, and I hope it goes on to win the overall Book of the Year prize too. Every now and then, a historical novel comes along that picks you up and drops you down right in the past, like a perfect magic spell, so that reading it is like being there. Hilary Mantel did it with Wolf Hall; Andrew Miller did it with Pure, and Sebastian Barry does it with this book.

By chance, Barry's setting is one I've long been interested in: The American frontier in the nineteenth century - the 'Wild West', as myth would have it. And what a culture of myth and legend there is, surrounding that extraordinary period. The relentless pursuit of land and better fortune by early European settlers on that continent provides a truly astonishing chapter in the book of human history - but of course it came at immense cost to the indigenous population. I find it hard to read about the shoddy treatment of the American Indians by the settlers without my blood boiling at the injustice of it all. But more of that in a moment.

I heartily recommend Barry's new novel to you all, whether you're interested in the history of the USA or not. Whilst his magic trick of sending the reader back in time is one I wish I could emulate with my own fiction, the book is a treasure trove for readers, regardless. There are jewels of prose on every page. To prove it, I am going to open the book at random now, and quote a sentence or two:

'Third day a big thunder storm and it only a huge song singing of our distress. Hard to get the darkness out of your head. Full ten thousand acres of dark blue and black clouds and lightning flinging its sharp yellow paint across the woods and the violent shout and clamour of the thunder. Then a thick deluge to speak of coming death.'

Stunning. Our narrator is Tom McNulty, a young Irish man driven to emigrate by the famine in Ireland, and his narrative describes his life as soldier and settler in the Indian Wars and the American Civil War in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Previously it had been easy for me, when reading about the actions of soldiers and officials in the Indian Wars, to condemn their brutality as a symptom of the racism and greed of a previous generation. Barry's book, however, says important things about what can happen, and what a man will do, if he is made worthless to society, if he has no stake, and no chance of betterment. It says important things about the human heart -  its capacity for love and tenderness as well as the damage done to it by violence and fear. It is an astonishing feat of fiction writing, and brilliant bit of myth-busting for anybody whose mental image of American history comes from Hollywood films.

As I mentioned, I have been interested in early American history for quite some time. I even had a stab at writing about it myself, in my first novel The Legacy, which featured a greenhorn New York girl getting married to a rancher and moving to Oklahoma Territory in the early years of the twentieth century - and all the many and lastingly devastating ways in which she does not cope in her new life. I acquired a number of very good books on the subject of the 'Wild West' as I did my research, and hear are four of the best, in my opinion:

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. Written in 1970, this book perhaps marks the start of the revision of American history. The subtitle, An Indian History of the American West says it all. Brown has written here a damning, heart-breaking history of every bloody battle, every broken promise, every casual cruelty and ignored treaty of the Indian Wars. The terrible inevitability with which an entire race and culture was near eradicated is documented here - whether the Indians were beaten in battle by the sheer numbers of white settlers and soldiers, or were starved, or were herded by treaty to lands they did not know and could not thrive upon. This book exploded the myth of the plucky cowboy protecting his family against the marauding savages. A harrowing but important read. Dee also wrote Wondrous Times on the Frontier, a fascinating collection of anecdotes about life in the early West, told first-hand by the men who were there.

Sand in My Eyes by Seigniora Russell Laune. Something easier to read but just as interesting. This memoir, first published in 1956, tells of Laune's early life in the rural town of Woodward at the turn of the twentieth century. The back of the book praises its exuberant representation of 'the pioneering spirit that civilized the West'... But, of course, Laune is blameless in living her life at the time and in the place she was dealt, as we all generally must. Her memoir moves away from the very early days of settlement to the beginnings of the modern era in what was still very much a spit-and-sawdust town, and gives an engaging portrayal of the trials of domestic life for women back then. Tellingly, it makes almost no mention of the Indians at all, though Woodward was in Oklahoma Territory, which lagged behind the rest of the States, developmentally, because it had remained set aside 'Indian Territory' for several decades - until the pressure of white settlement grew too much.

