Author’s Note

 

The Rakes of St. Regent’s Park is a new series, but with a couple of previously standalone historicals revised to fit the series. There will be more books added at a later time.

In the late Victorian age, women couldn’t join the Metropolitan Police in London except as a matron. It wasn’t until 1915 when Edith Smith was hired as the first female police constable with the full power of arrest.

Like Eleanora Galway in my story, many women joined or created private investigative agencies. Lady detectives were also popular in fiction books during the Victorian era, starting in the 1860s.

Rory Kerrigan makes an appearance in this book. You can find his story in The Copper and the Madam (Blind Cupid Series #3) which also takes place in 1897.

The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 finally gave women the right to file for divorce, although it was limited. A woman had to prove more than one cause to obtain a divorce, a man needed only to claim adultery. A revision in the act in 1878 allowed a woman to separate from her husband on the grounds of cruelty and claim custody of the children. The Married Women’s Property Act of 1884 at last recognized that women were not property belonging to the husband, but an independent person.