Chris Nickson's Blog, page 24

Book Bargain

I don’t often put up on here that one of my books is on sale very cheaply (mostly because they aren’t, I suppose). But for once…The Dead On Leave, set in 1936 during the Depression in Leeds, when Oswald Mosley brought his Fascist Blackshirts to town and was forced to leave with his tail between his legs, with a body in his wake, is on sale as an ebook for next to nothing – 99p in the UK, $1.32 in the US.

I was surprised – the publisher hadn’t told me, and it’s evidently just for a limited time – because the paperback isn’t out until June 18.

Your regular outlets will have it, if you fancy a dip into historical crime, but the Amazon UK link is here. Make up your own mind about the cover, but don’t judge the book by it, please.

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Breaking The Old Bonds

Fortunes could change quickly in Victorian England. In a single generation some men could leap beyond tradition. And some women could find power and independence.

It’s hardly a secret that most of my books are set in Leeds. But my family, on both sides, goes back generations here. Leeds and family are pretty much the same thing to me. But how did those ancestors of mine live?

Its turns out to be a question with a few surprising answers.

My great-great-great-great grandfather Isaac Nickson was born in 1785 and arrived in Leeds from Malton somewhere around 1826/7, with his wife Jane and six children (two more would be born here). In 1823 he’d been listed in the Malton trade directory as a butcher, with premises on Newbiggin, a trade he carried on in Leeds. How much he made of himself is debatable, at least from his shifting addresses: East Bar, a shop and house on Timble Bridge, 43, Marsh Lane, Garland’s Fold. By 1840, Jane had left him, moving to Rothwell with two of his daughters.

                          By Timble Bridge, late 19th century

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But things grow more interesting with the next generation.

Of his five sons, four became painters and paper hangers. It was a theme that would continue for some of the men into the 20th century. Others had similarly unskilled occupations – heeler and boot repair, tailor’s cutter. Poor men, in other words. My father and his brother were the first to have secondary education, in the 1920s, purely because they won scholarships.

Isaac’s oldest son, also named Isaac (b.1815), and younger brother George (b.1820), were in business together, with premises in Birch’s Yard, 4, Lowerhead Row, advertising themselves as House and Sign Painters, Paper Hangers, Marble Painter Manufacturers.

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George, who married Mary Caroline Hewson (known as Caroline) in 1839, was at Crimble Row, close to Camp Road.

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Crimble Row, 20th century

Another brother, William Isaac (b.1824), was also a painter, as was youngest sibling, John (b.1827), who lived first on Lower Brunswick Street, then Vandyke Street, off Regent Street, and had his premises at Ship Inn Yard, off Briggate

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Ship Inn Yard

George and Isaac seemed to go their separate ways before George’s death in 1867. Caroline took over George’s business, very rare for a woman in those days, and in the 1871 census she’s shown as employing seven men and two boys – obviously a successful woman. She was living at 200, North Street, and had one servant, 15-year-old Elizabeth Strafford. George was buried at Beckett Street Cemetery, plot 5932. In 1877, Caroline married George Heuthwaite, a widower of Hunslet Road who made his living as a dyer, and she died in Hunslet 20 years later.

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Entrance to Birch’s Yard on left, past Dobson’s

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North Street

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Gravestone for George and Caroline’s son, Thomas. Beckett St. Cemetery

Caroline’s son, Robert Hewson Nickson, probably took over the business and made it pay well, with premises in Lonsdale’s Yard on the Lowerhead Row (later known as Bradley’s Yard).

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On his death in 1893 he left £331 19s 5d over £40,000 in today’s money, a staggering figure for a working-class man. Yet they still lived in an ordinary terraced house on Stamford Street, although they had a servant, Edith K. Simmons, aged 12.

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Stamford Street

In 1901, Robert’s widow, Clara, is listed as a painter and decorator, so she took over the business, although two years later she’d sold it and had a boot making business on Roundhay Road.

Isaac obviously as well as his brother, because in 1868, still living on Wade Lane, he was on the electoral roll, owning property worth more than £50, a large amount. In these days of a universal franchise, it’s difficult to believe how restricted the vote was in the 19th century.

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Wade Street, 20th Century

Isaac Jr.’s son William Robert was yet another painter. Born in 1837, he learned the trade properly, and the 1861 census lists him as a journeyman painter, so he’d obviously completed his apprenticeship. At that point he was living on Wade Street with his father (although in the census he’s shown as a servant, strangely, and his uncle William is also shown there, again as a servant, although he has his own census listing with his family on Elm Street). But by 1868, he, too, was on the electoral roll.

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William Robert had his business premises in Wheatsheaf Yard, off Briggate.

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Entrance to Wheatsheaf Yard

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Grave of William Robert and three of his children, Beckett Street Cemetery

He died in 1890, but the 1891 census shows his widow Anna (or Hannah) Elizabeth living on the very respectable Ramsden Terrace and running the painting and decorating business – not bad for someone, it was noted, who could not write.