The Virginian, by Owen Wister. The novel that spawned an entire genre, The Virginian was written in 1902, by which time the West was more or less tamed, no longer a frontier, and the myth of the heroic, gun-toting, ranch-building cowboy had been born. Here we have the strong, silent man, carving his own destiny out of the wilderness; the virtuous, brave woman he loves; the romance of the sweeping landscape, and what I believe to be the first ever depiction of a quick-draw gun duel in the main street of a Western town. Very interesting to see how stories begin to be told, and how they can then grow and spread.

The Real Wild West by Michael Wallis. Published in 1999. This book combines a fascinating history of the vast 101 Ranch in Oklahoma - which at its height covered 110,000 acres, operated its own trains and had its own oil refinery, schools, churches and postal service - with a history of the birth and perpetuation of the myth of the American frontier. The 101 Ranch created the first ever touring 'Wild West Show', which became world famous, and featured real life figures like Geronimo and Buffalo Bill in what must surely, to them, have felt like surreal theatrical representations of their own lives. The book is packed with detail and anecdote, is hugely informative on early settler and farming life, and can be read for sheer enjoyment as well for an insight into the way in which the bloody, difficult history of a nation can have its heartbreak and suffering sanitised, repackaged and sold to the masses.

A Postcard from Prague by Katherine Webb

This close to Christmas, and newly returned from a short break to Prague for Christmas markets and beer, I had, of course, intended to write a post about King Vaclav the Good, aka Good King Wenceslaus, the real life figure and later saint who inspired the famous Christmas carol. Vaclav was a C10th century duke of Bohemia, the area now encompassed by the Czech Republic; whose remains are interred in Prague's St Vitus's Cathedral.

Vaclav was born in 907AD, and came to power as young man of only around 20 years old. A devout Catholic, Vaclav's pagan mother and Christian grandmother fought it out behind the scenes, embodying the struggle for the hearts and minds of the Bohemian people that was raging at the time. Known during his lifetime as a fair and charitable ruler, who founded many churches and monasteries, kept Bohemia free from foreign powers and did a great deal to firmly establish the Christian faith in Bohemia, Vaclav the Good was murdered in 935 by his brother Boleslav the Bad, who then seized power. So, it goes: philanthropy, Good; fratricide, Bad. Clear?

An interesting figure, and just as interesting is the way his legend spread, his sainthood was bestowed and he was posthumously re-titled as a king. A Czech legend that a sleeping army lies beneath Mount Blanik and will awake, to be led by Vaclav, to defend Bohemia in its hour of direst need, bears obvious strong similarities to the English legend of King Arthur.

A gratuitous shot of the huge Christmas Tree in Prague's Old Town Square. A few times a day they make the lights 'dance' to Rossini's William Tell Overture - bonkers.

But whilst I was there, I found out about something even more interesting than Saint Vaclav: Prague's Old-New Synagogue; one of the oldest surviving synagogues in Europe. What a fascinating, atmospheric building. Originally called the New Shul (synagogue), it became known as the 'old-new' when others were founded in the city. It was built in the latter years of the C13th, around 1270, and remains the most important synagogue for Prague's Jewish community today.

The Old-New Synagogue

The synagogue survived various pogroms and fires throughout Prague's history. Its walls are thick; and, sadly, many of its legends reflect a history of persecution. For example, the attic is said the house the remains of a golem (an animated clay man) created and brought to life in the C16th by the famous Rabbi Loew (Judah ben Bezalel, to give him his full name), to protect the Jewish people. Another legend has it that the synagogue was protected from the several fires that swept through the ghetto by the wings of angels, manifested as doves.

The serene, atmospheric interior of the synagogue

The curtained holy arc, containing the Torah scrolls, with the 'eternal light' (ner tamid) suspended to the front

Close to the Old-New Synagogue is Prague's Jewish cemetery, another deeply affecting place. The Jewish community was granted so little space within the city that burials had to take place on top of burials, in a crowded jumble. The level of the ground was eventually built up, so that, in some places, people could be interred ten storeys deep. This must have been so hard to cope with for a community for whom the dignity and purity of the burial ritual is so important.

