Category Archives: Research

Oranges and Lemons

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This nursery rhyme has been in my head since I started writing ‘A Depraved Indifference’, and for a very good reason, which will become clear when you read the book. (Maybe next month, certainly by November.) I’m excited to tell you about the action through the story, but I can’t, of course, so I will just have to get on and finish it, so we can then discuss it, but I will say that it is definitely a mystery, and it has something to do with the nursery rhyme, ‘Oranges and Lemons.’

A letter from a publication of 1891, noted that beadles and porters of St Clement’s Inn (London) handed out oranges and lemons at New Year, so it wasn’t just children who knew the song. It is sung to the melody of certain church bells, St Clement Danes being one.

The melody of the sung rhyme is always the same, but the couplets can vary, and it always starts with St Clement Danes.

South-west view of the church of St Clement Danes

There are various versions of the lyrics, and it’s not unheard of for people to add their own, as happens in my story. I have gone for the standard version as written in The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, although I notice that the ending can also vary. In some modern versions, they have changed the bit about having your head cut off to something less violent. I can’t think why. It’s only a nursery rhyme, and I grew up with a chopper chopping off my head and ‘the last man is dead’, and I haven’t grown up to be a head-chopper-offer.

Below is the version I grew up with, and I remember playing the Oranges and Lemons game on the field in summer at primary school. We would have two children stand making an arch with their arms, and as we sang the rhyme, we took turns to walk beneath the arch. On the last line, the ‘chopper’ came down, and whoever was caught had their head chopped off. (Not really. It was a rural school, but not barbaric.)

Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St Clement’s.
You owe me five farthings,
Say the bells of St Martin’s.

When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey.
When I grow rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch.

When will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney.
I do not know,
Say the great bells of Bow.

Here comes a candle,
To light you to bed.
Here comes a chopper
To chop off your head.
Chip chop chip chop the last man is dead.

For more info on the rhyme, start at: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oranges_and_Lemons]

St Clement Danes is top right (You will also notice Holywell Street.)

There is also a debate, or several, about which churches are referred to in the rhyme. Some say St Clement’s isn’t the church in the Strand, but the one over at Eastcheap, and so on, but there are probably as many arguments for each one as there are additional lyrics.

Bull’s eyes and targets, say the bells of St Margaret’s, for example; I’ve never heard that one before.

Anyway, Oranges and Lemons features in the story and so far, and so do some other interesting ‘props.’ At the moment, I am asking myself, ‘What do the following have in common?’

A church organ, a medical skeleton, graffiti, a charitable organisation, and a ring? The answer? A Depraved Indifference – coming soon.

PROMO

This Saturday’s ‘please give these books some attention’ promo is the one I take part in every month because it is organised by Book Mojo, and they never send me unsolicited AI emails about book promotions.

MAYHEM & MOTIVES: Mystery, Thriller, & Suspense Reads – September Edition The M&M, Book-Mojo collection this month includes my three series starters. There are 45 titles to check out, all various kinds of thriller or mystery, and not necessarily MM related, but still, a good read.

You know how it works, click the banner to reach the page of books…

A Depraved Indifference

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Newsletter

First, my monthly newsletter will be sent out this morning (Saturday) at 10.00 GMT + 2. It contains a brief news section and a heap of new promo suggestions with everything from steamy MM to standard historical fiction. Look out for that, and if you haven’t already subscribed, you know what to do!

A Depraved Indifference

The update here is that I am now up to 35,000 words of the first draft, so about four chapters away from the halfway mark. It’s not set in stone that I write each novel to 100,000 words, but it is what I like to aim for. I think my longest is 150,000 words, which is ‘The Larkspur Legacy’, but then, that is really parts two and three of a much longer story that starts with ‘Starting with Secrets.’ I guess you could say, together, they make one continuous mystery adventure of around 260,000 words.

The complete sentence that inspired the title of Delamere Ten is, A Depraved Indifference to human life, and it looks like this mystery is going to give Jack and Baxter some gruesome scenes to investigate. So far, I have three connected mysteries, one of which is a nasty and inventive murder. I now need to invent a few more and give Jack a worthy adversary who may go on to become his archenemy.

At the moment, I am looking into the history of a church called St Dunstan’s and All Saints, in Stepney, East London. I came across a blog titled, A London Inheritance, which has a fascinating post about the church, if you are interested, go and have a read. It also held this image:

It’s a map from 1720, and the church is ringed in red. What I also find interesting here is that at the bottom of this image, you can see both Shadwell, where Baxter comes from, and next to it, Limehouse, where Jack and Will Merrit are from. As you can see, they are noted as being hamlets. Later, the wider area became known as Tower Hamlets because it comprises an area near the Tower of London that was made up of hamlets.

