Category: Articles

'DUSTY FOSSILS' & YORK’S AMAZING CASTLE MUSEUM

2/6/2023

Both of York’s incredible museums feature in my novel, Dancing With Dusty Fossils. The older, more prestigious Yorkshire Museum features on the book cover, but the curators from both museums worked closely together during WW2. Many scenes in my book are set in at the Castle Museum and its female curator, Violet Rodgers, helps my two intrepid sleuths track down the killer of her colleague.

So, imagine my delight when I discovered that the Gala Dinner at this year’s Crime Writers Association (CWA) conference in York was to be held in the highly unusual venue of the cobbled Victorian Street in the Castle Museum. While we dined, we were surrounded by rows of recreated Victorian shops, including a chemist with a glistening array of poisons in jars behind the counter and a police station complete with a prison cell.

2023 CWA GALA DINNER IN YORK

Opened in 1938, York Castle Museum was the first of a new kind of museum in Britain which explored and commemorated our social history. It paved the way for bigger attractions, like Beamish, all of which show the life of our ancestors in context rather than in dusty glass cabinets.

Unbelievably, the bulk of the exhibits at the Castle Museum were collected by one man, Dr John Kirk.

Dr Kirk had a medical practise in Malton. He was fascinated by history, and by vanishing ways of life – especially rural life. He realised that many old traditions and ways of working were changing forever. Acutely conscious that some trade skills were becoming obsolete he started to collect archaic work tools and other rare survivals of these endangered ways of life. He filled his home with bygones, his collection growing year on year. Sometimes Kirk accepted objects in lieu of payment for his medical services.

By the 1930s, his vast collection had outgrown his home. It included everything from perambulators and children’s toys to antique weapons, potato dribblers to a Tudor barge and Victorian hypodermic needles to horse bridles. Larger items included whole Victorian shop fronts, a hansom cab and a stuffed horse.

Determined to find a permanent and publicly accessible home for his vast and rare collection, Dr Kirk approached York Corporation who gave him the disused female prison in the centre of the city for his museum and helped modify it, so it was fit for purpose.

Dr Kirk with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at the museum

The Castle Museum finally opened in 1938 and it caused much excitement in the city. Its biggest attraction was the recreation of a late Victorian street, named 'Kirkgate' in Dr Kirk’s honour and lined with all those shopfronts he’d collected and filled with his treasures. This street was the first of its kind in Britain and this was where we dined at the CWA conference.

The queue for the opening of the Castle Museum

Sadly, by the time the museum opened in 1938, Dr Kirk was already a very sick man. He only just lived long enough to see his dream realised. He died in February 1940. Thankfully, he’d already appointed a successor, Violet Rodgers, one of the first female museum curators in Britain.

With the outbreak of war, most of the men in York were called up for military service and York Corporation asked Violet to run the museum (although they didn’t raise her salary).

Violet Rodgers at work at the Castle Museum

WW2 was a difficult time for all British museums and art galleries. Once hostilities were declared, they scrambled to remove their most precious items to safety, away from the threat posed by the Luftwaffe. For example, most of the valuable antiquities from the British Museum in London were stored at Skipton Castle in West Yorkshire.

Although, the exhibits at the Castle Museum were unique, Violet recognised that in terms of historical value they didn’t compete with the incredible collection of Roman, Viking, Saxon and pre-historic artifacts at York’s older and more prestigious museum, the Yorkshire Museum. Violet gave up a lot of her free time during the war to help her colleagues at the Yorkshire Museum pack and dispatch their own items to safety.

Thankfully, when York was heavily bombed in 1942 the Castle Museum was spared – although the Yorkshire Museum was hit.

In 1945, when the men returned from war, the corporation appointed a male curator for the museum and gave him twice the money they’d paid Violet.

Naturally disgruntled, Violet married her fiancé, a Polish army lieutenant, Władysław Włoch, and in 1947 she moved with him to Warsaw to continue her career. She became a Curator at the Historical Museum of Krakow and was awarded the Polish Cross of Merit for her work.

It was a pleasure and an honour to walk in the footsteps of Dr Kirk and Violet Rodgers during our Gala Dinner in April. And who knows? Maybe this fascinating and slightly spooky venue, which contains an interesting collection of potentially lethal curios, will spark my imagination and lead to a further outpouring of grisly and unusual crime fiction?

Here’s hoping.

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Article: A Ghost in a Murder Mystery?

13/3/2023

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The Museum Ghost

It’s inevitable that writers of historical crime fiction occasionally stumble across the odd ghost story or some unexplained paranormal activity during their research. Our ancestors were a superstitious bunch and strongly believed in a revolving door that separates us from the afterlife, through which the dead return.

But I was genuinely shocked to discover the fascinating tale of a frock-coated gentleman ghost that allegedly haunts the prestigious Yorkshire Museum while researching for Dancing With Dusty Fossils the second novel in my series about a WW2 York ladies’ detective agency.

I know that there’s more spooky sightings in York than any other city in England. Every medieval tavern seems to have its own ghost who jangles the keys and harasses the guests. Even the buildings on the hallowed ground around York Minster echo with the tramping feet of long-dead Roman legions, the rumble of cartwheels rolling over the cobbles and the screams of Royalist soldiers.

But I never expected to stumble across a ghost story linked to the Yorkshire Museum. This was the main seat of serious scientific learning and discovery before York University was built. The people who ran the museum were archaeologists, renowned antiquarians, and experts in the field of natural history. A ghost just didn’t belong there.