Graves, some dating back to Medieval times, packed cheek by jowl, with the old Jewish Ceremonial Hall in the background 

The stump of an old tree, which had grown through some ancient graves, pushing the stones out of place 

You can see here, quite clearly, how the ground level was raised to try to create space for people

The history of Prague's Jewish community, like that of so many in other areas, takes a deeply tragic turn in the C20th. Transported to an internment camp outside of Prague, at Terezín, many tens of thousands of Czechoslovakian Jews died during the Nazi occupation in World War II; either by being executed or from the hardships they endured. Over 150,000 other people were held at Terezín for years before being transported to death camps in occupied Poland.

Prague's second-oldest surviving synagogue, the C16th Pinkas Synagogue, now houses a museum. The names of around 78,000 Jews killed by the Nazis are inscribed inside the walls in commemoration, and there is also a deeply moving collection of drawings made by Jewish children being held at Terezín. Most of the children's names are followed by three dates: Date of birth, date of internment, date of death.

The Pinkas Synagogue in 1909, before the restoration of the Jewish Town in Prague

Though I was only in Prague for two days, and the primary purpose of the visit was to explore the Christmas markets, eat the street food (I am now worryingly addicted to sausages and pickled cabbage) and drink the mulled cider, it is a place of such visible and fascinating history, it can't fail to make an impression. And it certainly does Christmas in style!

I wish all the History Girls, and our readers a peaceful, very happy Christmas, and a wonderful 2017.

A Snapshot From the Writing Life by Katherine Webb

A somewhat more personal blog than normal from me this month as I find myself in that slightly bewildered, exhausted/exhilarated state that comes about when the second (and hopefully final) draft of a book has been handed in. Mostly, there's a tremendous sense of relief! And I know it's definitely done this time because I have stopped waking up in the middle of the night thinking of tiny, tiny changes to make to the script - literally swapping one word for another on page 342, for example. I'm free!

As somebody who cannot plan a story before starting it, writing a novel is always a leap of faith. Will I still be able to do I? Will ability kick in where faith is failing, and let me produce something worth reading? I know where I want the book to start and finish, and I know who my players are, but will I be able to steer them through a complex narrative? And, given that I can't plan, a book with a twisty plot - like my fourth novel, 'The Misbegotten', and like this one I have just finished - always cause me headaches. I knew when I handed this script in for the first time back in June that there was work to be done - and I was looking forward to getting my agent's and editor's eagle eyes on it. Often, I am far too close to the woods to see the trees by the time I reach the end of the story. It's all there in my head, but has it made it onto the page?

I am often asked by aspiring writers how I deal with the editorial process, and the general feeling is that it must be awfully hard. Well, it is - but not necessarily for the reasons people might think. I imagine that if you'd turned in what you thought was the perfect novel, hearing that your publisher would like changes made to it must be very hard. The key is never to assume it's perfect! I've done this enough times now to know that I have strengths and weaknesses, and every first draft I write will have strengths and weaknesses. Having a skilled editor to point out the weaknesses is a GOOD thing. I've also been asked whether a book still feels like my book once I've redrafted it. My goodness, YES. If it doesn't, something is very seriously wrong. An editor might point out a problem; it is up to the author to find the solution to that problem. Or to argue convincingly that there isn't a problem. Or to sidestep the problem by rewriting other parts of the novel in a certain way. It remains, absolutely, all my own work.

My entirely shambolic work book, which helps me keep tabs on what I've changed and what this is doing to other parts of the book, and what still needs to be added/removed/rewritten...

Another thing I also do at this stage of the writing process is to go back through all my research notes for little gems of historical detail I've missed, which I can drop in to add authenticity to my settings. This time around, that meant rural Wiltshire life in the 1920s, which has been a joy to learn about and to write. Equally, you have to leave some things behind, if they're not needed. However interesting I found the highly-skilled process of constructing a Wiltshire hoop-raved wagon...it brought nothing to the plot. I've weeded out every bit of too-modern sounding dialogue, written in unthinking full-flow, as I can find; I've checked which wild flowers would have been blooming in the months I've set my story, and I've agonised over whether a character would be 'fascinated with' or 'fascinated by' her lover's body. I have, in short, driven myself quite batty.

