When I write a history story I have to decide when the action is going to take place – and also where to set it. I also have to decide what is going to happen based on the setting. Then how it happens. And why it happens. But – for me – writing historical fiction always has to begin with the character.
The who.
That who is usually a real person who lived through a period of history that fascinates me. That’s my character.
Once I have the who, the where and when look after themselves. That’s my setting. I need to set the book in the time and place that person lived. If you are basing your story on a real person this is the easy part.
Now – with more research in books, online and in film, maybe – I can find out what they did. Along with how they did what they did, I have a plot or a storyline.
And, finally, why. What motivated my historical figure to do what they did?
That’s my WRITING CHALLENGE for all you young Time Tunnellers.
Can you think up a good idea for a story based on a real historical figure that you are interested in?
Now ask yourself the questions:
Who do you want to write about from history?
When did they live?
And where were they when they made their contribution to history?
What did they do in that time and place that so interests you?
How did they go about it?
And – very importantly – why?
For me this is the starting point for every book I write. Some answers come easier than others, but, if you keep going and research deeply into your who, where, when, what, how and why, then you should have a decent story on your hands.
Tom Palmer is the author of over 60 children's books, including award-winning historical fiction for young people.
Like the post on William Shakespeare, Part 1 - Stratford, this week's Time Tunnellers post will offer another interactive and fun classroom jumping quiz.
Use masking take to mark out a long line on the floor.
Invite as many volunteers to participate as you can fit on the line. They should stand on it.
Explain: A jumping quiz works in the following way.
There are ten statements which you (as the teacher) will read out.
The statements will either be true or false.
Pupils should think about their answer (which may well be a guess), but not give anything away.
Then you say 'Ready, steady, JUMP!' On the command, pupils should jump forwards for 'true', and backwards for 'false'. You can then reveal the answer.
As there are ten statements, pupils can keep track of their own scores on their fingers.
Apart from being fun and interactive, jumping quizzes are great for engagement: even those watching can participate by deciding on an answer and awarding themselves points if they were right.
In addition, cheating is all but impossible: you can't turn yourself around in mid-air, can you!
So without further ado, here are ten questions based on our video!
1. William Shakespeare moved to Liverpool to work in the theatre. (FALSE - London)
2. Some of the earliest references to Shakespeare's plays were in theatre owner Philip Henslowe's Diary. (TRUE)
3. Henslowe owned the Globe Theatre. (FALSE, he owned the Rose Theatre)
4. The Rose Theatre was on the North bank of the Thames. (FALSE, the South Bank)
5. Another playwright, Robert Black, was jealous of Shakespeare. (FALSE, Robert Greene)
6. Greene called Shakespeare and 'upstart swan'. (FALSE, 'upstart crow')
7. Shakespeare was a shareholder in the Globe Theatre. (TRUE)
8. Shakespeare was well known and popular in his own time. (TRUE)
9. Plays were also performed at inn courtyards. (TRUE)
10. Shakespeare's brother is buried in Salisbury cathedral. (FALSE, Southwark Cathedral)
TIE BREAKER QUESTIONS (in case of a draw between top scorers):
A. Queen Elizabeth I often attended theatres. (FALSE, she saw their performances at court, in her palaces)
B. Shakespeare's portrait hangs in the National Gallery in London. (FALSE, Portrait Gallery)
Barbara Henderson is one of the regular Time Tunnellers and an award-winning author of eleven books, eight of them historical adventures for children.
Haworth 1847. When Mother and her beloved twin brothers are taken by the Haworth ‘miasma’, to keep her family from the workhouse, Kate, 15, takes a job at the Parsonage, home to the Brontë family. Kate dreams of being a writer. Poverty and gender stand in her way and Luke Feather who wants to marry her, believes writing a waste of time. When Charlotte Brontë discovers Kate’s passion for books and writing, an important friendship develops. Kate begins to embrace Charlotte’s radical ideas of equality and is thrilled when she spots clues that the Brontë sisters are writing stories. But how can Kate achieve her ambitions to write, while locked into the daily struggle to survive in Haworth?
I have also written since childhood and have been fascinated by the Brontës’ ever since I first visited their home, The Parsonage in Haworth, Yorkshire and saw one of the tiny books displayed under a magnifying glass. Patrick Brontë, their father, was the Reverend in the church which they could see from their bedroom windows. Sadly the children lost their mother and two older sisters in early childhood. The four remaining children became very close and their writing was the centre of their lives together.