The Yorkshire Museum, York

For nearly 130 years the museum was owned and run by The Yorkshire Philosophical Society (YPS), an auspicious group of learned gentlemen (and a few ladies) drawn from 150 of the north’s wealthiest families. They built the museum in the grounds of the ruined abbey in 1829. Many of them left large bequests of money and the entire contents of their library to the society in their wills – and that’s where the museum’s ghostly trouble began.

Alderman Edward Wooler of Darlington was one such gentleman. When he died in 1927, he left over 1,600 books on archaeology and local antiquities to the museum. During his life, he was in the habit of pushing letters, notes and other memorabilia inside the volumes; he used them as an informal filing system. But such a haphazard system has its problems – in death as well as in life.

Alderman Edward Wooler (1851-1927)

The ghost of Alderman Wooler, an elderly, stooped gentleman who had fluffy side whiskers and very little hair, was first seen by the museum caretaker wandering through the library in September 1953. He was muttering: “I must find it; I must find it.”

After pulling out one of his own books and flicking through the pages, he tossed it onto the floor for the humans to clear up then promptly disappeared.

It was quickly established that the ghost of Alderman Wooler appeared every fourth Sunday at 7.40 p.m. on the dot, looking for something he’d lost. By the end of that year, evidence of the ghost’s antics – lots of scattered books – had been witnessed by several people, including a journalist from The Yorkshire Evening Press who duly reported it in the newspaper. Although no-one else, apart from the caretaker, had seen his spectral form or heard him speak.

Article in York Evening Press

By February 1954, it was suggested to the YPS that they invited the Society for Psychical Research to mount an investigation, but this caused a lot of furious arguments amongst the members, many of whom felt this was ridiculous and their scientific credibility and reputation would be ruined. A lot of resignations followed.

Despite the turmoil, the Society for Psychical Research came twice to the museum to investigate the ghost. Sadly, both evenings were a non-event. No-one saw anything; Alderman Wooler didn’t appear.

Was I tempted to include the ghost of Alderman Wooler in Dancing With Dusty Fossils which features the brutal murder of a museum sub-curator? After all, novelists need book-lovers – and Alderman Wooler was definitely one of those.

Yes, in my more fanciful moments I toyed with the idea. Sometimes the ghost left muddy footprints on the tiled floor. Maybe I could use these as a red herring to distract my two private detectives, Jemma and Bobbie, from solving the murder? Perhaps I could write a scene where the killer spooks the spook – or the other way around?

But, ultimately, I decided to let Alderman Wooler rest in peace.

Most readers of crime fiction – and mine are no exception – expect the case to be solved by dogged detection and brilliant deduction; there’s no place for ghostly interference.

Dorothy L. Sayers and Dame Agatha Christie

Back in 1929, the British Detection Club, a society peopled by such legendary mystery writers as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and G. K. Chesterton, came up with the Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction. And the second commandment was ‘All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.’

Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the grandfather of the genre, who attended many séances and popped up to Yorkshire to investigate the mystery of the Cottingley Fairies, downplayed his own fascination with the supernatural when it came to writing his stories. Other characters might be superstitious, but Sherlock Holmes isn’t. He’s the embodiment of logic and reason.

And then there was the small problem of space. There’s already three mysteries in Dancing With Dusty Fossils. Apart from solving the museum murder, Jemma and Bobbie are led a merry dance around the city by Jodie, Yorkshire’s most famous and spirited actress, whose aristocratic husband wants evidence for a divorce. In addition to that, Jemma is still looking for her own husband who’s gone AWOL from the RAF.

Quite frankly, there wasn’t room in the book for a ghost story as well, and I didn’t think including Alderman Wooler as a character would have matched the expectations of my readers.

Anyway, Dancing With Dusty Fossils was published – without a ghost – on November 15th 2022 and is available in eBook and paperback from all good bookstores.

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Policing York in WW2

21/6/2022

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Policing York in WW2

Whilst researching for my latest novel, Smoke & Cracked Mirrors, which is set in wartime York, I came across loads of material about the city’s beleaguered police force. I say ‘beleaguered’ because like most forces across the country, York City Police lost a third of their officers to the armed forces once war was declared. Nationally, reported crime rose by 57% between 1939 – 1945 – and York saw its fair share of that. Retired officers were called back to duty to bolster the ranks of the elderly officers who remained. But unlike in other areas of the country, York’s police force refused to allow women officers across the threshold of their Victorian police station on Clifford Street to fill the gap.

But what was behind this huge jump in crime on the home front? Especially in such a quiet, beautiful city, with its soaring 12th century Minster and quaint cobbled streets encircled by medieval walls. Unfortunately, the war brought with it a raft of new restrictions and regulations which many people chose to break or circumvent. Rationing of various staples of life offered huge opportunities to fraudsters, forgers and thieves and created a vibrant black market. Meanwhile the blackout allowed all sorts of criminal activities to flourish in the dark and chaos.

By early 1940, York Magistrate’s Court was over-run with cases of blackout infringement. On several occasions the police had to disperse angry crowds who’d gathered in the dusk outside shops where the proprietors had left a light blazing. If the offending shop owners couldn’t be traced quickly, the elderly officers had to clamber over back fences and break into the buildings to shut down the light. In addition to this, fatal car accidents doubled in the city once the blackout was enforced, and thousands of people were forced to move about in darkness close to moving vehicles.