A Wiltshire hoop-raved wagon. Would often have been painted bright blue, with the wheels and details picked out in scarlet; and would have lasted donkey's years.

The sudden loss of this soul focus of my attention is a strange feeling. I've only been half in the room for the past six weeks, as I worked on the redraft. Time to call up some friends, and apologise for being glassy-eyed company of late... I feel relieved, as I said, and also a little bereft. I find myself wondering whether I should have found a way to work in the details of the hoop-raved wagon after all... But, once I've hit send I am strict about doing nothing else to the script until I hear back from my editor. And now, a few days on, real life is slowly returning to mind!

The book is due for publication in the UK next June. The script now goes off to a copy editor, who will fact-check it and pick out any glaring continuity errors (always a danger when some sections have been rewritten); after that it'll go to be type-set and then proof read, both by me and by a professional proof reader. And I must turn my attention to the next book... Normally, by this stage, I'll have had an idea about what I want to write next. This time, I haven't an inkling. This latest book has taken up a huge amount of my energy and brain-space for the past nine months - perhaps more than any of my other novels to date. I am - tentatively - extremely proud of it, and I think I need a few weeks to recover from it!

I'll leave you with a few fantastic facts about rural Wiltshire a century ago that I wasn't able to work into the narrative:

Wiltshire folk were superstitious about elder trees and wouldn't cut them down, as it was said that Judas hanged himself from an elder tree.

Vertical stones set on top of a wall around a well, and designed to keep children out, were called 'cock-ups'.

A treat for the children when the butcher's wagon came around was a lump of suet to gnaw on. Yuk!

Obby was short for Albert.

When it came to making wagon wheels, only heart of elm would do for the hubs; only ash for the shafts, and only oak for the spokes.

Folks would say that spring had come when you could step on nine daisies at once.

Judicial Murder in Melbourne by Katherine Webb

I recently travelled to Australia for the first time to visit my sister, who emigrated out to Melbourne earlier this year. It might have been winter over there, but it was still a wonderful trip - I'm not much of a city person, generally, but Melbourne is a lovely one. By the sea, not too big, full of character, and with far more visible history than I'd expected - from the old wooden trams in the centre to the cobbled laneways; the grand Victorian villas with their fancy ironwork balconies and the tiny miners' cottages in their compact rows.

Victorian architecture in Melbourne

I had particular, albeit sombre, fun visiting Melbourne Old Gaol. This grim place, now brilliantly set up as a tourist attraction, gives a clear reminder of how far we have come, as a society, in the last hundred years or so! It must have been a terrible place to be incarcerated. Inmates were kept in tiny cells only just long enough for them to lie down in, for twenty-three hours a day in some cases - allowed out for a single hour of exercise during which time they weren't allowed to talk to the other prisoners. Disobedience was punishable by lashing. If you'd been of sound mind when you went in, it's doubtful whether you would have been when you came out! If you came out, of course. The prisoners lived their lives in full sight of the prison gallows, where a good many met their end.

Inside the gaol, on the ground floor. There are cells to either side, and rising two floors above as well.

The gaol was built in the early nineteenth century, and the first executions there were of two native Tasmanian men in 1842. They were found guilty of the murder of two white whalers, but were essentially hanged as a deterrent to other troublesome natives. A proper cell block was built on the site by 1845, but this was soon dangerously overcrowded, since the population of Melbourne exploded from 23,000 to 90,000 after the discovery of gold in the area in 1851. A second cell block was built in 1859, and a separate women's wing in 1864.

The gaol in 1859

The gaol's most famous inmate was without doubt Ned Kelly, the bushranger folk hero who was also, indisputably, a thief and a murderer. He was the 101st person to be hanged at Melbourne gaol in November 1880, and the gaol has replicas of the iron armour he wore for his final showdown with the police - which did stop several bullets before it failed to stop the bullets that halted him. However, I also 'met' another notorious criminal there. A friend of my sister's had asked me to look in a register or log book, if one were available at the gaol, for any record of a relative of hers, recently uncovered by her mother's family history research - a man named Fred Deeming, who was apparently an inmate at one time. I agreed, not holding out much hope, so imagine my surprise when a whole story board was dedicated to the man!