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Ramsden Terrace at top of picture

Her son (yet another Isaac) lived with her, following in his father’s footsteps as a painter and decorator.

These are just a few instances, of course. But they show that in Victorian Leeds, it was possible for working men to make the leap across the class barrier to wealth and property. Yet what strikes me as remarkable is the fact that not once, but three times, women took over the businesses, and very male businesses at that. They didn’t give up, didn’t immediately sell them off. And they did it all successfully. In a time when that wasn’t a woman’s role, they showed that women could do it, and do it well. It was possible, for some, to transcend their origins and traditional roles.

Of course, not all the brothers did so well. William Isaac, my great-great-great grandfather, married Charlotte Berry in 1844. They had two children, John William and Martha, and lived on Elm Street, just off York Road in the Bank.

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William died in 1883, with no money for a funeral, not even enough for a guinea grave. He’s buried in an unmarked plot at Beckett Street Cemetery. Charlotte moved in with Margaret and her husband in Louisa Street in Hunslet. She died in 1889, and is also buried in a pauper’s grave at Beckett Street.

So, to those who have occasionally expressed surprise that Annabelle Harper in my Victorian series of books would be able to run a business so well, all I can say is that the precedent is right there. No wonder I see it as natural; it’s in the family.

All street images from Leodis.

The 1930s Return, Leeds Style – The Dead On Leave

I was shocked and very pleasantly surprised by how many of you read an extract from my upcoming book last week. Right, I thought, maybe they fancy a bit more…

It’s’ 1936, and the Depression has hit Leeds hard. Oswald Mosley has brought his Blackshirts to town, and they’ve been chased off from Holbeck Moor with their tails between their legs by 30,000 Lioners. But there’s a body left behind, and Detective Sergeant Urban Raven has to find his way through the fog of politics and sorrow to discover who the killer might be.

The Dead On Leave is out in paperback on June 18, £7.99

The first man stood on his step and listened as Raven told him about the murder. He was in his sixties, with a shock of pure white hair and a thick moustache the colour of nicotine stains, with deep lines etched into his face. He spat out onto the cobbles, said, ‘About bloody time,’ and closed the door.

The next name was three houses further along Kepler Grove. A young fellow this time, with bulging frog eyes and a bouncing Adam’s apple. He looked downcast at the news, but nothing more. The same at the next few addresses. No grief. No one here was going to miss Frank Benson.

Round the corner on Gledhow Place, a man named Galloway cradled his infant daughter, heard what the sergeant had to say, then snorted.

‘You know what he was like?’ the man asked and Raven shook his head. ‘A real sod, that’s what. He’d dock you for owt. Reckoned he was God an’ all.’

‘What do you mean?’

Galloway tucked the girl’s head against his shoulder, tenderly stroking her hair.

‘About a month back, I were expecting him round. He didn’t even knock, just opened the front door and barged right in like he owned the place, looking around, checking in the cupboards and asking if there was any change in my circumstances. No how do you do, no by your leave, no respect. I told him to get hisself right out again. “My wife could have been washing at the sink, you bugger,” I said. I picked up the poker and waved it at him. That got him back outside right quick and tapping politely. “Any change in things?” he asked when I let him in. “Aye,” I said. “For the worse.” He took a glance in the pantry, and when he was leaving, he told me, “I won’t forget this.” He didn’t, neither. Someone told him I’d been making a little repairing boots and they stopped my relief. Five weeks. Still got three to go. Benson relished telling me, too.’

‘You realise you’ve just made yourself a suspect,’ Raven said, and Galloway shrugged.

‘Arrest me, then. At least you’d have to feed me in jail.’

‘Where were you yesterday?’

‘Right here. Where the hell else would I be?’

‘You’re in the clear, then.’ Not that he suspected the man; Galloway was far too open, his heart showing loud and bright on his sleeve.

He heard similar tales at other houses. Family members who’d been forced to move into lodgings because they were working and their income would cut assistance to the others.

‘The truth is that half of them haven’t moved at all, of course.’ He sat in the scullery of a house on Anderson Mount, a wooden rack in front of the range with clothes drying slowly. Ernie Haynes was a member of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement. Thoughtful, soft spoken, in his fifties, he seemed to have given up on the idea of ever having a job again. There were plenty more in the same boat. The unemployable. ‘They stay out all the hours they can then sneak home to eat and sleep. Benson liked to try and catch them. As if it was a game.’

‘No one seems to have a good word for him.’

‘How can you, for someone like that?’ Haynes wondered.

*

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‘None of them even said “poor man”,’ Noble told him as they drove back into town, along Mabgate and past the mills and factories that stood empty and forlorn. Rubbish lined the roads; no one cared. ‘Not an ounce of sympathy.’