Another factor involved in the rapid rise in crime was the arrival of thousands of service personnel to Strensall Barracks and the four airbases that circled the city on the flat land of the Vale of York. Drunkenness, brawling and alcohol-induced accidents dramatically increased. The police had to drag bodies out of the River Ouse and one poor soldier even managed to kill himself by toppling from the top floor window of a hotel onto the cobbled paving of the street below. The indignant locals watched with horror as drunken brawls broke out in the hallowed precincts of the mighty York Minster and the tiny Minster Police Force (yes, York Minster has had its own police force since 1285) had a tough time stopping the vandalism.

Drunkeness amongst the young women of city also rose at an alarming rate as they flocked to the side of the soldiers and airmen in the dancehalls and the bars. Particularly popular with the girls were the Canadian air force men, who were paid four times as much as our British boys and were very generous with their cash. Alarmed at the number of intoxicated young women being hauled off to the police cells, the female leader of York’s Watch Committee asked the police to reconsider their earlier decision and start appointing female officers whom she felt should deal with the drunken girls. The request was promptly denied, and the ensuing argument spilled over into the pages of the Yorkshire Post.

It is surprising, perhaps, that alcohol managed to cause so many problems for the police because after some confusion at the start of the war, when initially all entertainment venues were shut down – and then reopened – pub opening times were severely restricted. However, this brought a new set of problems from the belligerent Yorkshiremen of the city who were unhappy at the early closing times. Police officers were often called to the pubs to remove old soldiers, who couldn’t understand why, after fighting for years against the Hun in WW1, they couldn’t finish their pint in peace because of another bloody German called Hitler.

The strong anti-German feeling prevalent at the time also caused the police headaches. Hundreds of German and Austrian Jewish refugees had been evacuated to the area and they, and many foreign business owners were subject to intimidation and attack. Even Chief Constable Herman didn’t escape suspicion. Despite his own exemplary WW1 service to his country, whispers began to circulate about his loyalty because of his surname. This led to hate-mail and direct calls for the resignation of Herman-the-German. He was robustly supported by the indignant Yorkshire Post.

But the biggest single problem facing the police according to Chief Constable Herman, was the constant theft of cars and bicycles by off-duty servicemen. All the airbases provided buses for the men to return after a night out, but if they missed the last bus, many just helped themselves to the nearest vehicle.

The police spent far too much time and money recovering stolen cars and bicycles. R.A.F. Elvington, where two thousand men were stationed, was a particular problem. Every morning there’d be dozens of abandoned bicycles dumped in the ditch by the main gate. The weary police came in a van every day to retrieve them before attempting to return them to their owners. In fact, they were probably grateful when four German seamen escaped from the prisoner-of-war camp on York Racecourse, and they had to do some proper detective work for a change and track them down. (Which they did).

Despite the fact, that York was well-prepared for air raids with shelters and ARP volunteers and there were over eight hundred air raid warnings, no one really expected the city to be hit hard. York was internationally famous for its chocolate manufacture. Kit Kats and cocoa were hardly a threat to the Germans.

Yes, they’d converted part of the Rowntrees’ factory to make fuses for land mines and Terry’s chocolate factory was secretly manufacturing propellor blades for submarines, but most of the authorities expected the biggest attacks to be centred on the Hull Docks, thirty-eight miles away. York police were involved in several night-time practice manoeuvres, along with the ambulance service and others, which focussed on the dreadful potential scenario of escorting thousands of injured and traumatised refugees from Hull to the safety of the North Riding.

So secure were they in the notion that York wasn’t of much interest to the enemy, the children of York weren’t evacuated, and the city took in evacuated children from Middlesbrough and Hull.

In the first two years of the war, there was the odd bomb dropped here and there on the farmland encircling the city by Luftwaffe pilots lightening their load before returning home. But during those early years, the Germans killed more farm animals in the North Riding than they did people.

All that changed on the night of 29th April 1942; the night of the infamous Baedecker Raid.

A month before, the R.A.F. had bombed the historic German city of Lübeck, causing a firestorm that burnt out dozens of ancient buildings and monuments. Hitler, enraged at the destruction, allegedly threw a copy of Baedecker’s Tourist Guidebook to British Cities at his Air Marshalls and instructed them to destroy every historic British building marked with three stars in the book.

In rapid succession, the Luftwaffe bombed Exeter, Bath and Norwich.

Unable to read the mind of this vengeful despot, British High Command were confused by this sudden change in strategy and failed to see the pattern. No warnings were issued.

And then, on the night of the 29th April, the Germans came for historic York.

The ancient Guildhall on fire

During the horrific bombardment that followed, seventy German planes dropped 250kg of bombs, killed ninety-two people and injured hundreds of others. Over a thousand buildings and homes were destroyed, including many medieval buildings and churches.

There were no barrage balloons or anti-aircraft fire and the R.A.F were slow to scramble to the city’s defence. Unopposed, the German aircrew dive-bombed the streets strafing the terrified civilians with machine-gun fire as they tried to flee the falling masonry. The ancient Guildhall and several medieval churches were blazing, and the convent was hit killing five nuns. Blinded by dust, the terrified citizens of York scrambled on their hands and knees amongst the rubble and the shattered glass, trying to dig out the bodies of their injured and dead.

But the one thing the Germans failed to hit was the biggest bloody building for fifty miles: York Minster.