I should explain that in each cell of the gaol, a story board and plaster cast death mask of a particular inmate are on display. In many cases, these provide a damning commentary on the harshness of justice and Victorian society, since many people - including women - were hanged for what boiled down to the crime of poverty and desperation. Fred Deeming's case, however, is a little different. To summarise the story board above, he came to Melbourne from the UK with his second wife, Emily, in 1891. He rented a cottage, but soon moved on. Early in 1892, the landlord noticed an awful smell, and an excavation of the hearth stone turned up Emily's decomposing body. The Melbourne authorities communicated with those in Liverpool, UK, where Deeming had lived before, and a similar excavation at his previous address turned up the bodies of his first wife and their four children, also murdered by Deeming. He was arrested in March 1892 in Western Australia, on the verge of marrying his third wife - who clearly had a lucky escape! Deeming was hanged in May 1892, in spite of a plea of insanity. Possibly not the kind of relative my sister's friend was hoping to hear about!

I mentioned above that there are original plaster cast death masks of many of the hanged inmates on display at Melbourne gaol. The Victorians did love to document death, and to look at it square on. I found these extremely poignant, and a little disturbing; not least because, having been hanged, the masks all show a terrible weal across the throat that the rope has caused. There is also, in some hard to define way, absolutely no chance of mistaking these for masks taken in life. I didn't want to put many up on here as it seemed somehow disrespectful - but in Fred Deeming's case I'll make an exception:

Fred Deeming's death mask

For anyone interested, a quick google will reveal images of Ned Kelly's death mask too. Perhaps the most fascinating case I learned about, however, was that of Colin Ross, executed in 1922 for the rape and murder of twelve year old Alma Tirtschke. For the first time in Australian history, forensic evidence was used to obtain a conviction - namely, some hairs found on a blanket of Ross's which were found by an 'expert' to match those belonging to the dead child.

Colin Ross, shortly before his execution

Alma Tirtschke

The little girl's body was left dumped in a cobbled back street called Gun Alley, near a covered arcade of dubious repute where Ross and his brother kept a bar. Under intense public pressure to make an arrest, the police soon lit upon Ross as a suspect, and, in the commanding officer's own words, then looked for ways to prove his guilt, rather than his innocence. Crucially, the press went into a frenzy over the case, and printed all kinds of uncorroborated stories and 'evidence'. Enough people with an axe to grind against Ross were willing to testify having seen him talking to Alma, and even to her having been drinking in his bar all afternoon - which her family strenuously denied.

Hounded to trial by the police, and then faced with a jury of his 'peers' who had, for weeks, been fed a stream of damning, sensationalist stories about the case, Ross stood little chance. The forensic evidence of the hairs found on a blanket from his bar was the final nail in his coffin. He was hanged, still protesting his innocence, in the spring of 1922. As a final cruelty the hanging was bungled, and Ross's death was by no means painless or instantaneous.

The gallows in Melbourne Old Gaol, a simple affair with a trapdoor dropping through the middle floor of the prison, where Colin Ross, Ned Kelly, and many others, met their end.

How utterly tragic that the first use of forensic evidence, now so indispensable to judicial process, should have formed part of such a terrible miscarriage of justice. Following extensive research begun in 1995 by journalist Kevin Morgan, Colin Ross has become the first man in Australian history to be pardoned after judicial execution. Ross may have been a bit of a ne'er do well, a bit of a chancer, but he was certainly no child murderer. The hairs on his blanket were not Alma's. The testimony of the witnesses who spoke against him is inconsistent and riddled with flaws; one witness was almost certainly induced by the police to recite a 'confession' Ross supposedly made to him whilst on remand. Colin Ross was tried by public opinion, an over-heated press and a police force so convinced they had their man that it blinded them. And whoever did rape and kill Alma Tirtschke was never brought to justice for the crime.