I have read the Brontë novels and have always loved nineteenth century fiction. But in 2016 a new biography of Charlotte Brontë was published by Claire Harman. In this book she writes how a new servant comes to work at the Parsonage, Martha Brown. Martha is strong and very willing – but she is only eleven years old!
The Bronte Parsonage (Photo: Miriam Halahmy)
“I am just going to write because I cannot help it.”
Charlotte Brontë wrote these passionate words as a teenage girl. By that time, together with her sisters and brother, Emily, Anne and Branwell, she had been writing since childhood. These were the famous little books written in very tiny script, so that adults couldn’t spy on their imaginary worlds. It is estimated that Charlotte wrote about 100,000 words before she started Jane Eyre, her most famous novel.
Charlotte's little book - 1830 - aged 14 years (Photo: Miriam Halahmy)
Now here comes the mystery of fiction. This sentence triggered a What If in my mind. What if a girl – Kate, fifteen years, very poor, – comes to work at the Parsonage. Kate has a secret ambition to write, and she is gifted. And what if Kate comes to the attention of Charlotte Brontë? That was enough to send me into a spin. I immediately began reading everything about the Brontës I could lay my hands on and started writing scenes and characters. This was a very exciting idea and I was determined to write the book. But I needed some help. I was awarded an Art Council Grant to research and write the book. Ann Dinsdale, Principal Curator at the Brontë Parsonage Museum opened the archives for me.
Researching in the Bronte Parsonage Museum archives (Photos: Miriam Halahmy)
Haworth is such a gift to a novelist. The old village is untouched in many places. It is really possible to walk down the steep cobbled Main Street and imagine walking in the footsteps of the famous novelist family. In the Parsonage you can enter their rooms, the kitchen, Patrick’s study and even see the dining table where the sisters wrote their novels. I would stand for ages, imagining scenes for my book and taking photos.
Main Street, Haworth (Photo: Miriam Halahmy)
The sisters' dining table (Photo: Miriam Halahmy)
We also know that the sisters and Branwell walked all over the moors above the village. I walked in their footsteps in snow, sunshine and rain, with the wind wuthering and the larks rising above me on fine days. I’ve seen heather in bloom, the dew ponds left behind from the old quarries and the remains of the three Withins farms. Top Withins might have been the setting for Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.
At the ruins of Top Withins (Photo: Miriam Halahmy)
I spent a year researching my book and then a year writing it. It's been a wonderful journey and now I have all the pleasure of taking my book out into the world. It is proudly on display in the Parsonage Museum bookshop and I have been invited to speak in schools and universities. I hope that my story of a poor girl who comes under the influence of Charlotte Brontë, will encourage a whole new generation of readers to explore the writing and the radical ideas of the Brontë sisters, as much as they have inspired me.
On the shelves at The Bronte Parsonage bookstore (Photo: Miriam Halahmy)
Miriam Halahmy has published eleven novels, three collections of poetry, short stories, articles and book reviews. She has been writing 'since she could hold a pencil' and the most important thing she did as a child was reading. Miriam was a teacher for twenty five years and continues to enjoy meeting young people to talk about her lifelong love of literature and her personal commitment to writing. Her books have been published in America, translated into several languages, adapted for the stage and she has been twice nominated for the Carnegie Medal. Miriam has been fascinated by the Brontë family since childhood and her latest novel, The Bronte Girl, has allowed her to immerse herself in the work and lives of the most famous literary family in the world.
Bob Johns paused on the stairs and cocked his head to one side. He could hear his father’s snores. He smiled to himself and stepped carefully down into the hall of 129 Jervis Road, the small, terraced house in Portsmouth where he’d spent the first 14 years of his life.
Outside, he pulled the front door quietly shut behind him and sat on the steps to put his shoes on before plunging his hands into his pockets, turning up his jacket collar and hurrying off past the Royal Navy dockyards. Did he look back? If he did it would have been the last time Bob Johns ever saw home.
Bob Johns
Fast forward a couple of years, to the early hours of 6 June 1944 and Bob Johns was taking a deep breath before leaping into the night sky above Normandy, one of the first… I was going to say men to take part in D-day but Bob Johns was not a man, he was a boy. Bob Johns was 16, and he shouldn’t have been there.