‘He didn’t seem to have much of that himself.’

‘He’s dead, though.’

‘We all will be some day,’ Raven said. ‘That doesn’t guarantee respect.’

‘It seems wrong, that’s all.’

It was the way of the world. Nothing more. People spoke ill of the living, the dead, of everyone. They enjoyed it. Some revelled in it.

In the office, he passed Mortimer the list, telling him what they’d learned and watching him grimace.

‘We’ll need to get the bobbies onto the rest,’ Raven said. ‘There are far too many for us.’

The inspector nodded and took a piece of paper from the top of a pile.

‘The post-mortem report. Benson was strangled. Whoever it was stood behind him to do it.’

Raven thought of the thin red line on the man’s throat.

‘What did they use?’ he asked. ‘Could the doctor tell?’

‘An electrical flex, he says. He found some of that fabric they put around the wire in the wound. There was some under Benson’s fingernails, too. He must have been trying to pull the cord away from his throat.’ He shuddered. ‘Bloody awful way to go.’

It was. Slow, knowing you were going to die. It didn’t matter how many shades of a bastard Benson had been in his job, that was a terrible death.

*

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The inspector drove as if it made him uncomfortable. He was wary, slow, too cautious by half. Going through Sheepscar, they passed a group of men in old clothes standing around a fire in a metal barrel on a corner, nowhere better to go.

‘The dead on leave,’ Mortimer said, so softly he could have been talking to himself.

‘What, sir?’

‘Something my wife heard on the wireless.’ He gave a quick smile and a shake of his head. ‘Someone was talking about all the unemployed. Said they were like the dead on leave. It struck me, that’s all.’

It was good, Raven had to agree. But it wasn’t just those without jobs. What about the fools and the cuckolds? They lived in that same sad, shifting world, too.

He glanced up the hill to Little London. That was what they called the area, but none of the streets were paved with gold. Instead, plenty of the cobbles were missing and fully half the houses were slums. Dilapidated, in need of knocking down, like so much of Leeds. Happen somebody would drag the whole city into the twentieth century before it was halfway over.

Some News…And Something New

For one week, I’m taking a break from going on about The Tin God. But I do have some news that’s related…

I’m over the moon to tell you that just yesterday I heard that my publisher loves the next book in the Tom Harper series. It’s called The Leaden Heart, and it’s very different – at least, I hope it is. It’ll be published next March in the UK.

Before that, though, there will be other things. One of them is The Dead On Leave, which will be out next month. It’s set in Leeds – of course – in the autumn of 1936 during the brief rise of British fascism under Oswald Mosley.

A week before the Battle of Cable Street in London, Mosley brought his Blackshirts to Leeds. They wanted permission to march through the Leylands, the Jewish area of the city. It was refused. Instead, they had to settle for a march out from the city centre to a rally on Holbeck Moor.

There were about a thousand of them. They were met by a crowd of about 30,000 – a beautiful mix of Communists, Jews, and people who objected to the threat fascism offered.

No guesses as to who came out victorious. But for Detective Sergeant Urban Raven (in case you’re curious about the name, I had a great uncle called Urban Bowling, and this is a faint nod to him, although he died before I was born) the duty there was just the start of things…

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He was one of fifty plain clothes officers in the crowd, there to try and break up any trouble before it could become serious. They didn’t have a chance, not out here, and all of them knew it. It was like being on the terraces for a match at Elland Road. Thousands upon thousands, so close together that it was hard to move. Even more than the communists had predicted, he was certain of that. And there’d been hundreds lining the route as he walked here from town, all of them ready, all of them with anger on their faces. Mosley and his fascists were going to have a rough ride. He pitied the bobbies who had to march alongside them. He turned to Noble.

‘Well, Danny, made your will yet?’ He could see the worry in the young man’s eyes. That was good; a little fear kept you alert and alive. All around, people were stirring, shouting, singing. They had stones at their feet, an arsenal of weapons. The crowd was primed. And the Blackshirts weren’t even in sight yet.

They came soon enough, though. He could hear them long before they were in view. The clatter of marching boots on the cobbles. Even louder, the catcalls and yelling from the crowd. He glanced at Noble. The lad swallowed hard, his face pale.

‘Don’t you worry,’ Raven assured him. ‘We’ll be fine.’

He looked around, feeling the people stir. Somewhere out there the police had three sharpshooters. He just prayed they wouldn’t be needed.

*

Give Mosley some credit, he thought. The man didn’t cower behind his supporters. He strode, unafraid, at the head of the parade, back straight, looking like the aristocrat he was. Sir Oswald Mosley. A carefully tailored black uniform to match his looks, just like a film star with that little moustache.

The others were right behind him. At the front, the bugle and drum corps, their music drowned out by voices. After them, the shock troops, the I Squad, all of them smirking like thugs who’d done their share of prison time. Then the believers, most of them terrified. A spectacle of ugliness.