I wholeheartedly recommend Kevin Morgan's book, which I bought having read about the case during my visit to Melbourne Old Gaol, whether you're interested in true crime or not. It's a meticulous, unputdownable reconstruction of the case which points, ultimately, chillingly, to the identity of the real killer. Far too late for the purposes of justice, of course, and far too late for poor Colin Ross and his family. I've always supposed this to be the crux of the argument about capital punishment: Which is the worst injustice: to let a guilty man live, and perhaps walk free, or to take the life of an innocent one? Because sooner or later, one or the other is bound to happen - however sound we believe the evidence to be. Personally, I think hanging an innocent man is by far the worse of those two options.

A Great Olympian by Katherine Webb

I hope you'll forgive a somewhat truncated post from me this month - it is holiday season, and by the time this goes live I shall be sunning myself (and reading voraciously) on a beach many miles away - hurrah! The only thing bothering me slightly about this holiday is that its dates coincide exactly with the Olympics in Rio.

I love the Olympics. It's the only sporting event I watch even more assiduously than I watch Wimbledon fortnight, and that's normally not a problem - the British weather being what it is, I don't generally feel bad for skulking around the TV instead of being out in the world. I can't do that on holiday, though... Well, maybe just the highlights show. So my blog this month is the review - or rather, the recommendation - of a book about a truly remarkable Olympian, Louis Zamperini.

Louis Zamperini in 1938

Laura Hillenbrand's 2014 book, Unbroken, tells the life story of this remarkable man, born to Italian parents in the USA in 1917, and a resident of California. From a childhood on the wrong side of the tracks, Louis became a college track superstar, setting a new intercollegiate record for the mile at a smidgen over 4 minutes 21 seconds. He qualified to represent the USA in the 5000m at the 1936 Olympics, and though he didn't finish in the medals, his final lap was so fast - just 56 seconds - that the Führer asked to meet him, and so Louis Zamperini met Adolf Hitler in person.

World War II broke out, and in 1941 Zamperini joined the US Army Air Corps. In 1943, he was on a B24 bomber called The Green Hornet, and known to be faulty, when it crashed into the Pacific Ocean some 850 miles south of Hawaii. Louis and two other crew members left alive after the crash managed to survive 47 days adrift at sea in an inflatable life raft, only to arrive at the Marshall Islands and be taken into captivity by Japanese soldiers, where they would remain until the end of the war. Zamperini's account of the treatment he and other POWs received at the hands of the Japanese guards, and in particular a man called Mutsuhiro Watanabe, is painful but important reading.

Mutsuhiro Watanabe during the war. He was notoriously brutal; feared and loathed by the prisoners under his jurisdiction.

Laura Hillenbrand, who also wrote the bestseller Seabiscuit, has turned this man's incredible life into an accessible, compulsively readable story of survival and triumph against all odds. I read it in conjunction with Richard Flanagan's Booker-winning novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North, about the plight of POWS forced by the Japanese to build a railway across Burma during WWII - commonly known as the Death Railway. Both books are shocking, compelling, and heart-breaking; beautifully written in their very different ways, and give a valuable insight into the depth to which war can plunge men. But in this Olympic month, it's Louis Zamperini, who died in 2014 at the age of 97, who gets my loudest cheer.

Cabinet of Curiosities by Katherine Webb

My first ever offering to the Cabinet of Curiosities are these very plain, rather dented pewter jugs:

The largest stands at 10cm tall, the smallest at a mere 6cm; or, more importantly, stamped onto the handles are the volumes they hold: 1 deciliter, 1/2 deciliter and 2 centiliter. Any guesses as to what they were for?

I bought these jugs in Italy while I was there researching The Night Falling a few years ago, from an old lady in the town of Gioia del Colle in the far south of the country. I had just been to look around a wonderful private museum called the Museo Della Civilta' Contadina - or Museum of Rural Life. This vast, private collection has been put together and is run by a man called Vito Santoiemma, and fills several huge warehouses in what used to be the family's sawmill in the town. It holds an astonishing array of objects related to every aspect of rural life in that part of Italy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and I got lost in it for hours.

Inside the museum. The jars on the floor with the wooden lids are called prisor, and are what most families would have had as their only toilet. It had to be carried out and emptied daily, into a slops barrel which was then dragged out of town and used to fertilise the fields. Disease, unsurprisingly, was rife.