His story is one of so many found within the history of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Europe 80 years ago, the day of days for so many young men and the end of days for plenty among them.
I have read and written plenty about D-day – including a podcast, Wars That Shaped The World – and been interested in it since I was a teenager and persuaded my parents to drive us from our home in Belgium so I could go and walk the ground, see Pegasus Bridge, Omaha beach, St Mere Eglise and all the other places that fill the history books.
Yet for all that I only came across the story of Bob Johns this week, stumbled over it while looking up something else. It’s why history fascinates me – there is always something new to learn, to discover to understand. History is always alive.
I can’t remember if we stopped in Ranville on that teenage trip or subsequent visits. Ranville, a small Norman village, occupies a footnote in history – it was the first village or town in France to be liberated. Among the men of the 6th Airborne Division who drove the Germans out at 2.30am was the boy Bob.
He's still there in Ranville, laid to rest forever in the war cemetery outside the village. On his white marble tombstone, the curved top matching all the other 2,417 graves, is carved the winged badge of the Parachute Regiment, the date of his death and his age, 16. It’s an age that places him exactly between my two daughters.
Bob's grave
There is an inscription on it, requested by his parents, Henry and Daisy… ‘He died as he lived, fearlessly.’
He was the second of Henry and Daisy’s five children to be killed in the war. His eldest brother, William, had been lost at sea in 1940 when his submarine was sunk in the Atlantic.
Perhaps that’s where the impulse came from for Bob to run off and join the army. When he turned up at the recruiting office, the sergeant must have had his suspicions, although Bob was tall and broad for his age – but nevertheless his age was only 14. The sergeant looked the other way and Bob was in.
By January 1944 he had sailed through the parachute training school. “He loved being a paratrooper,” his commanding officer, Jack Watson, was to recall after the war. “He was a very big chap and very capable. He was always ready to help people and really was fearless.”
He jumped into Normandy not long after the clock had hurried past midnight on 6 June to signal the beginning of D-day. Bob and his company were to spend 11 days on the frontline around Ranville and after a brief break were back in action in the bloody battle for Normandy. Some veterans have described this as the time of their lives, and from what we know of Bob this does sound like the time of his young life.
Back home, that was not how his parents saw it. When he’d disappeared, they searched with mounting desperation for their son. Not a single friend knew where he’d gone, or if they did they didn’t let on. The local recruitment office said they’d not seen him (he must have joined up away from Portsmouth). Henry and Daisy filled an ‘Under-age enlistment’ form and waited for the army to send him home to his mum and dad. Except this was not a priority within the armed forces – there was a war on.
At last, the Military Police picked up his trail. He was tracked down to his unit, the 13th (South Lancs) battalion of the Parachute regiment. Two MPs were dispatched across the Channel to find Bob – he was two young to fight. He should not be in Normandy.
On 23 July 1944, Bob was two days from turning 17. He’d no idea the net was closing in on him. He had a war to fight, a war he’d been fighting for six weeks. His platoon was dug in at the Le Mesnil crossroads. At 10am firing broke out. This is how his battalion’s war diary recorded what happened.
“At 1140hrs an OR [other rank] of the Anti-Rank Platoon was shot dead by a sniper from the area 146725. In retaliation we attacked [the sniper’s position] with mortars and PIATs at 1400hrs.”
That was it – the OR was Bob Johns, shot dead by a German sniper. Coincidentally, I read of the death of my great uncle Ronnie in the First World War in the same way; a brief sentence in a war diary that ends with him being shot by a sniper.
A few days later the two MPs arrived in Normandy with orders to take Bob Johns home to his mum and dad. They were too late. Instead of their son Harry and Daisy received a telegram… their boy Bob was dead for king and country, aged 16.
Robin Scott-Elliot has been a sports journalist for 25 years with the BBC, ITV, the Sunday Times, the Independent and the ‘i’, covering every sport you can think of and a few you probably can’t. He threw that all away to move home to Scotland and chase his dream of writing books instead of football reports. Once there his daughters persuaded him to write a story for them and that is how his career as a children's author began. Finding Treasure Island is his latest book and is published by Cranachan.
Much has been written about Shakespeare's Stratford-upon-Avon.
This week's Time Tunnellers post will instead offer an interactive and fun classroom activity:
A Jumping Quiz.
Use masking take to mark out a long line on the floor. Invite as many volunteers to participate as you can fit on the line. They should stand on it.