As dawn broke over this ancient Roman city, which had seen off centuries of plague, pestilence and invading Scots, York’s exhausted residents took comfort from the fact that somewhere, above their smoke-filled streets, the Minster’s honey-coloured, gothic towers were still soaring serenely into the sky in defiance.

SMOKE & CRACKED MIRRORS
by Karen Charlton

Available on Amazon in eBook and Paperback

£5.99/$5.99

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Researching The 'Golden Age' of Crime Fiction

23/5/2020

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The Murder AT The Vicarage

Why Agatha Christie Was So Popular

As part of my research for my new series set in York in WW2, I’m currently reading dozens of novels and short stories written by British ‘Golden Age’ crime writers. Detective crime fiction is an inspiration for my two new lady sleuths, Gemma James and Roberta ‘Bobbie’ Baker. I needed to find out what books they might have enjoyed.

York in the 1940s

I've also trawled hundreds of old newspapers to gain some historical perspective and I was shocked to read about a bitter argument in York in 1940 between a women’s group and the local police. The latter had refused to recruit female officers even though a quarter of their men had signed up to fight and left.
Prejudice against women was rife in British society and the police force at this time. It doesn’t seem to have crossed anyone’s mind that women were as capable as men at solving crimes.
This attitude is reflected in the 'Golden Age' crime fiction. Most of these detective stories are narrated by very clever men, who tell other very clever men how they – or one of their very clever male friends – solved the murder. This style of narration - made famous by Arthur Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes Mysteries - was copied relentlessly in the first half of the 20th Century.

A brilliant fictional female detective had yet to be created. This huge gap in the market was eventually filled by Agatha Christie with the elderly spinster, Miss Jane Marple, a character whose crime-solving mind is sharper than her knitting needles. No wonder she was so popular.
I have just re-read Murder in the Vicarage and – when put into context against the output of Christie’s contemporaries – it was a breath of fresh air. No wonder she was so popular.
Christie’s plots are always a devilish brain-tease and this one is no exception. But to have a female character solving a crime that baffled the police was a radical and ground-breaking development.
Christie never commented on politics or involved herself in political campaigns and I’m sure she would have hated to be called a ‘feminist’. But the creation of Jane Marple was a subtle and brave contribution towards changing society’s attitude and lifting the ignorant prejudice against female sleuths and detectives.

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Research Article: 'The Body in the Well'

26/3/2020

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'Dreadful Murder'

'For a week past, the water in the well of the Duke of York public-house at Brompton, Kent, had been affected with so nauseous a taste and smell that it became unfit for use. The servant, when drawing, found something hindered the bucket from filling…and thought that she perceived something like a body, and on moving the rope backwards and forwards to fill the bucket, she found pieces of skin and animal substance adhering to it when it was drawn up. Within the last few days, the smell at the mouth of the well had become so exceedingly offensive that no one would go near it.’

The Morning Chronicle, 23rd October 1818

The murder of the heavily pregnant Bridget Donallen and the callous disposal of her naked body caused a public outcry in 1818. The wife of William Donallen, a soldier in the 98th regiment, Bridget had been murdered and ignominiously dumped down a tavern well in Westcourt Road, Old Brompton. Her water-logged and rotting corpse wasn’t discovered until a month later.

Map showing Brompton, Kent

The newspapers of the time reported every grisly detail surrounding the difficulty experienced by a group of volunteers when they tried to retrieve her remains. The Morning Chronicle, in particular, was in its element:

‘On Saturday morning, some soldiers who were drinking at the Duke of York, offered, for a trifling reward, to go down the well and clear it of its impurity. A young man was accordingly lowered down, but before he arrived at the bottom, he was almost overpowered by the fetid effluvia, and called out to the men who were lowering him to stop. Having waited a few seconds and recovered himself, he proceeded. He, with infinite horror and dismay, discovered a naked human body floating on its back. To be certain, he took hold of the hair, when the body rolled over, and the hair and scalp became detached from the skull and remained in his hand. Terrified in the extreme, and almost reduced to insensibility at the horrid sight, he called to the men on the brink of the well to draw him up…’

The Morning Chronicle, 23rd October 1818

The article went on to describe how one of the other soldiers later braved this hellhole and brought up the decomposing body wrapped in a sheet. But this chap was so affected by the foul air, he fainted when he reached the top and nearly fell down the well himself.

Old Brompton, Kent

An inquest was held, and Bridget’s husband was deemed to be the main suspect for the murder. A warrant was issued for Donallen’s arrest but during the weeks that had elapsed, he’d left the army and disappeared. Bow Street Police Office was contacted. Principal Officer Stephen Lavender was employed to find the suspect and solve the case. Lavender finally tracked Donallen down in County Mayo, Ireland and brought him back to Kent to face trial. Donallen was hanged for the murder of his wife in August 1823.

Bow Street Magistrates Court

I first came across this gruesome case, while browsing through the yellowing and musty pages of an 1818 edition of the Morning Chronicle during a visit to The National Archives in Kew. I needed a strong stomach as well as the standard-issue white gloves for my research that day.

The Morning Chronicle wasn’t alone in this period in its use of sickening and repugnant detail. The Times, that highly respected and most illustrious of newspapers, also pandered to the public’s taste for blood and gore. Describing another of Lavender’s cases, a particularly nasty attack on an eighty-six-year-old man in Northamptonshire, The Times took great pleasure in telling its readership about the ‘large quantity of clotted blood that had settled in his [the victims’] mouth.’

