Velvet (30 page)

Authors: Mary Hooper

I went to two more theatre events when I was writing
Velvet
, rather hoping that the spirits might know that I was planning to write a book about them and turn up to give a good performance. As before, however, I didn’t hear anything which convinced me that someone on the Other Side could make contact. At the first event the medium asked (rather desperately, for no one had ‘owned’ any of the spirits who had come through) if there was someone in the audience with a black handbag, and more than three quarters of the audience raised their hands, and then looked around at each other and laughed nervously. At the second event the medium and his assistant were waiting in the foyer of the theatre to greet, talk with and put the audience at their ease, rather like Velvet does with Madame Savoya’s clients.

I began to wonder if it had always been thus. Had anyone ever really and truly received a message from the Other Side, or was mediumship more about intuition and clever talk? Either way, I thought the subject would make an interesting book, especially if I set it in the heyday of spiritualism, the Victorian and Edwardian periods.

I’d like to mention the naming of my main character. The first thing I do when I plan a book is to decide the main character’s name. As part of my research I looked at a list of girls’ names popular in Victorian times, but some of them I’d used in books before (Hannah, Lucy, Grace, Lily and Rose) and some I just didn’t like very much (sorry – Maud, Agnes, Bertha and Mildred). When I saw the name Velvet I knew I’d found exactly what I wanted. Then when I started writing the book I discovered very quickly that Velvet hadn’t always been called that – in fact, she’d started life as Kitty, and the reason for this change of name became part of the story.

As I wrote, the plot crowded about me, waiting to be used. I already knew the main story was going to be about a fraudulent Victorian medium, but I also wanted to incorporate a love story, and to use something I’d come across when I was researching
Fallen Grace
(set about forty years earlier), and that was baby farms. There are, in fact, several books waiting to be written about baby farms, but I’m not the person to do them; I found it impossible to read about the subject without getting upset and angry about what had been allowed to happen. Perhaps the worst thing about them is that baby farms were still in existence only a hundred years ago.

All this research was important for the book, but perhaps the single most important discovery I made was that every Victorian or Edwardian medium was accused of fraud, and that only one of these was not convicted of any wrongdoing. I am not saying that speaking to spirits is impossible, just that I haven’t seen any evidence of it. I will certainly report back if I do.

Mary Hooper

Contact Mary on
www.facebook.com/maryhooperfanpage

Some Historical Notes from the Author

Baby Farms

Sadly, there were many of these in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. In 1864 a law was passed stating that illegitimate children were the sole responsibility of their mothers until the age of sixteen. However, if their mothers were unable to care for them it was difficult to find anyone who would. At this time, unwed mothers and their children were seen as an affront to morality and the majority of orphanages denied illegitimate children shelter, fearing they would contaminate the minds and morals of legitimate children. Single mothers were therefore desperate enough to use people like Mrs Dyer to baby-mind or even adopt their infants, otherwise there was little hope of their obtaining accommodation or work. Laws were in place against the mistreatment of animals, but not children, and reform moved slowly for fear of violating the Victorian ideal of the sanctity of the family. Fallen women were condemned, their children stigmatised, and there was no welfare state to look after them.

Amelia Dyer was a real person, one of a breed of baby farmers. By moving around and changing her name and her methods, for some time she escaped the notice of police and the newly formed NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children). Babies disappeared from baby farms, but their mothers were tricked into thinking that they had died of natural causes and were reluctant to take matters any further for fear of disgrace. Dyer was first arrested in 1879 after a doctor became suspicious about the number of child deaths he had been called upon to certify, but instead of being convicted of murder, she was sentenced to six months’ hard labour for neglect. She returned to baby farming and murder, and began to dispose of the bodies of the infants she minded in the nearby River Thames.

In 1896, a package containing the body of a baby girl was retrieved from the river at Reading, and Dyer’s house was placed under surveillance. When it was raided, police discovered that in the previous few months alone, at least twenty children had been placed in her care, and subsequently seven bodies were found in the Thames. In May that year she appeared at the Old Bailey, where it took the jury a mere four and a half minutes to find her guilty. She was hanged in June 1896. The Dyer case caused a national scandal, following which, stricter adoption laws were passed giving local authorities the power to police baby farms and stamp out abuse. However, the advertising of homes for infants and their trafficking and abuse did not stop immediately.