Explain: A jumping quiz works in the following way.
There are ten statements which you (as the teacher) will read out. The statements will either be true or false.
Pupils should think about their answer (which may well be a guess), but not give anything away.
Then you say 'Ready, steady, JUMP!' On the command, pupils should jump forwards for 'true', and backwards for 'false'. You can then reveal the answer.
As there are ten statements, pupils can keep track of their own scores on their fingers.
Apart from being fun and interactive, jumping quizzes are great for engagement: even those watching can participate by deciding on an answer and awarding themselves points if they were right.
In addition, cheating is all but impossible: you can't turn yourself around in mid-air, can you!
So without further ado, here are ten questions based on our video!
1. William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon. (TRUE)
2. William Shakespeare married a lady called Mary Arden. (FALSE, Mary was his mother!)
3. The Shakespeare home was on Hamley Street. (FALSE, Henley Street)
4. William Shakespeare's Dad was a glovemaker. (TRUE)
5. William Shakespeare became a player and playwright in London. (TRUE)
6. William was the youngest surviving son of the Shakespeare family. (FALSE, eldest)
7. Shakespeare's son Hamnet tragically died at the age of five. (FALSE, eleven)
8. The bedrooms in the Shakespeare house were upstairs. (TRUE)
9. The Shakespeare coat of arms above the door shows a quill. (FALSE, an arrow)
10. The schoolmaster in Shakespeare's school taught Latin and French. (FALSE, Latin and Greek)
TIE BREAKER QUESTIONS (in case of a draw between top scorers):
A. Shakespeare attended the Grammar School from the age of five. (FALSE, seven)
B. Shakespeare's portrait hangs in the National Gallery in London. (FALSE, Portrait Gallery)
Barbara Henderson is one of the regular Time Tunnellers and an award-winning author of eleven books, eight of them historical adventures for children.
My grandad
– born into a working-class family in late Victorian England – led an eventful
life. Sadly, I never got to hear about it first-hand as he died of ill-health
brought on by his experiences as a gunner for the Royal Field Artillery in the
First World War, 15 years before I was born. But one of the many stories my dad
told us about him was that he had been born in a workhouse in Camberwell, south
London. More recent research into our family tree has revealed that several of
our other ancestors also spent time in workhouses during the course of their lives.
Workhouse record showing names of my grandad and great-grandmother
I remember learning something about the workhouse system and why it came into
being in history lessons on the Industrial Revolution at school. First
created through the enactment of the New Poor Law in 1834, three years before Queen Victoria came to the throne, it replaced the earlier ramshackle system of
assistance or ‘poor relief’ for those who couldn’t
work due to age or disability, in operation since Elizabethan
times.
Victorian 'paupers'
(Photo of original drawing in Southwell Workouse - Ally Sherrick)
Under the law,
a network of hundreds of specially designed institutions were set up to give
shelter to the poorest and most vulnerable in society. Commonly referred to as
‘paupers’ or ‘the destitute’, these were people who couldn’t afford to feed or
clothe themselves and who would otherwise have ended up living, and in many
cases dying, on the streets – forced to beg or else turn to a life of
crime to support themselves. They included the unemployed, the elderly,
unmarried mothers, women whose husbands had deserted them and people with
physical or mental disabilities. In the absence of unemployment benefit, state pensions and the health and social care provided by the modern welfare
state, unless they were granted money or help to continue living at home –
‘out-relief’ – the workhouse was their only recourse.
Elderly women workhouse inmates
(Photo of original drawing in Southwell Workhouse - Ally Sherrick)
Workhouses
were a contradictory blend of things. On the one hand they were designed to provide
much needed support in the form of food, clothes and a roof over the head to
those unable to look after themselves. But through their policy of separating
families – wives from husbands, parents from children – and the heavily-supervised
regime of dull routine and gruelling manual labour able-bodied inmates
were expected to undertake – they were also intended to act as deterrents,
discouraging people from regarding them as an alternative to employment and pushing
them instead to do all they could to fend for themselves.
Gruelling manual labour was expected of all able-bodied inmates
(Photo of original drawing in Southwell Workhouse - Ally Sherrick)
Oakum-picking was a particularly tough job, often carried out by women inmates
(Photo: Ally Sherrick)
Institutions
were run by a Governor, or Master, and a Matron who was responsible for
overseeing the women and children and ensuring the provision of nursing care.