The second thing I noted in the Morning Chronicle’s report about the Donallen murder was the reporter’s indifference to the danger posed to the staff and customers of The Duke of York by the contaminated water. But when we put this in historical context, it’s not surprising really. It would be several more decades before doctors and scientists linked the drinking of poisonous water to lethal outbreaks of cholera and typhoid fever.

In fact, if we are ever to really understand our Georgian ancestors, we also need to put their morbid and blood-thirsty curiosity into context. Like a lot of people, I formed a romantic impression of Regency Britain when I was a young woman. Thanks to Wordsworth and Coleridge, Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer and Thackery’s Vanity Fair I thought it was a delightful period in history. But tea parties in a Hampshire vicarage and balls in the assembly rooms of Bath, with giggling ladies in high-waisted, white dresses escorted by dashing soldiers in scarlet uniforms, were only one small part of their complex world.

This was still an era when whole families took picnics to watch public hangings. The brutal treatment of male and female prisoners – and their children – in our over-crowded jails and prison hulks barely elicited a shrug of concern (although prison reformers like Elizabeth Fry were starting to make their voices heard). Sometimes crowds of ten thousand people lined the streets and encircled the gallows to watch the suffering and terror of the condemned. They cheered when the dying criminals twitched and defecated themselves at the end of the rope. And with over two hundred and twenty crimes on the statute books which were punishable by the death penalty, there were plenty of hangings to watch.

Further evidence of the blood-lust of this generation can be found when we examine the most popular culture of the time. Yes, the novels of Jane Austen were popular, but the Regency publishing industry made a fortune from cheap novels full of spine-chilling gothic horror laced with a generous splattering of blood. This genre dominated the industry for more than sixty years after the novel format was first invented by Samuel Richardson. In addition to this, most London theatres were kept afloat by producing a string of gory melodramas.

But don’t just take my word for it. Go online, read some old newspapers and discover for yourself the true extent of our ancestors’ revolting fascination with decomposing bodies and oozing body fluids.

The Times has its own online archives and a small monthly fee paid to The British Newspaper Archive will give you online access to another 35 million pages of other British and Irish newspapers dating back to early 1800s. These websites can be accessed for free at most libraries.

You might be surprised at what you learn – just don’t eat before you browse.

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Article: Murderous Underwear

4/3/2019

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Killer Corsets

I first came across the unusual effect corsets can have on stab victims while researching the assassination of the Empress Elisabeth of Austria in 1898. ‘Sisi’ as she was called by her family and friends was generally considered to be one of the most beautiful women in Europe and she had the world at her feet. That same world was devastated when she was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist while walking with her lady-in-waiting to catch a steam boat on Lake Geneva.

Part of Sisi’s tragedy is that her life may have been saved if her corset hadn’t been so tight.

Empress Elisabeth of Austria

Due to the pressure from her tight undergarment, the haemorrhage of blood was slowed to mere drops. This confused her attendants who didn’t realise she was fatally injured and were slow to seek medical help. She was helped to her feet, walked another one hundred yards and boarded the steamer which left port. It was part way across the lake before she lost consciousness. Only then did her servants and the crew realise that they needed to turn back for urgent medical help. It was too late.

When I read about Empress Elisabeth’s murder, I knew I’d discovered an unusual device I could use in my fifth Detective Lavender Mystery, Murder in Park Lane. And my victim didn’t have to be restricted to a woman either. Fat Regency gentlemen (including the Prince Regent) often used male corsets.

Further research revealed that the internal bleeding caused by a single stab wound to a tightly-corsetted victim would probably cause them to lose consciousness within half an hour. But a dying person can travel a significant distance from the scene of the crime in half an hour, even in the horse-drawn world of the early 19th century. In addition to that, stabbing is a silent crime and if the victim was alone, the absence of a blood trail would make it very difficult, even impossible, for an investigator like my Bow Street Principal Officer, Stephen Lavender, to identify where the attack actually took place.

But where would be the fun in an unresolved crime?

If you’d like to follow how Lavender rose to the challenge and solved the strange murder of David MacAdam in The Murder in Park Lane, you can purchase the novel here.

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ARTICLE: WRITERLY FRIENDS

29/4/2018

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"Birds of a feather Flock together"

We’re all familiar with the stereotypical image of the lonely and isolated author scribbling away in a cold garret – but after five years as a full-time author, I know that nothing is further from the truth. Writers rarely work successfully in a vacuum. They need other writers – and actively seek them out.

The scaffolding behind a literary work can appear baffling to the non-writer. Authors need each other for support, inspiration and sometimes for collaboration. Only our fellow scribblers truly understand our obsession with plot holes, narrative structure and character development. Writers need to be able to put aside their fear of competition and intellectual theft and reach out to their peers. They need to find the confidence to ask each other for help and find the time and energy to offer mutual support. It’s a foolhardy and ego-centric writer who believes they can create a masterpiece in complete isolation, negotiate the complex world of publishing alone – and retain their sanity.

Oliver Goldsmith with James Boswell and Samuel Johnson

From Shakespeare to the Bloomsbury group, the history of literature is full of strong and supportive friendships between writers. When Shakespeare's first folio was published, his friend and fellow playwright, Ben Jonson , wrote a glowing introduction to the manuscript. In the eighteenth century, James Boswell, Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith were great friends and the first two toured Scotland together. A few years later, Lord Byron and the Shelleys were travelling through Europe together when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Meanwhile, Wordsworth and Coleridge were inspiring each other’s poetry and co-wrote The Lyrical Ballads.