Time, Raven thought. It was time.

*

It started almost as soon as Mosley began to speak. He’d just announced that ‘the war on want is the war we want’ when the first stone arced through the air.

A moment’s silence as people followed it with their eyes. It landed short of the stage, catching a Blackshirt on the head. That was the signal. Suddenly the air was full of branches, cobbles prised up from the roads. Bricks. Potatoes with razor blades protruding from the skins.

Raven knew his duty. He was here to arrest those who were disturbing the peace. Sod that; he wasn’t even about to try. This lot would tear him apart if he produced his handcuffs.

Bloodlust, that was what it was. Frenzy. Missiles flew both ways. Mosley kept speaking until a stone caught him in the face and he crumpled, his guards quickly gathering around to protect him.

One of the Blackshirt musicians waded into the crowd, swinging his bugle like a weapon and cracking some heads. Too far away to reach, though. Everyone had surged forward, packed so tight that breathing was hard and movement impossible.

Noble was a good six feet away now, shoved around like flotsam by all the bodies surrounding him and looking scared. Never mind, Raven thought, he was trained, he could look after himself. The best thing they could do was try to identify the worst troublemakers. Later, once things had calmed and everyone had gone home, they could go and arrest them.

He glanced up again and the fascists were forming ranks to march away. They hadn’t lasted long. Mosley was still there, blood flowing from the cut on his face. The men and women with him looked more ragged now. Stunned, bruised, battered as they left. And the worst was yet to come.

People would be waiting on the route with stones and more. More would be up on the roofs. It was going to be brutal. Here on the moor though, he couldn’t do a damned thing about that, and he was glad to be away from it all.

Men were helping the wounded as the crowd began to disperse. Bloody handkerchiefs held to heads, a few carted off unconscious. Weapons lay strewn across the grass. It was like the aftermath of a battle. An air of silence and desolation hung over the Holbeck Moor. All those walking proudly away or just limping – women along with the men – had that curious glint of battle in their eyes. A few sat on the grass, smoking cigarettes and looking as if they weren’t sure what had happened.

His part was done. He knelt, picking twigs and small pieces of glass from the turn-ups of his trousers. Noble was talking to a man who stood cradling his wrist, nodding blankly as he spoke. Raven started to walk towards them. Then he heard the sound and stopped.

In the distance, the piercing shriek of a police whistle.

Urban Raven began to run.

Noble was younger and fitter, he had longer legs. He sprinted, following the sound. All Raven could do was trail behind, panting. On the road, the protestors had already faded away like smoke. He could hear angry shouts in the distance, but they might almost be in another county. He breathed hard, keeping Noble in sight as he pounded along before turning onto a street with a Bile Beans advertisement fading on the end of the gable. No motor cars around here, he thought. Tram or shank’s mare, that was the choice. A bicycle for the fortunate ones.

People had gathered around a squat brick building. The privies. All the houses here would share outdoor toilets. Breathless, he shouldered his way through the crowd, watching the anger and insults vanish as soon as they saw his face.

A harried constable was trying to keep everyone back. There was dust on his uniform and a small cut on his cheek above a thin moustache. The tall helmet had a dent in the high crown. Caught up in the march, Raven thought.

‘What is it?’

‘At the back, sir.’ He straightened to attention and started to raise his arm for a salute. The sergeant waved it away and marched past, Noble right on his heels.

The body lay in the tight, stinking space between the back of the privy and a brick wall. It must have been dragged there. A man, just beginning to run to fat, he could see that much. One arm was raised, covering his face.

He could pick out the Burton’s label in the suit. Decent leather soles on his shoes, not worn through to holes. Not rich then, but not poor either; someone in work. And murdered. Absolutely no doubt about that.

‘Get that uniformed copper,’ Raven ordered. ‘If this is his beat, he might know who this is.’ Noble seemed rooted to the spot, staring at the corpse. Of course, his first murder. Death might be common, but killing was rare. There’d been three in Raven’s fifteen years on the force. Four now, he corrected himself. He gave Noble a nudge. ‘Copper,’ he said. ‘After that, find a police box and call it in. Tell them we need the crew out here.’

‘Sorry, Sarge.’

Alone, he squatted, trying for a better look at the body. They couldn’t move him until the evidence boys had been out to take their photographs and measurements and he couldn’t reach the pockets to find a wallet. Damn.

Raven breathed through his mouth, small gulps of air, trying to ignore the stench. There had been places like this every day when he walked the beat, but he’d forgotten how bad they stank.

‘You wanted me, sir?’ the bobby asked.

‘Yes.’ He stood. ‘Is this your manor?’

‘No, Sarge. I’m PC 7862, Jones, over in Beeston. They just had me here for the Blackshirts.’ A tiny glimmer of envy in his voice as he said the name.

‘Have you ever seen this man before?’