St Dunstan’s is only one of several locations used in my next book, which is set in August 1893, and starts at the time of Simeon’s 17th birthday.

Of course, none of this will make any sense unless you have read the Delamere Files books, but if you have, you will be pleased to know that life goes on in Delamere House, although with a moral Vs professional dilemma for my main man, Jack.

More will be revealed in time – but not too much! Have a great weekend, and remember to look out for the newsletter and check out the promos.

The blog is well worth visiting if you are interested in London history and want a guided walk.

Research: British Newspaper Archive

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British Newspaper Archive

You may know that I use old newspapers and publications a great deal when researching for my 1890s mystery novels. Sometimes, I use them for inspiration and turn to the Illustrated Police News to find ideas for stories. At other times, I use them to find advertisements for things so I can use props that were real at the time, soaps, hair products, and in the case of ‘A Depraved Indifference’, a watch.

Here’s the front cover for the Police Illustrated News of 137 years ago on September 8th.

Click to open a PDF of the page (larger)

The central illustration is headed ‘Revolting and mysterious murder of a woman – Buck’s Row, Whitechapel.’ This is coverage of Mary Ann Nichols, a Jack the Ripper victim killed on 31st August 1888. Just out of interest, my grandfather was born on 8th September 1905, and my husband on 8th September 1967, and if you have read the Clearwater series, or Delamere, you will know that both houses stand side by side in Buck’s Avenue. It’s a made-up street in Knightsbridge, just about where the barracks are, overlooking Hyde Park, but I chose Buck’s on purpose. Anyway…

Morley’s Hotel

One of the places I wanted to know more about was Morley’s Hotel, so I have turned to the newspaper archive again to see what I could see. So far, I’ve not had much luck, but I have discovered that the hotel, which was in Trafalgar Square, was, in 1893, owned by the James brothers, so I have dropped them into Jack Merrit’s investigation. Currently, I am on chapter eight of the new story and it’s going along well. I am a quarter of the way through, and we have had two seemingly unconnected discoveries, a birthday, and Will has solved two cases, once while getting out of a carriage.

Morley’s Hotel stood where South Africa House now stands on the east side of Trafalgar Square and was a massive building. However, there seems to be very little information about it. I found out that Buffalo Bill once stayed there and an American soldier shot himself there in 1892, but that’s about it. I couldn’t help wondering how much of a rival it was for D’Oyly Carte and his Savoy Hotel up the road, or the Charing Cross station hotel. I will keep researching. The newspaper archive does cost a little to subscribe, but there is some free material, and you can find out all about it here:
https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

Excellent Promo: Thrillers and Mysteries

Next week, my newsletter will be out, and new promos will start. One, though, is already up and running and since it started, sales of my series have begun to rise – which is excellent news for me! This promo runs into September, so there’s still plenty of time to browse and maybe find new authors to read and follow. It’s a collection of mystery and spy thrillers, and there are 46 titles to check out. Have fun!

Click the pic to find new reading.

London in 1888 Video

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If you have read the Clearwater Mysteries, the Larkspur Mysteries and the Delamere Files, you will know that they are set mainly in London and Cornwall. If you have been following the progress of the Delamere series, you will know that book eight will be out in June and it is called Holywell Street. If you have read Deviant Desire, Banyak & Fecks and others, you will know that many of the characters come from or have lived in London’s East End, mainly Whitechapel (Greychurch in the Clearwater books).

So what?

Well, yesterday, I was searching YouTube for something informative to watch and I found a video by the Jack the Ripper Tour, and I want to share it with you.

Why?

Because it takes us from Trafalgar Square to the Mile End Road and stops at or passes various locations used in the Clearwater, Larkspur and Delamere series. It also includes photographs of those places from around the time the books are set, 1888 to 1893. It also incorporates maps of the time to show you the route some of my characters have taken on many occasions. It lasts for 48 minutes, and is well worth watching if you want to learn about, see and imagine my Clearwater London.

