The character of Evelina Haverfield who features briefly was indeed alleged to have led police horses ‘out of their ranks’ as noted in several sources. I’d like to think she did this by charming them and making them sit, however it’s sadly doubtful this was the case. William Reynolds is inspired by a man named William Ball who went to prison and was force-fed for the women’s cause, afterwards being transferred to Colney Hatch. The treatment of Ball was far more shocking than that of Reynolds, as is detailed in the Museum of London’s online records. I completely fabricated his affair.
Twinkle, believe it or not, also has her roots in a real person, although I used only the barest facts of this woman’s life. Catherine Walters aka Skittles was the last of the great Victorian courtesans. I first read about her years ago in The Mammoth Book of Heroic and Outrageous Women (1999) ed. Gemma Alexander, which was incidentally also the first place I came across Emmeline Pankhurst (an excellent Christmas present for a teenage girl; thank you, Auntie Ros).
For information relating to the work of Scotland Yard and the suffragettes I am grateful to the National Archives. For police history background I used the memoir At Scotland Yard: being the experience during twenty-seven years’ service by John Sweeney, late Detective Inspector, CID (1904), When I was at Scotland Yard (1932) by Chief Inspector James Berrett, Joan Lock’s Scotland Yard Casebook (1993), and The Police Code and General Manual of the Criminal Law, Fifteenth edition (1912), by Sir Howard Vincent (revised by the commissioner of the Police of the Metropolis). I also particularly want to acknowledge William Thomas Ewens’s enthralling memoir Thirty Years at Bow Street Police Court (1924) from which I shamelessly poached the true story of the suffragette court riot and the egg being thrown at the clerk.
The act of a policeman dressing up as a woman to go undercover may seem ridiculous, but Joan Lock cites this as having happened during the Whitechapel investigation (though surprisingly never during the era of the suffragettes). I couldn’t resist adding it in.
As for corsets, Valerie Steele’s book, The Corset: A Cultural History (2001) was a great place to read about the history of these fascinating objects, including the man who inspired The Hourglass Club. And David Kunzle’s extraordinary Fashion & Fetishism: Corsets, Tight-Lacing and Other Forms of Body-Sculpture (New ed 2004) was invaluable in helping me get my head round the paradoxical allure of subjugation and sexual liberation in corset fetishism.
As regards London, my deepest apologies to the denizens of the city I love so much for any inaccuracies of place or distance I might have thrown in. I spent three wonderful years living in London but for additional information on its history I am grateful to Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography (2000), Stephen Inwood’s A History of London (1998), and probably the most enjoyable read of all my research, Judith Summers’s firecracker of a book, Soho: A History of London’s Most Colourful Neighbourhood (1989).
Female journalists were not uncommon during the era, as I discovered from Elizabeth L. Banks’s Autobiography of a Newspaper Girl (1902) and Michelle Elizabeth Tusan’s Women Making News: Gender and Journalism in Modern Britain, (2005) (and from those indefatigable bastions of sexism, The ‘Ladies Pages’ in contemporary period newspapers to whose editors I must also express my gratitude). I read about the news agency tape machines and the anatomy of newspaper-making in Henry Leach’s Fleet Street from Within: The Romance and Mystery of the Daily Paper (1905) and about newspaper history in Dennis Griffiths’s Fleet Street: Five Hundred Years of the Press. Other books of great use were The Edwardians: The Remaking of British Society (1975) by Paul Thompson, and Edwardian Life and Leisure (1973) by Ronald Pearsall.
Richard Anthony Baker’s brilliant book British Music Hall: An Illustrated History (2005) introduced me to the National Vigilance Association, the history of the London Coliseum and the song ‘The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze’, and also The Great Lafayette’s remarkable stage trick, The Lion’s Bride, the inspiration for Ebony’s disappearing act. On the subject of outrageous tricks, the presence of nitrocellulose in the red dye on old decks of playing cards is true, and according to folklore has been used in the past to create deadly bombs. Christian de Ryck of the International Playing-Card Society was kind enough to look into this for me and confirm it.
While suffragettes were arrested and sent to prison for a wide range of arson activities in the early twentieth century, I have tried to be faithful to their ethos in presenting them as holding human life sacred. It is true that some acts of arson, such as Gladys Evans setting fire to the Dublin Theatre during a visit from Asquith in 1912, would seem to contradict this, however it is not clear whether actions such as this were sanctioned by the WSPU in advance, or merely supported retrospectively in view of the fact that no one was hurt.
The same goes for an alleged plot to assassinate the Prime Minister in 1909. Although attributed to ‘suffragettes’ in the media there is nothing to indicate that this was an official WSPU plan. At any rate, the line taken by Emmeline Pankhurst was that the only people in danger of harm from suffragette activities were suffragettes themselves. This was unfortunately fulfilled on several occasions, the most famous being Emily Wilding Davison’s protest at the 1913 Derby.
It took fifteen more years for women to gain universal suffrage. The WSPU kept to their oath, that no human life except their own be harmed in their campaign.
On 2 July 1928 the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act gave women the vote on the same grounds as men. Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the suffragettes, had died eighteen days previously.
Acknowledgements
My deepest thanks go to the army of people bigger and more fearsome than the Hourglass Factory seamstresses who contributed to the creation of this book.
First of all I am massively grateful to Daisy Parente at Lutyens & Rubinstein for having the enthusiasm of a champion and a fantastic reader’s eye that helped shape the story. Similarly, enormous thank you to Clare Hey at Simon & Schuster for her brilliant and invaluable editing, and for making the learning process fun along the way. Huge thank you also to Jane Finigan at L&R, Carla Josephson, Helen Mockridge, Leena Lane and the team at Simon & Schuster who worked on the book.
For their tireless encouragement I owe a debt of gratitude to The Scottish Book Trust, particularly Will Mackie, Claire Marchant-Collier, Caitrin Armstrong and also Helen Croney for her time and expert PR advice. The Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award I received allowed me to work on the book in the beautiful surroundings of Cove Park as well as giving me the financial support I needed to redraft it. Thank you to Beatrice Colin for her words of endorsement on the opening chapters. To receive encouragement from a writer whose work I love was a dream come true and kept me motivated.
Huge thanks to Harry Man, Araminta Whitley and Sophie Hughes for suggestions that helped shape early drafts; to Lainey Johr for reading the very first draft, Lynsey May for reading the nearly last draft and Caraigh McGregor for advice on Northern Irish accents – I’m privileged to have both their great friendship and their feedback. Rhoda MacDonald is an absolute pearl for turning her bedroom into a writer’s retreat during one of my redrafts, as are Rose Filippi and Rosie Watts for being so passionate about seeing the finished book that giving up was never an option.
I conducted most of my research through books – and made a good deal of it up – but on the occasion I wanted to check a fact with a human being I was very grateful to have Evangeline Holland, of the excellent Edwardian Promenade website, patiently responding to my emails with her encyclopaedic knowledge of the era.
Finally the greatest thanks of all go to my family, Liz and Richard Ribchester for encouraging their wayward daughter, to my brother Tim, and to Chris, Keith and Lidia for the support. And for reasons too numerous and complex to describe, I thank my other half, Alex.
The Hourglass Factory Page 38