Coming soon…

Times of change and strife are often the ones that stand out in history and the years between the wars were certainly filled with both. The men who came back from the Great War had been promised a land for for heroes, but what they got was very different. The war left behind both economic and political turmoil, and what peace there was, was uneasy. There were still wars being waged, the Turkish War of Independence, the Polish Soviet War, the Irish War of Independence, the Rif War, problems between the Italians and Libya, the Americans and Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic to mention just a few. Politically too, the world was changing, with the slow rise of both communism and fascism. America may have experienced a period of financial boom in the early 1920’s but Britain faced an unemployment crisis more persistent and severe than any since industrialisation. The ordinary, working-class men who had come back from the war faced terrible hardships. In Southampton, the men of the docks were some of the worst affected.

Many of those men lived in the run down streets of Northam and Chapel, in conditions we can hardly imagine today. The damp and cold terraced houses had little to recommend them. Toilets were in sheds at the bottom of cramped back yards, often shared with neighbours. Heating was an open fire, cooking was done on a range, washing was a long slow process involving washboards and mangels, and for many, water came from a tap in the yard. For working-class men, entertainment was mainly found in one of the pubs on every street corner where there might be a piano, or a dart board. For their wives, gossip was probably the only relief from the drudgery. Most working-class women didn’t frequent the pubs, and certainly not alone.

While I was writing my first novel, Plagued, other characters were clamouring inside my head, demanding that their stories be told. The lockdown gave me time to listen to them, and the strife of those post war years gave me a setting for their tale. Writing is a long, slow and lonely process. Sometimes the voices are clear and strong and there don’t seem to be enough hours in the day. At other times, they are just whispers and I have to listen very hard to know which direction to take. Between the listening and the frantic typing, there is research. As a reader, I know how much it jars when something doesn’t quite fit, but finding all the facts isn’t always easy. In this second tale, much of the research was about the General Strike and how it affected Southampton.

There were interesting snippets that set off ideas. For instance, I read several versions of a story about men being killed, or injured in the docks during the strike. Will Boisseau’s article in the Southampton Local History Forum Journal, mentioned men who ‘lost their lives or their limbs in the docks as unqualified men tried to work heavy machinery.’ Adrian Weir’s newsletter in the History Group of the Communist Party of Britain called them ‘Two dockers killed due to management scabbing and trying to operate cranes.’ Other articles alluded to them, but nothing told me exactly what had happened. Even so, it led to lots of research about cranes as I saw it as a turning point in my story.

Crime was also a feature of those inter war years. After the war, there were concerns that the men returning from the battlefields had become so used to violence that they would not be able to control themselves at home. While the prohibition certainly caused a rise in gangs and violence in America, this didn’t happen to such a great extent in England. Even so, there was still crime and there were still criminal gangs. Unemployment and poverty were probably the driving factors. Some cities, like Birmingham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and London, had well known gangs who ruled the streets. Southampton did not, but there was crime and there were still groups of criminals, who no doubt wanted to emulate the gangsters of the big cities.

Researching crime from the era also led me to look at the punishments for those crimes. The Old Bailey Online and the National Archives gave an insight into trial procedures, the kinds of sentences handed out and the workings of the Winchester Assizes. One interesting historic crime came to have a bearing on my story, although it happened in 1905, not 1926 and in London, not Southampton. The Mask Murders, as they were called, were discovered on 19 March 1905, when William Jones found the body of Thomas Farrow and his mortally injured wife Ann in the flat above Chapman’s Oil and Colour Shop. They had both been repeatedly beaten. The shop had been robbed and the cash box was empty. When the empty box was examined a finger print was found inside and this was taken to the new Fingerprint Bureau at Scotland Yard.

Two men had been seen leaving the shop and it wasn’t long before Alfred Stratton, a known vagabond, was identified. His brother, Albert, matched the description of the other man seen. Both men were arrested on 2 April and fingerprinted. Alfred Stratton’s fingerprint matched the one on the cash box. On 5 May, 1905, they were tried for murder. After more than two hours of deliberation, both brothers were found guilty. They were the first men to be convicted of murder in Britain, based on fingerprint evidence. Both were executed on 23 May 1905 at Wandsworth Prison. Their case set a precedent for the use of fingerprint evidence in future crimes, and their story gave me an idea.

Plagued , was never going to be a stand alone novel. All through the lockdown I have been scribbling away and there are several more books to come. This was just some of the research that went into writing my second book, Land Fit For Heroes. Some of the lovely reviews I received for Plagued, talked about the hope for sequels, and certainly helped spur me on. Thank you to everyone who took the time and trouble to leave a review. It really is appreciated, and not just because it helps my book to be seen on Amazon. It really is heartening to know that people enjoy what I write, and it is an encouragement to keep going, even when those voices of self doubt creep in. I’m not very good at blowing my own trumpet, but I suppose I have to if I want to be successful. With that in mind, I’m sharing a few of the reviews with you here.

All being well, Land Fit For Heroes should be available in the spring. It is set during the General Strike of 1926, when an unpaid debt and an unsolved murder tests the friendship between two Southampton dockers, and uncovering the truth becomes a matter of life and death. Percy sees the strike as a chance to recapture the dreams snatched away from him on a battlefield in France. Meanwhile, Lenny is tired of constantly bailing out his brother-in-law, but can’t forget what Percy sacrificed for him. Laura is caught between the two men she loves. She’s exasperated by her brother, Percy’s, self destructive behaviour and worried about the toll it’s taking on her husband, Lenny. Then Percy gets involved with a criminal gang. When the violence starts to escalate, he turns detective after suspecting they may be behind a shocking unsolved crime. Has he bitten off more than he can chew? And will his digging drag Lenny down with him? If it does, what will become of Laura and her children?

If you like what I write and would like to help me keep doing it, you can now buy me a virtual coffee by clicking on the little orange coffee cup at the bottom right. If you’re interested in my historic novels, Plagued is available now on Amazon.