Some of the locations you will hear about and see that have been used in my books including:

Trafalgar Square where Silas gets caught up in the Bloody Sunday riots in Banyak and Fecks, Charing Cross station where so many journeys have begun and ended. Strand, including the Savoy Hotel (the climax of Speaking in Silence), The Lyceum Theatre (Bitter Bloodline), The Gaiety Theatre (Follow the Van), Holywell Street (there’s a stop off here to talk about ‘Bookseller’s Row’ and the pornography industry), the Old Bailey and Newgate Prison (Guardians of the Poor), Saint Paul’s Cathedral (Starting with Secrets), and Whitechapel (several of the books).

My suggestion is, you get yourself a cup of tea, put your feet up and slip back in time to watch this wonderful documentary and see how many Clearwater-world locations you can spot.

Enjoy!

New Research Resources: London Images and Slang

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As you know, I’m a great believer in research and getting it right. By that I mean, I can spend an hour searching for something to fit my story, for example, the name of a street, or a quote that was in existence at the time of the story that the character would have known, even an advertisement for a product, simply to add accurate detail. If no such thing existed, I have to make up my own, but I still like to keep it as real as possible.

While starting on ‘Holywell Street’, I have been trying to do just that. I have chosen the address that’s of interest to my detectives as number eight, because, in 1891, it looks like it was empty.

I have a character who is a dentist, and I have named him after one of London’s largest chains of dental practices at the time. I have him washing his hands with Pear’s soap, but my detective suggests he tries Vinolia because it had recently won a hygiene award. I took that info from an advert in a London newspaper of April 1893 when the story is set.

And so on.

https://www.londonpicturearchive.org.uk/

This week, while looking around for more information on Holywell Street, or ‘Bookseller’s Row’ as it was called up until it was demolished (or later, ‘Pornographer’s Row’), I stumbled upon a picture archive I’d missed. This is the London Picture Archive, and it contains thousands of images of London locations through the centuries. I ordered myself a PDF file of a Holywell Street image (which should arrive soon and which I will then have printed), and this, with the watermark still on, is it. It’s actually from 1900, but the street wouldn’t have changed much in between, and I’ve always liked the symmetry of architectural-style drawings. This could well be a Dalston Blaze, although it’s actually by Alfred Bennett-Bamford.

https://www.londonpicturearchive.org.uk

Another site I picked up this week is Green’s Dictionary of Slang, a great addition to my copy of Gorse’s ‘The Vulgar Tongue.’ That is an addition to another book about slang I have downloaded to my Kindle. Why so much slang? Well, of my (now) five detectives, three are from the East End, one is from rural Cornwall, and one is from the Kent marshes, so dialect and slang will play a part in their everyday speech. Then, we have foul-mouthed Ronny in the basement, not to mention his brother, who is, these days, slightly better spoken because he idolises Jack, who is trying hard to become a gentleman despite his own vernacular.

This image from Green’s Dictionary’s timeline shows how handy the resource is, because you can trawl the timeline to see, in their estimation, what was in use at what time in what decade. Here, we have 1890s slang associated with homosexuality. (And, in some cases, such as backscuttle heterosexual behaviour too.)

Green’s Dictionary of Slang

I have added a few other website and book links to my research folder, including one intriguingly headed, ‘the great manure crisis of 1894’ but that will have to wait until the Delamere series has moved into that year.

In the meantime, what I have below is a link to my new BlueSky account (which I am starting to use when I have time) in case you want to follow and hook up, and a link to one of the promotions still running this month if you want to give that a boost.

https://bsky.app/profile/jacksonmarsh.bsky.social

Check in on Wednesday for an update on ‘Holywell Street’ progress.

Smithfield Market, London, 1838

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It was market morning. The ground was covered nearly ankle deep with filth and mire; and a thick steam perpetually rising from the reeking bodies of the cattle, and mingling with the fog, which seemed to rest upon the chimney tops, hung heavily above…

Not my writing, I’m afraid, but Dickens (Oliver Twist, 1838). I am currently researching Smithfield Market because two of my investigators will be going there later today, and I want to give an accurate picture of what one of London’s most famous markets was like in 1893. However, so far, I have only found accounts from earlier in the century and passages from authors such as Dickens. Having said that, I have not yet read everything on my go-to website, the Dictionary of Victorian London.

One of my challenges is to describe the same thing again and use accurate facts without sounding like a lecture. This is where Will Merrit comes in. I have fallen on this handy tool of using him to provide Jack and Baxter with background information about destinations they visit. It’s happened in previous novels, and there’s a little bit of it happening in the next one, ‘Acts of Faith,’ which is ticking along nicely in first draft form (see Wednesday’s blog for updates). So, to let readers know the facts of a place, I might slip in a snippet like this:

In form, the Meat Market is a parallelogram. It is 631 feet long, and 246 feet wide. It covers 3½ acres of ground. The architectural style of the building is Italian. The external walls of the market are 32 feet high, and for the purposes for which it was erected it is both in appearance and arrangements a model market.