The constable squinted and swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing hard before he shook his head.

‘I don’t think so, sir. Can’t see his face properly but he doesn’t look familiar.’

‘Good. You stay here and keep them all at bay.’ Raven glanced at the wall. ‘Better watch that, too, or there’ll be boys over it before you can say Jack Robinson.’

So Who Is Annabelle Harper?

Annabelle Harper has really stepped into the limelight with The Tin God. It’s interesting that many reviewers and readers have seen it as her book, rather than a Tom Harper crime novel.

She’s been there all through the series of course. But for those who don’t know about her past, a little piece of fiction to very quickly tell her story…

Leeds, 1898

Annabelle Harper dusted the mantelpiece. By rights it needed doing every day, but she didn’t have the time. Running the Victoria public house downstairs, her work as a Poor Law Guardian and having a six-year-old daughter took up every waking hour. And with her husband being a Detective Superintendent, there was no knowing when he’d be at home.

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Leeds. It got everywhere. Soot and grit on the windowsills, in the carpets, in the air…it was a losing battle to keep anything clean. Hang out the washing and it was covered in smuts by the time you took it in.

That was the price for prosperity, people said. Maybe they were right. But there was precious little wealth in Sheepscar, just people doing their best to survive, and plenty going under. Yet folk believed the lies, and the ones who told them grew richer.

She picked up the photograph in the silver frame, wiped it carefully, then held it at arm’s length and studied it. How long since she’d really looked at those faces. There she was, carefully posed, back straight as she sat in the chair, wearing the first expensive gown she’d ever owned, her face so young and serious. Standing behind her, one hand resting on her shoulder, Harry Atkinson, her first husband. Much older, the usual twinkle in his eye hidden as he stared seriously at the camera. Thirteen years he’d been gone now. She still thought about him, but only from time to time these days; he seemed like someone from another life. Well, he was, she told herself with a smile, he was. But a good life. Without him, she’d never have had all this. She’d never have met Tom Harper and never have had Mary. You never knew, she thought. You never knew what life was going to do.

Odd flashes of those times ran through her mind. Harry and his wife Elizabeth taking her on as a servant. Elizabeth dying of cancer, vanish right in front of them, inch by inch. The strange courtship she had with Harry, the quick honeymoon in Scarborough, the first time she’d ever seen the sea. The way he taught her how to run a business and how she surprised herself by having a knack for it.

Harry was older, he had a good thirty years older, a man who look at life with his eyes wide open. He’d prepared her for when he’d be gone. And then it happened. Quietly, in his sleep. As soon as Annabelle woke, she knew the life had gone from him. She reached over and stroked his cheek.

‘Oh, you,’ she said as she started to cry. ‘Oh, you.’

The only thing she remembered with absolute clarity preparing for the funeral. The casket was already in the hearse. She just had a few minutes alone up here with his ghost.

Staring at the mirror. The way the light flickered in the gas mantle, reflecting in the jet buttons of her dress. In black, from head to toe. Even the lace and the petticoats and the new leather boots that pinched her feet.

She’d picked the funeral hat off the back of the chair and arranged it on her head, spreading the veil in front of her face. Her hand was raised, ready to pin it all in place, when she tore it off and sent the hat spinning across the room.

She turned to the photograph on the mantelpiece. A shiny silver frame. Herself, sitting with her husband’s hand on her shoulder. Mr. and Mrs. Atkinson.

‘You sod,’ she said quietly. ‘You bloody sod.’

No hand to steady her now.

They’d all be waiting downstairs in the pub. Harry’s sister and her children, Dan the barman, the two servants, and all the neighbours and friends from round Sheepscar. The hearse was outside, the horses with their sober ebony plumes.

She breathed deeply, gathered up the hat and set it in place again, hearing the footsteps on the stairs, then the tentative knock on the door.

‘Annabelle, are you ready, luv?’ Bessie, her sister-in-law. ‘Only it’s time.’

A last glance in the mirror and at the picture.

‘Yes,’ Annabelle Atkinson said. ‘I’m coming.’

 

A final swipe with the duster and she put the picture back on the mantelpiece, adjusting the angle once, twice, a third time until it seemed just right. She took a deep breath. Then she heard the small footsteps on the stairs and her daughter was shouting at the top of her lungs.

‘Mam, can you give me a hand?’

She shook her head, putting all the past behind her again.

‘Yes,’ Annabelle Harper said. ‘I’m coming.’

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The Tin God is out now in the UK, and on July 1 elsewhere. I hope you’ll buy it – and please, leave a review somewhere. It all helps.

Thank you.

The Tin God Launch – The Film

I know many of you don’t live in Leeds, so there was no chance of you attending the full launch of The Tin God on Saturday. And for some who do live here, well, it was a hot, sunny weekend, a Bank Holiday; there were other commitments.