They reported to a committee of unpaid Guardians, elected by each parish from
amongst local ratepayers, whose taxes funded the workhouse. Regional Inspectors
would visit the workhouses on their patch to check they were abiding by the
rules set out under the New Poor Law. Though many were well-run, there were sadly
also examples of inmates, like poor Oliver Twist and his friends in CharlesDickens’ novel of the same name, being badly treated and insufficiently fed,
plus instances of staff corruption too. A combination of factors – the general stigma
associated with having to go into a workhouse in the first place, the loss of
independence and tough conditions once inside, and stories of harsh treatment
and brutality – meant that most people regarded them as a place of last resort,
to be avoided at all costs.
(Photo: Ally Sherrick)
Family
ancestry research has revealed that like Oliver Twist, my grandad was born in a
workhouse to an unmarried mother – my great-grandmother – who was admitted when
she was in labour at the age of 17 years. In late Victorian England, to fall
pregnant when you were unmarried was frowned upon and meant that you risked
being cast out into the world by your family with no means of support. My
great-grandmother’s own mother had died when she was tiny, and for her, it
seems that seeking admission to the workhouse infirmary to give birth was
probably the only real option to get the help and care she needed. The records
suggest that she was in the workhouse for less than a month and then left –
presumably with my grandad. We don't know where they went after. Perhaps back to the family. But if they had stayed longer, what would life have
been like for them as inmates? Last summer I had the chance to find out on a
visit to an incredible survivor from those times.
Main entrance to Southwell Workhouse and Infirmary (Photo: Steve Smith)
Southwell Workhouse in Nottinghamshire, now in the care of the National Trust, is one of
the earliest and most complete examples of a 19th century workhouse
to survive in the country. Largely unaltered from its original construction in
1824, it provided the prototype for all other workhouses under the New Poor Law
system.
Workhouse rules
(Photo: Ally Sherrick)
Visitors
today can explore all aspects of workhouse life from the work rooms, exercise
yards and dormitories used by the inmates, to the infirmary – where the sick
were cared for and women, like my great-grandmother gave birth – and staff quarters.
I could easily write a whole series of blogs on what I discovered on my visit,
but as space is tight, here are just a few insights into what it was like to be
a child inmate.
Inmates slept in shared dormitories
(Photo: Ally Sherrick)
You may be
admitted with your parents after they sought financial help from the parish, or
else as an orphan or because you’d been abandoned – a sad reality for many
children born into poverty in those days. Or maybe, like my grandad, you ended up being born
there because your mother couldn’t get medical attention or support anywhere
else. On admission, your clothes and any other belongings you might have with you
would be confiscated, fumigated and stored away to be returned to you when you
were eventually discharged. In their place you were given a workhouse uniform,
usually made of coarse blue cloth.
Kept
apartand
sorted out
If you
were admitted with siblings, you might be allowed to stay together, depending
on your age. But if arriving with your parents, you would be separated from
them since all able-bodied adults capable of work but who weren’t in a job (known
in Victorian times as the ‘undeserving poor’) were regarded as a bad influence,
including on their own offspring!
Your parents
could request to see you, on a fixed day of the week, and always under the
supervision of the Master or Matron in charge.
Like the
adult inmates, children were divided into classes. These were:
·Boys
aged 7-12 years (later 7-15 years)
·Girls
aged 7-15 years
·Children
under 7
A
strict timetable
Just as
for the adults, you would be expected to follow a strict timetable. You would
get up with the rising bell (6am in the summer, an hour later in winter), put
on your uniform, get washed, make your bed and empty your chamber pot. Prayers
and breakfast would be followed by lessons in the classroom. Dinner was served at
12 noon with time for recreation followed by work-related training in the
afternoon. This was followed by supper at 6pm with a little more time for
recreation, then prayers and bed at 8pm. Sunday was a day of rest as were Good
Friday and Christmas Day.
Laundry work was carried out by women and girls
(Photo: Ally Sherrick)
Reading,
writing and arithmetic
As a child
inmate you had one advantage over other working-class children in the early
days of the workhouse system at least, receiving a basic formal education long
before it became compulsory in wider society. If you were under seven, you
would be taught in mixed classes. If older, you would find yourself in a class
of either boys or girls taught by a school master or mistress. The main
subjects, taught for three hours each morning, were basic arithmetic, reading
and writing with religious instruction given by a chaplain.