That’s actually from John Fletcher Porter, London Pictorially Described, [1890], and thanks again to the Dictionary and its compiler, Dr Lee Jackson. Click that link and you will find all his books about Victorian London. I have a few of them and have read others. They are fascinating, though not necessarily my period of late 19th century.

So, my workload today includes writing chapter 18 and making sure there is a PoC (Point of Chapter) so that the story moves or the characters develop and we don’t end up with a shoe leather chapter where you get fab description but no story movement.

I also have to put out the month’s newsletter which will contain this month’s promotions for new books from many authors. (Sign up for the monthly newsletter from the link at the top of this page.)

I’d also like to get to the bottom of why, in my new PC, my autocorrect options sometimes use ‘straight quotes’ and other times use ‘curly quotes,’ there seems to be no rhyme or reason for it. The problem is the straight ones in words like don’t, come out as reversed curly quotes in the final printing of the book and look odd. (A minor niggle, but a niggle all the same.)

I also have some other bits and pieces to take care of so this Saturday looks to be already filled up with work and typing, just as I like it.

Illustrated Police News, 1893

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As regular readers of my Victorian mystery series will know, I often refer to publications of the time for ideas, research and details. In the case of the currently untitled, seventh Delamere File, I have one of my detectives reading the Illustrated Police News from roughly the time the story is set. I say ‘roughly’ because there was only one copy of that month/that year on the British Newspaper Archive site when I looked, so I used one from a nearby month for the book. Here’s the front page of the IPN from the 4th March 1893:

And here’s a closer look at one of the drawings.

The illustrations were mainly on the front cover, with a few drawings inside, but nowhere near as many. This, for example, is page three of the same publication.

Apart from its lurid stories, what this publication gives me is an idea of policing methods of the time. Then, of course, you have the surrounding news, such as what the weather was like on the day, what was happening in overseas crimes, and, in the illustration, a look at what the scenery was like. By that, I mean, this one has a drawing of Poplar Town Hall as the artist saw it back then, rather than as someone might have photographed it in the 20th century. There are also short, dramatic stories which help give a feel for the creative writing style of the time, but they are also fun to read for the scandal and gossip.

They also lead me to new discoveries, and these can lie among the advertisements as well as the text. For example, I’d never considered an ‘Organette’ until I reached page four.

I’ll try and work one of these into the next Delamare. I often wonder what Jack, Will and the rest do of an evening. I know they play billiards, read, and go to the theatre or pub, but what about background music? There is no music in the house because no-one plays an instrument, and the gramophone was only a few years old. The first ‘records’ didn’t come out until 1892, and the first seven-inch record in 1895. I can imagine Jimmy having a phonograph if he needed to, and they now have three telegraph machines at the house. When telephones become more accessible, they will no doubt have at least one of them.

The first telephone came about in 1667 when Robert Hooke created an ‘acoustic line telephone’ like we did with tin cans when we were children. It wasn’t until the late 19th century that things really started to pick up (the phone), and not until the early 20th century that the call to invest more in home phones was answered. Great technology which, in the UK today, allows you to listen to Vivaldi for two hours while trying to reach a doctor.

You see how it goes? I started off talking about the Illustrated Police News and ended up talking about telephones via the organette. Now, I’m going to delve into chapter eight of the next book, where, I believe, someone has just experienced the first pangs of falling in love, while examining where a woman died in a bath. The mind of an author, eh? Have a good weekend!

Hackney in the Past

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Today’s brief chat is about the London Borough of Hackney, Stoke Newington in particular, and in very specific particular, the Congregationalist Chapel on Church Street. This post is also about promoting a local service that has helped me find details about this chapel, and it’s all to do with the next Delamere book, currently called ‘Snapshot’ (working title only).

Here’s how one of my ideas soon becomes complicated.

I wanted to find a theme for the next book, and decided on photography. This led me to some interesting research which I’ll talk about another day. However, it also opened up the idea of a mystery story which then became the plot. The inciting event of the story happens, as usual, very near the beginning.