I asked a young filmmaker who’s won awards for her work to document the event.

She came up with an absolutely wonderful piece of work, and I’m grateful.

The Reality Of Victorian Leeds

I write crime novels set in Leeds. Historical crime.

That’s hardly a revelation, I know.

The crimes are the spine of my books. But I try to put a little more meat on the bones. The relationships between the characters and the changing face of Leeds itself.

It fascinates me, I try to make it a character in itself, and I find it vitally important. Nowhere is that change more apparent than in the late Victorian series with Detective Superintendent Tom Harper and his wife Annabelle

He’s grown up with the changes in Leeds. By 1890, when Gods of Gold is set, the first organised slum clearance was already underway, a number of the yards and courts between Briggate and Lands Lane already demolished to make way for Thornton’s Arcade and Queens Arcade. Before that, things had simply gown in the space, the original plots built over, the poor crammed away, out of sight.

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Many of the places where he’d walked a beat when he started out as a constable had vanished by the time he was a Detective Inspector. The city – and it did finally become a city in 1893 – had a better water supply, the laws across England had changed to give children a little more education before they were sent out to work (although families still had to pay for any secondary education, something most could afford). That same year, Leeds was described as “a great hive of workers…whose products have the whole wide world for their market…her nine hundred factories and workshops, monuments of the wealth, industry and mercantile prestige.”

The workers who created those products saw little of that wealth, of course. They worked long hours for very little money. Few benefits, and any semblance of compassion depended on the owners of the factories. Between them textiles and engineering employed around have the workforce in Leeds – men and women.

It was a place with 23 tanneries and 200 cabinet makers. Leeds was changing, but for many, that change was happening slowly. Not many years before, 50 dead animals were pulled out of the river every single day. A Royal Commission heard that “hundred and thousands of tonnes per annum of ashes, slag, cinders, refuse from mines, chemical works, dyeing, scouring and fulling, worsted and woollen stuff, shin cleaning and tanning, slaughter, house garbage and sewerage from towns and houses” ended up in the Aire. Only around 3,000 houses in Leeds had flushing water closets. For everyone else, there was the midden.

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That was the reality of the Leeds Tom and Annabelle Harper knew as they grew up, even when they were adults. The grand buildings – the Town Hall, the Corn Exchange –  might have been the public face of Victorian prosperity. Peek behind the curtain, though, and the reality, quite literally, stank.

No surprise, perhaps, that contagious diseases were rife. People died of typhus, whooping cough, diptheria, smallpox, diarrhoea – things we barely recognise today. Advances in public health, in sanitation and some of the housing were greatly lowering those figures by 1890, but they still existed.

A new Leeds was beginning to emerge. But it would still take many years to finally arrive.

The average wage for workers was a little over £42 a year by 1900, up from £34 in 1874. That’s an average; many, especially in unskilled jobs would earn much less, and women far, far less. Half the country’s income was taken home by one-ninth of the population, the kind of disparity still prevalent today.

The cost of living for the working-class is perfectly encapsulated in the broadside ballad “How Five-And-Twenty Shillings Are Expended In A Week”. It’s humorous, but it makes its point sharply. So many people lived hand-to-mouth. Every week, every month, every year.

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The very poor relied on outdoor relief (benefits) or the workhouse when they couldn’t look after themselves or their children. That’s the world Annabelle sees when she runs to be a Poor Law Guardian in The Tin God, the sixth book in the series. From 1873-1896, there had been a global economic depression, felt hard in Britain, especially in the industrial centres of the North. Poverty was rife, competition for jobs.

This was their Leeds, their reality. I’m still trying to grasp its essence. Maybe one day I’ll succeed.

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How Annabelle Changed Me

A couple of things have surprised me about The Tin God. Of course, I’m over the moon about the reviews it’s being receiving, far better than I could ever have expected.

I set out to write a crime novel, a continuation of the Tom Harper series. And really, that’s what I did. But what people seem to see as the heart of the book is Annabelle’s fight to be elected as a Poor Law Guardian. That astonished me, but also gladdened my heart. It’s important, it’s vital, and it means, perhaps, that I’ve written something that reaches out beyond genre to deal with something bigger. As a writer, I don’t think you can ever aim to do that. If it happens, it’s serendipity.

The book has also changed me a little, made me more aware, more vocal on issues. And since I completed it, I’ve been assisting the curator of an exhibition called The Vote Before The Vote, about the Leeds Victorian women who worked for equality and the Parliamentary franchise, perfectly apt for the centenary of some women receiving the vote. Most of these figures are unknown, written out of suffrage history, and they deserve so much more than that. The exhibition runs for the month of May in Room 700 at Leeds Central Library, and there will be a website with all the information.

