The fate of Napoléon after Waterloo was essentially as described here. He really did expect to be allowed to buy a small estate somewhere in England and settle down to the quiet life of a country gentleman, much as his younger brother had done when captured some years before. There were indeed forces in the British government pushing to have him turned over to the Bourbons to be hanged; Liverpool was originally in that camp but eventually changed his opinion. Sightseers did indeed flock to the coast by the tens of thousands in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the deposed emperor. When the South Atlantic was finally chosen as his destination, the Admiralty decided to transfer Napoléon to the HMS Northumberland due to fears that the aging Bellerophon might not be able to make the long voyage to St. Helena and back. For a more detailed description of the French emperor’s surrender and his days on the Bellerophon, see The Billy Ruffian: The Bellerophon and the Downfall of Napoleon, the Biography of a Ship of the Line, 1782-1836, by David Cordingly.
The English apprentice system that existed in Sebastian’s time dated back centuries, to the medieval craft guilds. By enabling master craftsmen to acquire inexpensive labor in exchange for feeding, sheltering, and training young people, it was a useful system. But the potential for abuse was always there, and by the early nineteenth century it was often used as a tool of oppression. Various statutes of apprentices passed over the years granted to justices of the peace, churchwardens, and overseers the power to bind out as apprentices any children for whom they were responsible or wherever they saw it as “convenient.” As the economic situation in England deteriorated and the number of poor, abandoned, and orphaned children exploded, it became a handy way for parishes to reduce their poor rates. Such children were typically sent into the most dangerous and least lucrative jobs, including mines, foundries, factories, hat making, brickmaking, etc., with little to no supervision by authorities. The exploitation and abuses that followed were inevitable. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, thousands of pauper children as young as six or seven were also loaded into open carts in London and sent north to work long, dangerous hours in the textile mills.
The use of small children to clean the narrow chimneys of London was one of the more horrific practices of the day. There were places in Europe—such as Edinburgh and many parts of Germany—where the use of climbing boys was forbidden, so chimneys could be cleaned without them. A mechanical sweep had also been invented in 1803 but was little used. Various laws restricting the use of extremely young children (girls were also sometimes used) were passed in England over the years, but none were enforced. It wasn’t until late in the nineteenth century that the practice of forcing small children up dirty, hot chimneys was finally stamped out.
The term “baby farm” did not come into widespread use until the Victorian age, but the practice of farming babies out to women living in the country existed long before then. Perhaps the best known of the women eventually hanged for murdering the children left in their care were Margaret Waters (1870) and Amelia Dyer (1896). But the practice of paying a fee to a woman who would then deliberately starve or quietly kill the infant left in her care was already so common in the eighteenth century that these women were popularly nicknamed “killer-nurses.” A satire written in 1768 (The Bastard Child, or a Feast for the Church-wardens) features churchwardens who joke with a “Mother Careless” about the speed with which she eliminates her charges. Because infant mortality in those days was so high, particularly amongst the poor, intent was difficult to prove and most of the women who either purposely killed babies or deliberately let them die were never punished.
The fencing master Damion Pitcairn is a fictional character, but he is modeled on the very real Joseph Bologne, le Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745–1799), a violinist, composer, and fencing master born to a French planter and an enslaved Black woman. Educated by his father in France, he also served as a colonel in the Légion Saint-Georges during the First Republic. In 1787, the famous London fencing master Henry Angelo arranged an exhibition fencing match between Saint-Georges and le Chevalier d’Éon at Carlton House before the Prince of Wales (d’Éon wore his trademark black dress). While in London, Saint-Georges also played one of his concertos, went foxhunting with the Prince of Wales, and met with several prominent British abolitionists. For the record, this book was already written by the time Searchlight released their biopic Chevalier.
The treatments described to Sebastian by the fictional Dr. Samuel Palmer were all used in the early nineteenth century (many were used on King George III when he went mad). Because there were few controls, many perfectly sane men and women were indeed locked away in “lunatic asylums” by their families for various nefarious reasons. The Erasmus Darwin who came up with “rotation therapy” (also sometimes called the “swing chair”) had a considerably more famous grandson named Charles.
Thomas Spence (1750–1814) was a historical figure. The British government did spy on his followers (known as “Spenceans”) when they met in pubs. John Stafford, the supervisor of the Home Office spies based at Bow Street, was also a historical figure. We will meet the Spenceans again—Jarvis has plans.
The use of what is known as mirror therapy or mirror visual feedback as a treatment for phantom limb pain was first pioneered by V. S. Ramachandran. The mirror box basically creates the illusion of two intact limbs; the idea is that when the patient moves their intact limb, the brain is tricked into believing it has “regained” control of the missing limb it thinks it sees in the mirror. This enables the easing of the phantom cramps, etc., causing the pain. The therapy has also been expanded into use by stroke patients. Although not introduced until the 1990s, the concept is so low-tech that someone such as Alexi could conceivably have come up with the idea in the early nineteenth century.
The Environs of London map reproduced on pages viii–ix is from 1832 and thus includes a number of features, such as Waterloo Bridge (opened in 1817), that would not have been there in 1815.