Mediums

Apart from Madame, all the names used in this novel are those of real mediums, although, as with Amelia Dyer, they weren’t all still working during 1900–1901, the date covered by this book. Mediumship started in the United States in 1848 with the Fox sisters (who later admitted they were frauds) and quickly spread to the UK, where it became extremely fashionable. There are many photographs showing mediums exuding ectoplasm (a mysterious substance said to be produced by mediums whilst in a trance state, and at different times described as resembling gauze, smoke, mist or slime) from their bodies, but whether you are convinced by these is another matter – as is whether you believe that someone on the Other Side is able to send messages to the living.

The case for mediums has not been helped by the great number of frauds that were perpetrated in Victorian and Edwardian times against vulnerable and recently bereaved people. Two of the cases I have written about, ‘Lady Blue’ and ‘Mrs Lilac’, were based on cases from the Old Bailey records (now available online). The reason Madame gives for demanding Mrs Lilac’s jewels (that the magnetism within them might draw her too early to the Other Side) was taken from these records. Spiritualism and mediumship underwent a great revival after World War I, when hundreds of people sought to get in touch with loved ones who had died in the war.

The Tricks of the Trade

The Spirits Speak

This trick is still worked now, and depends upon the medium having an accomplice planted in the audience. When the envelopes containing the audience’s questions have all been collected, the medium is handed the first envelope and, without opening it, answers the question inside. The person who asked the question (the accomplice) appears very impressed, following which the medium opens the envelope in order to read the question out. What they actually do, however, is open a genuine envelope from someone in the audience, memorise the question and throw it away. They then pick up the next sealed envelope and pretend to use the spirits to answer the question inside, when what they are really doing is answering the question from the one opened earlier. They repeat this process over and over again, letting the ‘spirits’ answer and staying one envelope ahead the whole time.

Hands on the Table

After asking everyone to link hands on a round table, it is quite a simple matter for a medium to momentarily detach their hand from those on each side of them (perhaps by putting their hand over their mouth to cough, or saying they need to get a handkerchief). A moment after (remembering, of course, that the room is in almost total darkness), the medium reconnects hands, ensuring that the person on their right touches the fingers of one hand and the person on the left takes the same wrist, thus leaving one of their hands free. This spare hand could then be employed in all sorts of mischief: stroking those within reach, shaking bells, using a fishing line to dangle instruments over the table, throwing flowers previously concealed under the table, etc.

(With thanks to Troy Taylor for permission to include these tricks from his books.)

The Spiritualist Church Today

Spiritualists believe that when we physically die, some aspects of the mind survive and continue to exist on a spirit plane, and that mediums are able to pass messages on from those on that plane to those on earth. Meditation plays a part in spiritualist practice, as does healing. Spiritualists draw inspiration from other religions, namely Christianity, but also from faiths with a deep mystical tradition, such as Hinduism and Buddhism. Today many spiritualist churches are thriving throughout the world, mostly in English-speaking countries.

Employment for Women at the Turn of the Century

Queen Victoria apparently said that God intended women to be a helpmeet for men, and these words were used by many powerful men to subordinate women. At the turn of the century women had very few rights, not even the right to vote. If married, they were expected to dedicate themselves to their husband and children. If single and poor, they were forced to take an unskilled and lowly paid job, perhaps as a domestic servant, agricultural worker or factory hand. Only wealthy and enlightened families educated their daughters for careers – the fact that in 1900 there were just two female architects and 112 female doctors in the whole of the British Isles illustrates this.

As the twentieth century progressed, however, women began to be employed in more varied ways. The rise of shopping as a suitable activity for unaccompanied ladies presented many more opportunities for a young girl to make her way up the career ladder in a store or shop, and offices started to employ more typists and female clerks. It wasn’t until World War I began in 1914, however, that women came into their own when they took on the jobs of all the men who had gone away to fight. Women over 30 were entitled to the vote when the war ended in 1918.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Conan Doyle was a doctor, cricketer and, most famously, the author of the Sherlock Holmes books. In 1893, in order to concentrate on ‘more important’ writing, he decided to kill off the popular Holmes by having him drop to his death from the Reichenbach Falls. The public was outraged at this, however, so much so that in 1901 he brought Holmes back to life. A famous spiritualist, he regularly attended séances at Eusapia Palladino’s house in London, and was even convinced by the 1917 photographs of the Cottingley Fairies (later proved to be fakes). Conan Doyle wrote a treatise about Great Britain’s conduct in the Boer War and was awarded a knighthood for it in 1902.

Please note that I have taken the occasional liberty with historical facts for the sake of the story (for instance, ten-shilling notes were not actually issued by the Bank of England until 1914).

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Pearsall, Ronald,
Table-rappers – The Victorians and the Occult

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Sambrook, Pamela,
Laundry Bygones