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I’m very, very proud to be involved with this. I feel I’m contributing something to the history of my city. Happy, too, as the official launch for The Tin God takes place during the exhibition. And especially because Annabelle has her own board there as part of it all, melding fact and fiction. Emblematic of the working-class women who were involved in the long struggle. She’s become a part of history in a very tangible way, and I suspect that somewhere, she’s beaming with pride, although she’d never admit it.

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On that note, I’ll give you a little from one of her election speeches, and hope it makes you want to buy the book. If you’re anywhere close to Leeds on Saturday, May 5, between 1-2 pm, come to the launch. There may well be more than you expect – and you’ll have the opportunity to see an important exhibition.

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This takes place after someone has set fire to a hall when Annabelle is set to give a speech. Instead, she addresses the crowd out on the street.

‘This happened because someone is scared of women. Not just as Poor Law Guardians or on School Boards. He’s afraid of women. Frightened of half the population. What is there to worry him? Do you know? Because I’m blowed if I do. Just three years ago there were fewer than two hundred women as Poor Law Guardians in the whole of England. Two hundred out of a total of thirty thousand. It’s not exactly taking this over, is it? We want to increase that number here. People believe we should. Important people. The Archbishop of Canterbury, no less, thinks there should be more of us. I’ll tell you what the Secretary of State for India said: “No Board of Guardians is properly constituted when it is composed entirely of men. Having regard to the fact that so large a proportion of the population of our workhouses are women and children, it seems vital to me that women should take their part in Poor Law administration.” Even the men at the top of government and the church think we belong. The one who set fire to this place – to your hall – he’s swimming against history. Women are running for the offices they can hold, and some of them are going to be elected. If not this time, then next, or the one after. We’ve started and we’re not going to stop. That tide he’s swimming against, it’s going to drown him.’ Harper watched as she looked around the faces, her breath steaming in the air. She was smiling. ‘I’ll tell you something else. You vote for me, and you can help send him packing. More importantly, you’ll be electing someone who wants to help the poor, not punish them. You there, John Winters, Frank Hepworth, Catherine Simms. You all know me. You know where I live. Maybe the Temperance people might not like the landlady of a public house holding office. Yes,’ she told them, ‘I’ve heard that grumble. But you know that when I start something, I do it properly.’ She paused and drew in a breath, straightening her back so she seemed taller. ‘You’re ratepayers. You can vote. I’m asking you to put your X next to my name. Thank you.’

And remember. vote for Annabelle Harper!

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Pen Work

Yes, The Tin God is out, and I’m overwhelmed by the reviews it’s received so far. I’ll be going on about that book again very soon, I know.

In the meantime, though, a short story that came to me this morning. No idea how it popped into my mind. And not all of it is true. I’m not about to tell you which bits are false, though…

I never told you

I lifted the nib from the paper, watching the ink colour dark blue against the white. A fountain pen, the first time I’d written with one in years. It was old, expensive once, and probably antique now, the better part of half a century old. It had been father’s, of course. One more thing he’d bought that we couldn’t really afford. But then, he was a man who’d occasionally spend money we didn’t have. Like the watch that cost far more than most men made in a week, or the baby grand piano that hardly fitted in the front room, and big Wolseley car with leather seats and a walnut dashboard. The type of thing that drove my mother to silent despair.

And this was what remained. Fifteen years since he died. The fountain had passed to me. I’d put it in a drawer and just found it again the week before. Then some cleaning and finding somewhere to buy real ink. That wasn’t as difficult as I’d imagined; apparently penmanship making a comeback. Artisan copperplate. Retro chic, of a sort.

What to write, though? That was a good question. Weighing the pen in my hand, the way it slid comfortably between my fingers, it seemed to demand something special.

I’m a left-hander. We’re not built for writing with instruments like this. We either have to turn our hand crabwise or hold it in an unnatural position to avoid blotting everything with the side of our hands.

I’m old enough that I learned to write with the old type of steel nib that had to be dipped into an inkwell. A relic of Victorian times, barely a step up from a goose quill. The year I turned ten, a teacher told me in June that I needed to learn to write without the awkward blotting before I returned to school in September. I did. I sweated the summer away, practising. At that age you don’t question authority; you adapt. I still write that way, not that I actually write much anymore. All my work is on the computer now. Yet I still remember the relief when I started A-level classes and we could take notes and submit essays in ball point.

The last thing I wrote with a fountain pen was a letter. To my girlfriend of the time, quite formally breaking things off. We’d been going out for almost six months, almost an eternity at that age. Long enough that people thought of us as a single unit – DaveandJane.

She went to the girl’s school next to our boy’s grammar. I’d wait at the bottom of the hill in the morning so we could walk up together. Then later, in the afternoon, back the way we came, talking about – I don’t remember.

Truth to tell, there’s very little that I do remember. Her face won’t even come into focus in my memory. It should. After all, she was the first girl I believed I loved. We lost our virginity to each other, a scrambled, dismal affair on my bedroom carpet that lasted seven seconds, if I’m being generous. Yet the years have turned her hazy. Gauzy. Try to touch the memory and my fingers slip right through it. I’m not sure if that’s a talent or a failing.