(Photo: Ally Sherrick)
In the
afternoon, you could expect to be given ‘industrial training’ – most likely gardening
for the boys and needlework, cookery or working in the laundry for the girls.
In this way, the thinking went, you would
be better equipped on leaving to find employment, whether in domestic service
or working in a factory or on the land. And the authorities hoped, less likely to end up back inside the
workhouse again.
Food,
but not so glorious …
Breakfast
was a simple meal of bread and gruel – a type of thin porridge.
Dinner –
the lunchtime meal – was usually made up of boiled meat, peas and potatoes or
else soup or suet pudding with portions carefully weighed out according to the
age category of the child – so the youngest children got the smallest amount of
food.
Supper was
a repeat of breakfast – with bread and more of that tasty gruel!
This sort
of fare might sound boring by our modern standards but, provided the workhouse
was well run and the inmates were given what they were entitled to, it was a
reasonably well-balanced diet, though perhaps a little lacking in Vitamin C.
The only
variation in the menu was on Christmas Day when you could look forward to a
meal of roast beef and plum pudding.
The
end of the workhouse
The Poor
Law was brought to an end in 1929 and workhouses – now known as ‘institutions’
– passed into the care of local authorities. Any children remaining in them
were moved to specialist homes though unfortunately this meant they often saw
their parents even less than they had before. Things changed again with the
introduction of the Welfare State in 1948 and many former workhouses became
state hospitals in the new National Health Service.
As for the
workhouse infirmary in Camberwell my grandad was born in, it is now a smart-looking residential
apartment block, something he would find hard to conceive of I’m sure.
Workhouse
stories
Besides
Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, the experience of children in workhouses
has also been brought to life by a number of brilliant children’s authors writing in more
recent times. Two of my favourites are:
Street Child by Berlie
Doherty about a young boy called Jim Jarvis who is carted off to the workhouse
with his sick mother. After her tragic death, Jim escapes and ends up in
further peril on the streets of Victorian London.
TheTwisted Threads of Polly Freeman
by Pippa Goodhart which charts the life of a young girl called Polly, sent to a
London workhouse after she and her ‘Aunt’ – a thief – are evicted and made
homeless. From there it follows Polly on a journey to Quarry Bank Cotton Mill
in Cheshire where she is sent to become a mill-girl apprentice.
(Photo: Ally Sherrick)
Writing Challenge
Imagine you have been forced to enter the
workhouse for the first time. Ask yourself these questions:
Why did you have to go there?
Have you come in with your parents? What do
you feel about being separated from them if you have? And what about your brothers
and sisters?
What are your first impressions of the place?
Think about things like the strict rules and routines; the lack of privacy and having
to share sleeping quarters; the sort of food you’re given to eat. What do you
make of having to go to school? Perhaps it’s for the first time? And what sort
of work are you given to do in the afternoons? Are the Master and Matron kind
to you, or do they make things a whole lot worse like they did in Oliver
Twist?
Do you miss your life outside the workhouse,
even though it must have been hard. And do think you might try and run away? Or
is it better to stay where you’ll have a roof over your head, food to eat and the
chance to learn how to read and write?
Write your thoughts down, then have a go a turning
them into the start of a story, a diary or perhaps a comic strip.Happy writing!
Ally outside Southwell Workhouse and Infirmary
(Photo: Steve Smith)
Source material for information on the New Poor Law and life in a workhouse comes from 'The Workhouse Southwell' Guidebook published by National Trust.
Ally Sherrick is the award-winning author of
stories full of history, mystery and adventure.
BLACKPOWDER,
her debut novel about a boy caught up in the Gunpowder Plot, won theHistorical Association’s Young Quills Award.
Other titles include THE BURIED CROWN,
a wartime tale with a whiff of Anglo-Saxon myth and magic and THE QUEEN’S FOOL, a story of treachery
and treason set at the court of King Henry VIII. Ally’s latest book with
Chicken House Books, is VITA AND THE
GLADIATOR, the story of a young girl’s fight for justice in the high-stakes
world of London’s gladiatorial arena. It has been shortlisted for a Young Quills Award.
For more information about Ally and her books
visit www.allysherrick.comYou can also
follow her on Twitter @ally_sherrick
Mobile phones, FaceTime, WhatsApp, social media…
It’s hard to imagine the world without instant communications, but if you ask any
older person, they will tell you that staying in touch has not always been as easy
as it is today.
