STORYWORLD

More about the joys of research !! When you're writing historical fiction, particularly Victorian and Edwardian novels, you rely heavily on a variety of sources, but old photographs are a great way to check out the way people lived many, many years ago. They're also a great way to discover characters and help you with details related to clothing, hairstyles, eccentricities etc. In my research for A Proper Lady, I've come across some wonderful pictures and discovered some groundbreaking photographers whose work has given us a lasting record of ways of life long gone. I found some incredible pictures by British photographer, Frank Sutcliffe (1853-1941) who came to live in Whitby after being a portrait photographer in Kent. He fell in love with the quaint fishing village on the Yorkshire coast and, refusing to prostitute his art by taking tourist photographs  began taking pictures of the real Whitby and the local people. In doing this he created a revealing record of this

When you're writing historical fiction, a great deal of time is spent doing research, and in the course of this reading and viewing, you come across some weird and wonderful characters. Some of them find their way into your stories, while some remain as fascinating discoveries. Here are a few I found while researching my novel, A Proper Lady. JACK BLACK, rat catcher : Yes, you read it correctly! Jack Black! Official rat-catcher and mole-destroyer to Her Majesty Queen Victoria. The heroic Mr. Black used trained dogs and ferrets to exterminate rats by the thousands in the heavily infested filth of Victorian London. He also had quite a taste for cooked rats and professed them to be, "Moist as rabbits and quite as nice," and also that,"Sewer rats were just as good as barn rats if you gave them a few days' chase before killing them." Rat exterminations were done on a cash-only basis, and were a profitable enterprise for those who'd grown up in poverty.