THE WORLD OF POPPY DENBY: A HISTORICAL NOTE

Mimi Yazierska, the young Jewish immigrant, first appeared when I was writing the second book in the Poppy Denby Investigates series, The Kill Fee. Mimi was originally a maid in the house of the wealthy Moscow family who feature in book 2. However, I struggled to weave her story into the already complex narrative, so I decided to leave her out. Fortunately for her – and her newly created sister – she was given another chance in The Death Beat.

I was interested in contrasting the experiences of rich and poor refugees and how the privilege of wealth and social connections can make the journey to safety far easier for one group than another. At the time of writing that book – and this – I was assailed with images of refugees fleeing the modern-day civil war in Syria. The wealthiest are able to buy air tickets out, the less well off, a spot in an inflatable raft, and the very poorest have to stay where they are or flee on foot and be housed in refugee camps.

I have an emotional connection to immigrants and immigration because my parents immigrated to South Africa when I was ten – and life was not easy as an “outsider”. I now live in England, and here it is my South African husband who is an immigrant.

Those readers who have read The Kill Fee will know that the early 1920s, like today, was a period of mass migration, when people from the war-torn countries of eastern Europe and the Russian empire tried to find a safe place to call home. And then, like now, countries on the receiving end of migration, like Britain and the USA, held public debates on how many more people they could or should receive. I was fascinated to read about the American Immigration Restriction Act of 1921. In that act quotas were put on immigrants from different countries, with some countries of origin considered less desirable than others. I’m sure I don’t have to point out the parallels with what is happening now. In addition, fuelled by the popular theory of eugenics, which aimed to “purify” the bloodline of the population, there were other restrictions (pre-dating the 1921 act). People with physical illness or disability, mental health issues (which were frequently confused with a simple lack of education), communist sympathies or morally questionable behaviour were regularly denied entry to the United States.

Since conceiving the character of Rollo Rolandson as a New York expat I knew that at some stage he was going to take his protégé to visit his home town. As a young journalism student in the late 1980s I was fed on a steady diet of New York Times articles as examples of excellent reportage and design. So for me the Times had always held an exalted position. Oh, what I would have done to work on that newspaper! But my life has taken me in another direction. Poppy, however, still had a chance – and I gave it to her!

So we have Poppy and her friends travelling to New York first class and Mimi and Estie in steerage. Both have problems getting into America, but both eventually succeed. And of course, because this is a Poppy Denby mystery, their paths inevitably cross.

As mentioned in my acknowledgments I am deeply indebted to Professor Vincent Cannato of the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Professor Cannato’s book, American Passage: The history of Ellis Island, was invaluable in my research, and he was gracious enough to personally respond to various queries. He very kindly helped me decipher an original 1921 ship’s manifest, which I used in the scene with Aunt Dot being interviewed by the immigration official. I would, however, like to point out that the people-smuggling storyline in The Death Beat is entirely fictional. While no doubt some illegal immigrants did slip through, on the whole Ellis Island ran a tight ship. This is a story of what might have happened to two illegals if they had managed to get through the back door.

My re-creation of life on the Olympic was helpfully aided by some wonderful original film footage from 1922, which readers can find on my Poppy Denby website, www.poppydenby.com, under “locations”. Poppy and Delilah’s dresses were based on originals in the Victoria and Albert Museum fashion archive.

As always in the Poppy Denby books, I have tried to include as much historical fact as I can, without overshadowing the fictional tale. The news stories you read of in The Death Beat, apart from the main story with Poppy and her friends, are all original articles from the 1921 archive. The New York Times publicity department was very helpful in this regard and pointed me in the direction of additional resources.

The radio broadcast of The Wolf is also based on fact. Both the Lyric Theatre in New York and radio drama expert, Professor Richard Hand of the University of East Anglia, were very helpful in helping me track down original material. There is some debate as to whether the first radio drama broadcast was in 1921 or 1922. In 1921 there was a broadcast of an audio track of the Broadway stage play Perfect Fool, but the first play that was especially recorded as a radio play was The Wolf in 1922, an adaptation by Edward Smith of the Eugene Walter stage play of the same name (which was first staged at the Lyric Theatre, New York, in 1908). So I have taken some creative licence and merged these two broadcasts. Needless to say, Aunt Dot and Delilah were not part of the original cast.

Another piece of creative licence is linked to Chester’s Speakeasy. In my research I discovered that the famous Chumley’s Speakeasy was originally housed at 86 Bedford Street, Greenwich Village, which is where the term “doing an 86” came from. However, Chumley’s, owned by Leland Chumley, only opened in 1926. So I decided to create a fictional speakeasy, Chester’s, at the same address and brought the use of the term “86” forward. In addition, although the Rudolph Valentino film The Sheik was released in 1921, it didn’t receive its London premiere until 1922. So Poppy and her friends got to see it early.

Apart from these, I’m unaware of any other conscious historical discrepancies and I hope you have enjoyed reading Poppy’s latest adventure as much as I did writing it.