A client comes to the detective agency saying he has just had a great shock and found the body of his late father in a cemetery. So? Well, the body was in a place where the gravedigger was supposed to be digging a grave for an upcoming burial. So? The body they found has only recently been put there. So? It’s his father. Yes, but…? His father died 10 years ago and is interred in the family mausoleum 200 yards away. Ah.

Abney Park Cemetary

And so it goes on. Just for accuracy, I went to my 1888 maps of London and checked how Abney Park cemetery in Hackney looked at the time, and decided that’s where the body would be found, because I know the park fairly well. (I used to live nearby.)

My map showed me a chapel directly opposite the southern gates, and I made that the headquarters of the vicar who was arranging the forthcoming burial.

Except when I looked further into this chapel, I discovered it was a Congregationalist one, not Church of England or anything I was familiar with. So, that entailed looking into that form of Christianity, so that my ‘vicar’ character spoke the correct terminology.

My vicar soon became a minister, who later became a pastor, as I got to grips with the language of that particular kind of church.

Congregationalism (also Congregationalist churches or Congregational churches) is a Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestant Christianity in which churches practice congregational government. Each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs. [Wiki]

Anyway, the religion isn’t what this story is about, but… For the sake of authenticity, I researched as much as I could about this chapel, only to discover it was bombed in WWII and is no longer there. Could I find its history online? Well, I found some, but not enough, and I became more fascinated. Then, through a variety of search strings, and having found out all kinds of information about the area, the cemetery and so on, I discovered there was a pamphlet.

This was written in 1912 and covered the history of the chapel back to the 17th century, and including the time in which I am setting my stories, 1893. A copy of this pamphlet is held by the Hackney Borough Council Archives Offices, in, unsurprisingly, Hackney, London, and I was welcome to visit during opening hours.

Obviously, I can’t do that because it’s about 4,000 Km, a boat, two flights and far too many Euros away, and I can’t afford that, not for simple background research, so I wrote to ask if they had a digital service. Not as such, but they do have a look-up service and could make me digital copies on request for a small fee. Having worked out the cost, I wrote saying yes please, because by now I was very fascinated, and they wrote back telling me they could do two pages per shot, thus halving the fee, and I said, thank you very much, where do I pay? Payment made, and within a couple of hours, there was my digital file download with the full pamphlet in PDF pages, and how fabulous was that service?

Made more fabulous because it’s only a small team, and all this was achieved within two days.

The front of the pamphlet

So, I am singing the praises of the Hackney Archives for anyone who might ever need them. This kind of service, to my mind, goes along with things like libraries and museums, places that collect and store, thus preserve, history.

And that’s how one idea for a story can lead to fascinating in-depth research, all of which makes the story more realistic and believable.

If you are interested in more mystery novels, don’t forget to browse this month’s Mayhem and Motives collection.

This promo is organised by Book Mojo and they have a Readers’ Central department which gives you loads of ideas for reading in all genres. There’s also a free newsletter to sign up to, and I am featured in today’s copy, apparently.

Links of interest

Hackney Archives Collections

Stoke Newington Then and Now (images and text)

History of Abney Park Cemetery

A Case of Make Believe

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I’ve started again on the Delamere Files book five, ‘A Case of Make Believe.’ Now, things are running much more smoothly. Before, I had Jack heading off to Paris and being out of the picture, leaving Will to work alone, and that simply was not working. The two of them need to be together for the tension and humour to work, so now, Jimmy’s off to Paris leaving Jack in charge, and on the day a new case comes in too.

It’s a case of a disappearance gone wrong. A magician performing at the Egyptian Hall, made his young assistant disappear, but unfortunately, the boy never came back. Where he went, and how and why he vanished becomes the mystery Jack and Will must solve. The boy’s older brother comes to them from the Cheap Street Mission (because he is/was a rent boy and is reforming), and the case may well involve some underground work at a brothel, on the Whitechapel streets, and in among the mesmerists and magicians of the Egyptian Hall. I say ‘may well involve’ because I’m not yet clear exactly where the investigation will take them. I know it has already taken me on a journey into the world of Maskelyne & Cooke at the Egyptian hall, Piccadilly, in 1893 – or as close to that date as I can find material. For example, here is the inside of a programme from 1872.

And here’s a poster (not sure of the date).

The Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London, was an exhibition hall built in the ancient Egyptian style in 1812, to the designs of Peter Frederick Robinson. The Hall was a considerable success, with exhibitions of artwork and of Napoleonic era relics. The hall was later used for popular entertainments and lectures, and developed an association with magic and spiritualism, becoming known as “England’s Home of Mystery.” In 1905, the building was demolished to make way for flats and offices. [Wiki]

I have found a book by George A. Jenness called ‘Maskelyne & Cooke’ which is, as far as I can see, the only book solely about them and the hall, and contains as much information as I could hope to find, down to the colour of the curtains. As for the stage tricks and the magic, I managed to find another well-out-of-print book titled, ‘Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography.’ Although this was published in 1897 (my story is set in 1893), the way the illusions were done would have been the same. I now know how they made people vanish, managed to decapitate people without cutting off their heads, and how fairies appeared on stage – among many other things.

In ‘A Case of Make Believe’ the magic trick that goes wrong is the ‘trunk trick’ where someone is locked in a trunk by the audience, and after a moment, the trunk is opened to reveal it empty. The assistant is then supposed to come back in a reversal of the trick which is managed by way of a… Ah ha! That’s a secret, for now, at least.

I am also using newspapers of the day so I can be as accurate as possible. In one early chapter, Will tuts about the weather report in the newspaper, not at the weather, which was bitter and frosty, but at the way the report was written. I’ve set the opening of the story proper (after the ‘prelude’) on January 10th 1893, which is a date that may ring bells with readers who have started at ‘Deviant Desire’ and worked their way forward. (January 10th is a special day for one of the main characters.)

Here’s the weather over New Year 1893.

And here’s where the Egyptian Hall used to stand. I took this off Google Earth yesterday. Good to see it’s still called Egyptian House. It’s just about opposite the Burlington Arcade if you want to take a look.

So, background work continues as I bang out draft one and delve into the mysterious world of illusions and all things magical. Which is a good way of introducing you to another promo:

Riveting Reads is a collection of mysteries, weirdness, horror, magical and all things spooky and dark, and there are many new titles and authors for you to discover there, with all books being in Kindle Unlimited and for sale. Click the banner to see the full collection.

The Things You Learn!

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Easter Promotion:

All these books are on Kindle Unlimited, and they are all romantic. Many have an image of a hunky or topless guy on the cover, or else the heroine, because all are romantic MM or FF in some way. As you can see, my Guardians of the Poor is in there with other top titles. Feel free to click through, then click the covers to see more details of the books, and if there’s something you like, head on over and grab it from KU or get yourself a Kindle copy.

The Things You Learn

Right now, I am working on ‘Where There’s a Will’, the fourth Delamere Files mystery set in 1892. In this story, Will and Jack Merrit are charged with attending the reading of a will. Why? They don’t know. Where? On a remote island in the Bristol Channel. I have based my island on the isle of Lundy, famous for its lighthouse, but also, for so much more. To get there, my characters have to travel to a place called Appledore on the north Devon coast. They could have travelled from Bideford, further upstream, but their island comes with its own ferryman, and I wanted a smaller location for the ferry to leave from.

While I was looking at the maps, and reading up a little about the area, I discovered that it wasn’t far from a place called Westward Ho! I knew that that was also the name of a novel., and I couldn’t help doing a little research because the character who talks about this place is something of a know-it-all (it’s not one of the Merrit brothers) and I wanted him to show us he is educated and knows all about this area.

This became a question of what came first, the novel or the village?

Westward Ho! Google Maps.

Strangely enough, it was the novel. Published in 1885, ‘Westward Ho!’ by Charles Kingsley was set in Bideford, nearby, and its story begins during the reign of Elizabeth I. The book was a bestseller, and entrepreneurs saw a way to use it to develop tourism in the area. The Northam Burrows Hotel and Villa Building Company, chaired by Isaac Newton Wallop, 5th Earl of Portsmouth, was formed in 1863, and to take advantage of the Victorian’s passion for seaside holidays, they called their hotel the Westward Ho!-tel.

Same place, 1890s-1910 map

Here’s a small advertisement for it from the North Devon Journal, June 1865.

As if that wasn’t interesting enough, the village they created for tourism, they called Westward Ho!, including the exclamation mark, meaning it is the only British place name to have punctuation. There are others around the world. Hamilton in the USA officially changed its name to Hamilton!, and in 1986, in Quebec, Canada, you can find a place called Saint Louis-du-Ha!-Ha!

Ha-ha! Now you know, and you may well have known already, but I didn’t, and it’s just this kind of unusual thing that makes research such fun.

Now, I am getting back to chapter six of the new book, and will leave you with a reminder to have a browse around the KU promo I’m currently a part of and see if you can find any new authors and titles to add to your ‘must-be-read’ list.