In the mid 19th century, Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell exchanged candid views on literature and publishing and shared artistic and professional concerns. Charlotte also acted as a sounding board for her friend’s literary ideas. Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens were friends for over twenty years and collaborated on short stories.

With friends and fellow- authors at The Theakstones' Crime Festival, Harrogate.

Modern writers flock to literary festivals and conferences like migrating birds. Happy to be released from the solitary confinement of their gilded writing cages, they chatter like starlings while they gather information about rogue publishers; audio-book narrators and the latest developments in successful self-publishing. They share their marketing concerns and their fears about the dreaded mid-list. Virtual friendships are consolidated and promises of future collaboration are made. It’s impossible to shut up an excited group of authors who’ve escaped from the office for a day or two. My jaw often aches when I return from the Harrogate Crime Festival.

At the moment, three of my best writing buddies are reading the manuscript of my seventh book. A fourth friend, who owns a horse, has already looked over every scene where my police officers are on horseback. The girls will come back to me with an honest evaluation of the novel’s strengths and weaknesses before I submit it to my publishers for official editing. I’ve sold over 350,000 copies of my books in the last five years but still feel I need their validation. These girls are all successful Historical and Crime Fiction writers in their own right and they are my rocks. I couldn’t have done any of it without their support. And this relationship works both ways; I’m always happy to take time out from my own writing to help them.

With two of my best writing buddies, Jane Harlond and Jean Gill at the Oxford Historical Novelists' Society conference

But how can an aspiring author build up a network of like-minded professional authors? Where do you start making writerly friends? After all, Ian Rankin, Lisa Hall and J.K. Rowling won’t become your best buddies just because you drop them an email and ask them to befriend you. That approach is more likely to get you arrested for stalking.

Most unpublished, aspiring authors start off with the local writing group for peer support. It can be a beneficial experience and many writers make life-long friends through these groups but it can also have drawbacks. It depends on the group. The other writers there might not understand or appreciate your genre – and you might not like theirs. My local group leader wrote erotica and another member wrote gruesome crime novels, full of horrific murder and graphic rape scenes. While I appreciated the constructive criticism they gave me, I squirmed with discomfort when it was time to listen to their latest chapters.

A far better approach is to join an online writing group and pick and choose what you want to do and whom you want to know. I met three of my best writing friends through the now-defunct online writers’ community, Authonomy. We exchanged many emails then arranged to meet up face-to-face and became good personal friends who holiday together. They’d just started out like me and our careers have grown together. Most online writing groups also offer a critique section, and although it’s time-consuming to read and critique other people’s work, the payback is huge if you get involved. I feel I learned more about the writers’ craft from the other members of Authonomy than I would ever have learned from a master’s degree in Creative Writing. Thanks to the advice I received, I adjusted the opening chapters of my debut novel and found my first publisher.

With friend and fellow author, Kristin Gleeson, on a 'working holiday' in Gran Canaria.

Most new authors join some of the associations set up to promote their genre. I’m a member of both the Historical Novel Society and the Crime Writers’ Association. There are also more generic societies out there who provide legal and business advice like The Society of Authors. Most of these organisations have a members’ area on their websites and related Facebook pages where you can chat about your work with like-minded souls.

The fellow authors in your first publishing house are another great source of writerly friends. Some publishers actively encourage their authors to get to know each other and set up a community forum where they can share news of promotions and ask each other for help. Unfortunately, my own first publisher was a paranoid crook who discouraged any form of communication between her authors in case we found out the truth about her operation. Desperately worried that I’d made a huge mistake, I contacted several of them anyway. They felt exactly the same as me and we formed a tight-knit group which helped us to deal with her and our disappointment. Eventually, we worked together to get her to release us from our contracts and return the publishing rights of our novels. We’ve remained good friends ever since – and she’s gone out of business.

My miserable first experience of the publishing world highlights another reason why writers can’t survive in isolation. Publishing is one of the most corrupt businesses on the planet. There’s plenty of sharks out there who prey on the naïvety and desperation of aspiring authors. There’s safety in numbers and genuine consolation available if your publisher folds and disappears into the ether with your royalties. Most authors have had at least one bad experience like this.

But, on a more positive note, when all your scribbling works out and your precious stories start to sell, writing for a living is still the best, most rewarding job in the world. Writers really do live the dream.

Provided, that is, you’ve got some mates by your side.

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Article: The Real Stephen Lavender

13/1/2017

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THE REAL STEPHEN LAVENDER

(TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION)

Thanks to the wonders of the World Wide Web, there is always a risk when you use real-life characters from history in your fiction that someone, or something, will pop up out of the ether and surprise you.
Real-life people, like my Detective Stephen Lavender, have children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And I knew that if Lavender's descendants ever decided to research their ancestor on the Internet, the chances of them stumbling across my novels was high. This thought actually made me a little nervous because although I’ve used Lavender’s name and two of his real cases in my novels, I knew hardly anything at all about the man himself. I used a lot of artistic license and imagination to flesh out the details of his personality and family life.
I focused on information I gleaned from reference books and contemporary newspaper articles about his work as a Principal Officer with Bow Street Police Office and just made up the rest. I didn’t even know how old the real Stephen Lavender was when he went up to Northumberland to solve the mystery of the stolen rent money from Kirkley Hall in Ponteland. And when I introduced this hired private detective to my readers in Catching the Eagle I made him a mature thirty-year-old man.