At the end of my visit, I asked if there was any small thing I could buy to take back with me, and was told that an old lady (I never did get her name!) might have something to sell. These jugs appeared, and I was asked how much I was willing to pay for them - always a tricky question when you have absolutely no idea of an item's worth - both materially and to the person selling it! She seemed both delighted and bemused by my offer of Euro20, and so I had a piece of history to bring home with me.

The smallest jug, with 2 centiliter stamped onto the handle.

I've written before about the shocking living conditions experienced by the vast majority of people in Southern Italy in the first half of the twentieth century. A few wealthy, often absent, landlords owned all the land and all the housing, and the peasants - some 80% of the rest of the population - had no means to live but to pay for the rent on tiny, inadequate apartments by selling their labour in the fields for a daily rate. They were exhausted, hungry, angry, and powerless, and when they rose up in 1921 and 1922, in a broadly socialist movement, they were crushed again by the rise of fascism.

The milkman's bicycle in Vito Santoiemma's museum, and other dairy-related items.

My jugs date from the years immediately after this, after Mussolini came to power in 1922. These jugs were given out as part of a new system of rationing intended to alleviate the problem of the poor simply starving to death in years of drought and bad harvest - and also to conserve produce that was desperately scarce all over Italy after the First World War. It seems impossible to imagine Italy being short of olive oil, but that is what the jugs were for - the rationing of olive oil. How many calories does the 2 centiliter jug represent? I estimate maybe about 100. I don't know how many people that was supposed to feed, but I do know that this was a weekly ration, not a daily one. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of women selling their bodies to corrupt officials for an increase in the ration for their family.

So perhaps my piece of portable history is a bit dark in nature, and links directly back to dire times for one particular family. But there is always something so emotive and powerful about actually holding an object from a time that has now passed out of reach, and I kept the jugs on the shelf by my desk as I wrote my novel.

A Day Trip to Bath by Katherine Webb

I was recently blindsided somewhat by a journalist who'd come over to the UK from Germany to interview me, I thought, about my latest release over there. It turned out that she was after a travel piece on Bath instead, and after floundering for a moment when she asked me to close me eyes and tell her 'What is Bath?', I was able to talk at length about this wonderful historic city, so full of its own character (and, my sister would remark, also full of itself).

I live about eight miles outside of Bath, in the countryside, but proximity to Bath was definitely a pull factor when moving to the area. And, within weeks of moving down here, I'd started a novel set in Bath in 1820 (The Misbegotten). I couldn't seem to help it - the atmosphere of all things Georgian and Regency was too powerful! So this month I thought I'd blog about Bath and some of its famous faces, and recommend it to anybody wanting a day trip this summer to a place that wears its history on its sleeve.

Well, I kind of have to start with this lady. Although Jane Austen only lived in Bath for a few years, she remains firmly associated with the place. Bath features as the setting of 'Persuasion', and gets a mention in other Austen books as well, and there's a Jane Austen museum and festival for fans here. It's just as interesting to visit The Assembly Rooms, however, at which Austen is known to have attended functions. Designed in 1769 by John Wood the Younger, the Assembly Rooms are now owned by the National Trust and you can go and have a wander around the grand tearoom, the octagon room where the men would have played cards, and the ballroom with its fantastic chandeliers - now electric, but in Austen's day holding hundreds of candles. The heat rising from all the thronging, dancing bodies below was often so great that the candles melted, and dribbled hot wax onto the party-goers. http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/bath-assembly-rooms

John Wood the Younger (1728-1782), and his father John Wood the Elder (1704-1754), were the architects who had the most influence on the building of Bath in the Georgian era. Between them the pair designed the most iconic of Bath's seven elegant crescents - The Royal Crescent - as well as The Circus, Queen Square, Gay Street, The Royal Mineral Water Hospital and Prior Park, private residence of Ralph Allen, about whom more shortly, and much more. The Woods' designs pioneered Bath's neo-classical, Palladian grandeur, still so much in evidence today. When it was built in 1775, The Royal Crescent was on the edge of the city, with no other buildings in front of it to spoil the view for the residents. The same cannot be said today, but I can report that Barton Fields, as shown above, have indeed never been built on.

