First of all, a huge thank-you to Early Police historian Dr Elaine Saunders—@hertfordshirehistory—for all her advice and guidance on the police service in Rory’s time. I’ve only used a fraction of the answers she gave me to my many questions, but she gave me an invaluable insight into the kinds of crimes Rory would have been tackling in Edinburgh, and the kinds of prejudice that his father would have encountered at the time, when Highlanders really were seen as coming to Glasgow and joining the police simply to ‘put boots on their feet’.
Clive Elmsley’s excellent book The Great British Bobby gave me an insight to the life of a police detective. Rory’s ‘fist, feet and teeth’ quotation is taken directly from one of those real detectives quoted in Elmsley’s book. Private detectives like Rory really did exist at the time, and they were often used to investigate crimes which the great and the good wished to keep out of the press.
Marianne’s main place of incarceration was inspired by a tour led by Mostly Ghostly of the Crichton in Dumfries, which I took with my sister Johanna. I am afraid I’ve used and abused the Crichton in this book, for it was in fact very much a forward-thinking institution for its time, though there were locked wards such as the ones in which I placed poor Marianne. The coffin cart which Marianne sees as she escapes is real, and on display in the crypt at the Crichton.
The story of Angus Mackay’s escape is one that I also heard on the Mostly Ghostly tour. It happened in 1859, a few years too early for Marianne’s escape, but it was too good a story not to use. Sadly, Sarah Wise’s book Inconvenient People, Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England documents cases very similar to Marianne’s.
I have borrowed a story from another tour I took recently, of Glasgow Central Station, with my sister Fiona—I have very tolerant sisters...they’re always happy to come along while I play the geek, provided lunch is involved. It was here that I heard the story of pickpockets hanging about the platforms waiting for the moment of darkness caused by steam enclosed under a station roof to take the opportunity to pinch both the purses and the bottoms of the female passengers.
As you’ll know, if you’re read some of my other books, I have a deep and abiding love of both Edinburgh and Glasgow. This time I wanted to showcase the ‘hidden gems’ in the cities, and some of my own favourite places to wander.
The obstetrician and pioneer of chloroform James Young Simpson really did reside at Number Fifty-Two Queen Street, and the gardens—if you have a key!—are a lovely spot to have a picnic. Dean Village, which is now a heritage site, was very, very different in Marianne and Rory’s day, and I’m not actually sure if you could have walked along the Water of Leith back then—though you can now. The Dean Orphanage is now part of the National Galleries of Modern Art. Dean Cemetery is a wonderful place to wander, full of fascinating graves and memorials—including one for one of my own favourite artists, John Bellany.
And finally I should say a word about Rory’s language, which is very much not Victorian, but fairly colloquial Weegie and Scots. I chose to do this partly to make his speech quite distinct from Marianne’s, but also, to be honest, because some of the words he uses are my favourites. Thank you to my family WhatsApp group for the many suggestions, including all those that didn’t make the cut—sorry, Mum, but ‘oxter’ was just a step too far.
As ever, I’ve done a ton of reading and research for this book, and shared most of it on social media. And, as ever, all mistakes and inaccuracies are entirely my own.
Keep reading for an excerpt from How the Wallflower Wins a Duke by Lucy Morris.