Kirkley Hall, Ponteland, Northumberland

I’d often wondered if any of Lavender’s descendants were still living and if so, what they would make of my fictional representation of their ancestor? Would they like him and approve of the bookish, educated and slightly-introverted character I’d created? Or would I be facing a court case for defamation of character? As a cheeky, writer friend once pointed out, “the phrase ‘loosely based-upon’ can be very useful in times like these, Karen.”
I finally got my answer in December 2016 when I was contacted by several of Stephen Lavender’s descendants. Thankfully, the first message that landed in my inbox from Australian, Richard Kinch, began with the words:
'Thank you for making my ancestor famous!’
Richard’s delight with novels about his ancestor clearly out-weighed any concerns he had about historical inaccuracies.
The contact from Richard was quickly followed by more messages from other Lavender relatives including Lesley Morgan, another Aussie descendant. In fact, it turns out that Australia is teeming with Stephen Lavender’s relatives. He had nine children. Two of his sons, and one daughter, emigrated to Australia in the 1850s. There are Facebook pages and online groups all over the southern hemisphere dedicated to connecting the Lavender relatives and exploring their genealogy.
Lesley, in particular, was incredibly helpful and informative. She told me about the real-life background to my character and explained the family history to me. She also put me in touch with a British relative, Alister Palmer, who lives in Bristol. We exchanged many emails and a fascinating picture of the real man began to emerge.
I already knew from my research, that several other members of Stephen Lavender’s family worked for Bow Street Police Office in the early nineteenth century but I didn't know that his father, Edward, was a clerk there. In my novels I've given him a father called John and a Church of England vicar for a maternal grandfather. Also in my fictional character's background is a Grammar School education and an unhappy year spent at Cambridge University studying law. From Lesley I learnt that after starting an apprenticeship in 1803 with the horse patrol, Stephen was created a Principal Officer in 1807.

Bow Street Magisgrates' Court & Police Office

But the biggest surprise was that the real Lavender wasn’t born until 1789. This means that he became a Principal Officer at the tender age of eighteen and was barely twenty when he was sent up to Northumberland to solve the mystery of the Kirkley Hall robbery. I know his investigation in this instance was meticulous and thorough – I’ve seen the court case documents at The National Archives in London – so he must have been a real child prodigy in the Regency world of policing. I wonder what thirty-seven-year-old Jamie Charlton, whom Lavender accused of the Kirkley Hall robbery, made of the situation when he was arrested and charged by a young man who was barely shaving?
I’ve always known that the London newspapers adored Stephen Lavender and zealously – and sometimes inaccurately – reported his cases and forays into the seedy underbelly of the crime-ridden capital. In 1818, Lavender solved the mystery of the vicious attack on an elderly man, William Sculthorpe in Northamptonshire (the basis for my novel, ‘The Sculthorpe Murder’) and this case was extensive reported by the London press. I wonder if his fresh-faced youth helped to make him so popular with the newspapers of the time?
Lavender, and his young family, left Bow Street in 1821 when he took up the position of Deputy Chief Constable in the industrial northern city of Manchester. Sadly, he died there in June 1833 at the relatively young age of forty-four. I’ve found his obituary written in over thirty British newspapers. He really was a celebrity in nineteenth century England.
So, what happens now? I hear my readers ask. Will you chop a decade off Lavender’s age, remove his fictional education and his gorgeous and exotic Spanish wife in order to bring the fictional character back into line with the real man?
No. I intend to carry on as before, ‘loosely basing’ my detective on the life of the real man and occasionally dipping into the archives to find more of Stephen Lavender’s cases to flesh out into an intricate plot. I hope to continue to share information with Lesley Morgan and Alister Palmer for the benefit of all of us who are interested in this fascinating man.
And anyway, I’m not sure that my mystery-reading public is ready for a detective barely out of his teens.

In this instance alone, the truth is definitely stranger than fiction.

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Article: Thoughts about book covers

23/10/2016

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'PLAGUE PITS & RIVER BONES':
BOOK COVER MUSINGS...

One of the most enjoyable things about writing a novel is playing with ideas for the book cover. Usually, by the time I'm half-way through a manuscript (which is where I am at the moment) I've some idea about what I would like on the front cover of the finished book. For me, it's always about the location of the story.
My publishers don't ask me for ideas until I've handed over the manuscript. The book cover design usually runs concurrently with the editing. APub use a very talented designer, called Lisa Horton, for my novels and I love everyone of them. Lisa rose to my challenge and created a fictional Northumbrian pele tower for 'Heiress' but I was more helpful with 'The Sans Pareil Mystery' and gave her pictures, pulled from the Internet, of the original Sans Pareil Theatre. Last year, I walked along the Market Harborough canal tow path and took photos of all the old bridges to help her with the design of the book cover for 'The Sculthorpe Murder.'

The River Thames was always going to feature on the front of 'Plague Pits & River Bones' because it's the river mentioned in the title. Originally, I toyed with the idea of using the stretch at Greenwich with the Royal Naval Hospital in the background. However, I've now changed my mind and decided that the old Westminster Bridge and the old Palace of Westminster will grace the cover of this new novel.
Both the bridge and the parliament buildings have been rebuilt since 1812, the year of this novel. Fortunately, there are plenty of paintings from the period to show us what it used to look like - many of them are painted by Canaletto. They're fascinating. I cannot get over how empty the banks of the Thames were two hundred years ago - and how wide the river seems to be without skyscrapers looming over it. Once upon a time, London was a city with a big sky.
Anyway, have a look at the inspirational paintings below and see what you think.

