The Penny Green series Box Set
Page 78
“Partners?” I replied. “Mr Edwards is an acquaintance, Ellie. The word partner suggests a much stronger attachment.”
“Perhaps an interested and hopeful acquaintance would be a better description,” proposed Mr Edwards.
“Possibly, but it’s rather a mouthful,” said Eliza. “Charlotte seems a pleasant lady, but a little plain. You may be much older than her, Penelope, but you have a prettier nose.”
“There is no need to compare me with the future Mrs Blakely, Ellie.”
“She has fair hair like you,” said Eliza. “Men often fall for a certain type.”
“Type?” asked Mr Edwards. “I hope you’re not suggesting that Miss Green is Inspector Blakely’s type?”
“Absolutely not,” said Eliza mischievously as she pedalled on ahead of us. “That would be highly inappropriate, wouldn’t it?” she called back over her shoulder.
“It absolutely would,” said Mr Edwards.
He stopped and gave me a suspicious look.
I glanced back at James’ retreating form and noticed that Charlotte was holding on to his arm. I tucked my hand into the crook of Mr Edwards’ elbow and his face broke into a smile.
“It’s time to find somewhere for our afternoon tea,” I said.
“Absolutely!” he replied. “Let’s catch up with our chaperone. Although, on second thoughts, would it be so utterly terrible if we lost her?”
“Yes it would, Mr Edwards. Let’s run and catch up with her.”
The End
Historical Note
Hyde Park Gate is the name for two streets in Kensington which are situated close to the Royal Albert Hall and opposite Hyde Park. The area has long been associated with the wealthy and that’s still the case today. The young Virginia Woolf lived at number twenty-two and Winston Churchill spent some of his later years at number twenty-eight, he passed away there at the age of ninety.
By contrast Gonsalva Road was a row of terraced homes which housed workers for south London’s industry and railways. My interest in the street arose from the discovery that my great grandmother and her family lived there for many years. The area suffered bomb damage during World War II and was cleared for redevelopment in the 1950s and 60s. It’s now home to the Westbury Estate and would be unrecognisable to my ancestors, although the railway lines are still there.
In Victorian England cyanide, and other lethal poisons, were easily obtainable. Prussic acid – hydrogen cyanide – was even found in skin lotions! Potassium cyanide and sodium cyanide were used as insecticides and potassium cyanide was also used in photography and gilding. A search of the British Newspaper Archive reveals a number of suicides by cyanide including a bereaved photographer, Alfred Matcham, who in 1884 drank a ‘large quantity of cyanide of potassium’. A large dose is fast-acting and the effects are unpleasant as the poison deprives the body of oxygen. Antidotes can work if they’re delivered swiftly enough.
My Gonsalva Road great-grandmother was working as a housemaid by the time she was 14 in 1891. Millions of women and girls did the same as her in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In England in 1900 domestic service was the largest female occupation with a third of women aged between 15 and 20 working as servants. Servants weren’t just the preserve of the wealthy, many self-respecting middle-class households had at least one servant.
My idea for Penny to work undercover as a maid is not a unique one: in the 1864 novel Revelations of a Lady Detective by William Stephens Hayward, the female detective works undercover as a maid in the home of the Countess of Vervaine in the story The Mysterious Countess.
Blundell’s vinegar factory and Lombard’s gin distillery are fictional. Legislation to protect factory workers from exploitation and accidents struggled to keep pace with rapid industrialisation during the nineteenth century. Despite countless factory acts being passed, workers still had to endure long days, low pay and dangerous working conditions. The London matchgirls strike of 1888 was prompted by poor working conditions in the Bryant & May match factory and the debilitating condition ‘phossy jaw’ which some of the workers suffered from. The women were supported by the social activist Annie Besant and were eventually able to negotiate better working conditions. Sadly, almost 130 years later, worker exploitation still makes the headlines.
The Royal Vauxhall Tavern was built in the 1860s and is now a famous gay venue. Many of the buildings which neighboured the pub have since gone but the Tavern is set to remain there for a long time yet having been made a Grade II listed building in 2015 in recognition of its importance to the LGBT community and history.
My research for The Penny Green series has come from sources too numerous to list in detail, but the following books have been very useful: A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain by Michael Patterson, London in the Nineteenth Century by Jerry White, London in 1880 by Herbert Fry, London a Travel Guide through Time by Dr Matthew Green, Women of the Press in Nineteenth-Century Britain by Barbara Onslow, A Very British Murder by Lucy Worsley, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale, Journalism for Women: A Practical Guide by Arnold Bennett, Seventy Years a Showman by Lord George Sanger, Dottings of a Dosser by Howard Goldsmid, Travels and Adventures of an Orchid Hunter by Albert Millican, The Bitter Cry of Outcast London by Andrew Mearns, The Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Philip Sugden, The Necropolis Railway by Andrew Martin, The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant edited by Liz Stanley, Mrs Woolf & the Servants by Alison Light, Revelations of a Lady Detective by William Stephens Hayward and A is for Arsenic by Kathryn Harkup.
The British Newspaper Archive is also an invaluable resource.
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The Penny Green Series: Books 4-6
The fourth, fifth and sixth mysteries in the Penny Green Victorian Mystery Series – The Inventor, Curse of the Poppy and The Bermondsey Poisoner.
Plucky Fleet Street reporter Penny Green often spots the clues which other people miss, but is anyone prepared to listen to a woman in 1880s London? From the splendour of Crystal Palace to an opium den in Limehouse, Penny must navigate her way through secrets and lies to uncover the truth of each case. Inspector James Blakely of Scotland Yard is by her side, but will he remain there?
Find out more at: emilyorgan.co.uk/boxset2
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News reporter Penny Green is committed to her job. But should she impose on a grieving widow?
The brutal murder of a doctor has shocked 1880s London and Fleet Street is clamouring for news. Penny has orders from her editor to get the story all the papers want.
She must decide what comes first. Compassion or duty?
The murder case is not as simple as it seems. And whichever decision Penny makes, it’s unlikely to be the right one.
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Limelight, The Rookery and The Maid’s Secret first published in 2017 by Emily Organ
This compilation first published in 2019 by Emily Organ
emilyorgan.co.uk
Edited by Joy Tibbs
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r than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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