The newly completed Circus in the late 1700s

Another person strongly linked to Bath's Georgian soul is Richard 'Beau' Nash (1674-1761), Master of Ceremonies from 1704 onwards. This was an unofficial title, but it put Beau Nash into a position of tremendous social influence, and helped make Bath the height of fashion in its heyday in the early 1700s. An early career in the army and then as a barrister clearly didn't suit the fun-loving Beau Nash, who had a gambling problem and lived with a string of mistresses. As MC of Bath, he would meet new arrivals, decide who was 'in' and who was not, broker marriages, arrange balls, keep a check on the worst gamblers, and accompany lone women to dances. He is also credited with encouraging a break down in the strict social boundaries between the upper and middle classes in Bath, although this might have backfired on him slightly as Bath fell out of fashion towards the end of the century, came to be seen as vulgar and old hat, the haunt of spinsters and invalids, and to be passed over by fashionistas in favour of Lyme Regis and other seaside resorts.

One more Georgian notable for you: Ralph Allen (1693-1764). Allen started out as a clerk in the Post Office at a young age, and by the age of 19, in 1712, became the postmaster of Bath. With a series of reforms and innovations, he increased the office's profits and reach to such an extent that he became a wealthy man. He bought up stone quarries in the local area, recognising the growing demand for the honey-coloured Bath stone in bringing the Woods' designs to life, and thus became a very wealthy man indeed. On a hill to the south east of Bath sits the Sham Castle, an elaborate folly built to give Allen something to look at from his townhouse in the city.

In 1742, Ralph Allen hired John Wood the Younger to build Prior Park, a Palladian mansion to the south of Bath, which he later moved in to. It is in a truly wonderful setting, with long reaching views of the city and a quintessential C18th garden, designed with the help of Capability Brown, which has one of only four Palladian bridges of its kind in the world. The house itself now houses a school, but the National Trust has the gardens, and they're lovely to visit. http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/prior-park-landscape-garden

The bridge has lots of interesting old graffiti, if you like that kind of thing (which I do) - showing that whilst standards of handwriting have declined over the years, standards of behaviour are much the same as they ever were!

There are so many Georgian wonders in Bath - don't miss the Florentine Pulteney Bridge, either, completed in 1774. Palladian again, this time designed by Robert Adam, the bridge has shops on along either side of its span across the River Avon - but its history goes back a lot further than that. The reason anybody came here in the first place was for the hot water springs, first settled by the Romans who named the city Aquae Sulis - meaning the waters of Sulis. Sulis was the native British goddess to whom the locals had built a shrine on the site. Britain's only hot water thermal springs, the waters were soon enclosed within a huge Roman bath and temple complex, now wonderfully excavated and fascinating to visit (incidentally, you can bathe in the hot spring water yourself, at nearby Thermae Spa - the rooftop pool has wonderful views of the city. You can drink it too, just like a Georgian invalid, in the Roman Baths visitor centre, although I don't think there's much to be gained by it - very eggy.).

The Roman Bath complex

Thanks to Georgian fashion and bombing in WWII, the medieval city of Bath is harder to spot. The Abbey, now in a late C15th form, sits on top of two older churches, and is very beautiful inside - fan vaulting galore. Sally Lunn's Historic Eating House is most famous for being the only place to get a Bath Bun - like a brioche, and very tasty - but for me the real treat in going there is to go down into the basement museum, which recreates kitchens of the past, and where you can see open excavations going down through the centuries, proving that there has been a house on that spot for over a thousand years. The medieval city walls and gates have sadly gone, but many houses in the area to the south of and immediately around the abbey are in fact medieval buildings, hunkered down behind tacked-on Georgian fronts.

I've got this far and not mentioned the Kennet and Avon canal, or Sydney Gardens, or William Herschel, or the Pump Rooms, or any one of a hundred other historical things to see in Bath. It is truly a unique city with a remarkable history, and an absolute must-see for anybody interested in our Roman or Georgian history.