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Article & Book Review

29/3/2016

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Revisiting The Widowhood

I don’t often mention my late husband, Chris, or his untimely death from cancer. And I try very hard not to moan.

Three years ago, I mentioned it a lot. To anyone who would listen. In fact, I didn’t just mention it – I screamed my anguish from the rooftops. Many of my friends and family received late-night, alcohol-induced phone calls and emails in which I railed against the cruelty and injustice of his terminal diagnosis and my fear of a future without him. After he died, I sobbed on the shoulder of anyone who would hold me. In the street. In a café. Or in the pub.

So why the change? Why did I stop discussing Chris and showing my grief? Have I ‘got over it?’ Moved on? Or have I simply changed?

May 22nd, 1993

No, we don't get over the loss of our lovers and soul-mates – ever. We can move on, yes, but the loss changes us too and only those who have walked in our shoes can really empathise. Fortunately, very few people experience the untimely death of their relatively young spouse. This is great for the wider world in general but not so good for those young widows or widowers who are left rattling around in an empty and exclusive club that no-one wants to join and very few people really understand. As one of my closest friends pointed out, I was the first in our friendship group to bury their partner. Even my parents still have each other.

And the other devastating discovery made by youngish widows is that there is no handbook on the shelves of W.H. Smiths to tell you how to cope and survive your tragedy, the ensuing loneliness or the survivor’s guilt. Counsellors, family and friends do what they can to help, and are brilliant at dealing with practicalities, but ultimately you are on your own with your insomnia, the nightmares and the angst at 3 am in the morning. You have to work through it by yourself.

As the uniqueness of my isolated position dawned on me, I started to feel like a freak. A very damaged freak. I made a conscious effort to stop talking about Chris and my bereavement and to deal with my heartache in private. Whether this was a good or a psychologically damaging thing to do to myself, I have no idea. Only time will tell if the pressure will eventually erupt in some form of mental breakdown. But I also had my heart-broken, teenage children to consider and they didn’t need a wailing, sobbing mother parading her grief in public. They needed a calm role model to help them get through the loss of their amazing father.

With Chris, Beth and Ross on Beth's 18th Birthday

Besides which, I didn’t want to be defined by my widowhood even though I know I will always be one. There is far more to Karen Charlton than just a ‘grieving widow.’ With the love and help of close friends and family; a great counsellor; a bottle of pills and copious amounts of alcohol, I sought solace in writing my cosy mysteries and did the ‘moving on’ thing.

However, there have been many times when the isolation of my situation has led me to reach out to others in a similar situation. For a while I was a member of the ‘widdahud,’ an online forum for widows and I was a very needy member, too. I did get some support, for which I am eternally grateful, but I found myself unable to give it back. Chris’ death left me blank, numb and sometimes downright crass when faced with the misery and despair of strangers. Embarrassed by my own lack of empathy and uncomfortable with just being a ‘taker’ rather than a positive contributor to the discussion boards, I abandoned the forum.

In addition to this, the widows’ forum lacked humour. This seems a strange thing to write, I know, but occasional flashes of ghoulish humour and irony make an untenable situation slightly more bearable. Sometimes these tiny moments of light are the only things around to help drag ourselves through another miserable day; we would go mad without them. Death and grief are an ugly business and the very antithesis of romance. A flash of bizarre humour helps with the healing.

It was the humorous title that eventually attracted me to a self-help book for widows by the American author, Catherine Tidd. I had never read a true-life ‘misery memoir’ before and normally shunned the genre as depressing but I couldn’t resist The Confessions of a Mediocre Widow. It brilliantly summed up how I saw myself three years ago – and how I still see myself today. I am that Mediocre Widow. I enjoyed (is that the right word?) Catherine Tidd’s account of her husband’s sudden death and how she survived (again, is that the right word?) and stumbled through the aftermath. I especially appreciated the gentle humour that lifted the pages of this book and made the despair bearable.

And this week I discovered another gem in the same ilk: ‘Life After You’ by Lucie Brownlee. Lucie is a young widow from my own area of North East England. Her book was an Autumn Read for the Richard & Judy Book Club. And what a stunning book it is. It’s a must-read for anyone struggling to cope with the sudden or untimely death of someone they love. Her honesty, anger and humour took my breath away and kept me reading late into the night. It’s a warts-and-all account of the sudden death of her husband, Mark, yet somehow it ends with hope and never becomes ugly (as I fear my own memoir might become.) Her insight, bitterness and humour resonated strongly with me. I loved her powerful language and imagery. She doesn’t waste a word and portrays the full range of human emotion experienced by young widows in a way I can only envy.

Like me, Lucie is determined not to be defined by her widowhood and has branched out into mainstream fiction. I sincerely wish her the best and look forward to reading more from this very talented author.

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The Museum Ghost

Policing York in WW2

The Murder AT The Vicarage

'Dreadful Murder'

Killer Corsets

"Birds of a feather Flock together"

THE REAL STEPHEN LAVENDER

(TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION)

'PLAGUE PITS & RIVER BONES':BOOK COVER MUSINGS...

Revisiting The Widowhood

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'PLAGUE PITS & RIVER BONES':
BOOK COVER MUSINGS...