But…

Those were days of longing. Innocent days, still a couple of years away from discovering that sex could be oral, too. Jane went on holiday for a fortnight with her parents. I pined and kept a diary – in ball point – and played “Wild World” over and over.

We’d stared going out after she split up with a boy in the year above me. It was one of those things she never wanted to discuss. No comparisons, no recollections. I never persisted; some dogs were safer left sleeping.

But after six months, I heard a whisper. A quiet word from a friend. The kind of thing to start the paranoia twitching. Someone had seen her in town, sitting in a café, talking to her ex.

Ask her? Confront her? I was sixteen, I didn’t have that much confidence. Or perhaps I was scared of an answer I didn’t want to hear. Fear seemed to crowd in around me, especially after another friend said they’d seen her with him at the cinema.

I sat in my room, playing guitar and waiting for inspiration.

We still walked to and from school together. When I looked in her eyes, everything seemed quite normal, quite content. But was that some reluctance in her kiss? One weekend she said she wouldn’t be able to see me – relatives were visiting. Yet when I accidentally strolled past on the Saturday afternoon, her parents were working in the garden. They didn’t see me, no conversation.

My throat went dry, I felt sick.

At home, I took a sheet of notepaper and picked up the fountain pen.

I made up an elaborate tale. I’d been seeing a girl from another school for three weeks. I apologised for cheating, but now I was admitting it, and it was only fair to end things. I knew Jane was wonderful, but this was the only right way to end things. I apologised again, waited until the ink was dry, folded the paper and put it in an envelope. I knew the address by heart. I still do, for that matter.

Strike first. It was a matter of adolescent pride. Walk away with my head held high or be known as the boy who was dumped.

I left early for school on Monday morning. She wasn’t waiting by the parade of shops after the final bell rang. It was over. It was done. The next I saw of her, she was holding hands with her older boy. He saw me and smirked.

In sixty-three years, I’ve told my share of lies. Hard to live that long without a few. But that was the first big one. I put the pen to paper again.

I never told you the truth.

Looking Ahead For Tom And Annabelle Harper?

It’s ironic, really. I always swore I’d never write a crime novel set in Victorian times. There era was overdone, with Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins – even Dickens – and all who’ve followed in their footsteps. And now I have six of them out there, plus a seventh just completed.

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It still makes me shake my head. Especially the reviews that have come in so far for The Tin God. I’ve created something that people seem to love…

Actually, it all began with a painting by Atkinson Grimshaw, the Leeds artist. A woman standing by the canal, holding a bundle. The water is almost empty because of a strike, the smoky skyline of Leeds tries to peer through behind her. She’s alone, just staring.

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She was Annabelle. That’s how she came into my life. It simply grew from there. A short story at first. Then, after reading about the Leeds Gas Strike of 1890, a novel. An event where the strikers won in three days, even as the Council Gas Committee imported strikebreakers? I had to commemorate that.

So Annabelle came back. She told me all about it and introduced me to her husband, Detective Inspector Tom Harper and his assistant, Sergeant Billy Reed. Out of that arrived Gods of Gold.

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The books are unashamedly political. No apologies for that. But they’re also crime novels, the two intertwined in a heart around Leeds. The newest, The Tin God, is the most political of all, and one where Annabelle finally takes centre stage.

In fact, she doesn’t, although the plot revolves around her bid (along with six other women) to be elected as a Poor Law Guardian in 1897. Trying to stop the man who doesn’t want women in politics is the core. But the heart, the linchpin, is Annabelle trying to win in the Sheepscar Ward.

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The Tin God was a book that seemed to write itself. I was simply the conduit. And over the last few years, Annabelle (in particular) and Tom have become every bit as real to me as friends I meet. I know them, and they know me. They’re family, in a way.

I’d like to say that I have plans for them, but the truth is, they have plans for me. To tell their story to the end of the Great War. Whether that will happen or not remains to be seen. But I’d like to do it. Although the books themselves aren’t planned out, I know what happens in their lives, and in their daughter Mary’s, too.

The book I’ve just finished writing will actually be my last Victorian (assuming my publisher likes it, of course). No, I’m giving nothing away about it, except it’s set in 1899. If another follows, that will be after 1901, and we’ll be into the Edwardian and George V eras. There’s plenty of Leeds material – the 1908 Suffragette ‘riot,’ the start of the war, news from the Somme in 1916, the Leeds Convention of 1917, and finally, finally, the Armistice a year later.

That will prove interesting. I’d certainly never imagined writing an Edwardian crime novel. Or even given a second through to George V. But I have a strong impression that Annabelle and Tom will guide me through it all.

In the meantime, I’d be very grateful if you read The Tin God. And the other books in the series.

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