The Dawn of Modern Communication
Let’s go back 150 years to the middle of
the reign of Queen Victoria. The 1800s was a century of change and innovation.
Industry, transportation, commerce, and medicine all saw rapid advances, and so
did communications. How did people stay in touch in the late 1800s?
A new communication system was Samuel
Morse’s telegraph, a system of electrical pulses sent along a wire. The pulses
– dots and dashes – formed an alphabet called Morse code. A specially trained telegraphist
tapped the message onto the wire and, at the other end of the wire seconds
later, another telegraphist transcribed the message. The number of words
determined the price of the telegram, so they were often abruptly short. Delivery
of the message cost an additional fee. People found telegrams expensive and
inconvenient, so they didn’t take off as a common means of staying in touch in
the 1800s.
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell’s freshly
patented telephone entered the communications scene. This new-fangled device
allowed for instant, real-time, person-to-person communication across a
distance, but it took another fifty years for telephones to become common in
homes, changing forever how people communicated.
Sample of Copperplate By George Bickham - The Universal Penman, published by Dover Publications, Inc., New York, Public Domain
The Heyday of Handwritten Letters
So how did nineteenth century people stay connected?
They sent handwritten letters through the post. What we call “snail mail” today
was then surprisingly quick – more like “hare mail.” Mid-century reforms enhanced
the British postal system, making it cheap, fast, and very convenient.
Up until the late 1830s, a letter was paid
for by the person it was addressed to, and the pricing wasn’t easy to calculate.
In 1840, a teacher named Rowland Hill suggested big changes to the postal
system: the pricing should be simplified, and the sender of the letter should
pay. He invented prepaid, adhesive postal stamps called Penny Blacks, which
cost one penny for a letter under half an ounce sent anywhere in the United
Kingdom. Pillar boxes were introduced, making letter sending very convenient,
and trains shortened delivery time across distances. From 1897, mail was
delivered to houses, not just to local post offices.
Penny Black sheet of six (wikipedia public domain image)
These reforms started a correspondence
craze. By the turn of the twentieth century, the General Post Office handled an
estimated 2,740 million pieces of mail – a ginormous increase from the 76
million pieces of mail sent back when Penny Blacks were first introduced.
The mail was delivered between six and
twelve times a day in big cities like London. That’s a lot of postie visits! It
meant someone could post a letter to someone across town, and they could receive
it about two hours a later. There was enough time for them to post a reply, and
have it delivered in the same day. It’s not instant messaging, but it’s pretty
good!
International mail was a different story
back then. For example, letters sent to India or Australia in the early 1800s could
take months. Imagine getting important news from home – like a job offer, a birth
or a death – late by a few months!
This Victorian love of letter-writing
spawned things like illustrated greeting cards, post cards, and Christmas cards.
Beautiful handwriting was prized, and a lovely, loopy script called Copperplate
was popular. Victorian pens were fitted with metal nibs that were dipped in
bottled ink.
Queen of the Handwritten Word
Queen among the letter writers of the
Victorian Era is Queen Victoria herself. No one knows exactly how many letters
she wrote in her lifetime, but some of her surviving correspondence has been
bound into over sixty volumes (books). Between her mountain of mail and her
daily journaling, it is estimated that she wrote an average of 2,500 words a
day – or approximately 60 million words in her time as queen. That’s a lot of
letter paper and ink!
Queen Victoria Writing with Abdul Arim (Wikipedia. Public domain)
Queen Victoria is the HM in Her Majesty’s
League of Remarkable Young Ladies, a book set in 1889 London and starring Winifred
Weatherby, a 14-year-old wannabe inventor. The story includes lots of different
forms of correspondence: calling cards, letters, telegrams, Morse code, news
articles, and something called a telautogram.
Telautograph (National Museum of American History; Smithsonian Institution, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)
The Telautograph was an extraordinary but
forgotten Victorian invention that reproduced and transmitted copies of
handwriting and line drawings across telegraph wires. Invented in 1889, Elisha Gray’s
Telautograph was an early forerunner of the 1980s fax machine. Read the book to
discover if this amazing invention helped or hindered Winifred in her role as
gadget maker for Queen Victoria’s league of young lady spies.
Writing Challenge 1: Snail Mail
Snail mail is super fun! The best way to
increase your chances of GETTING a letter is SENDING a letter.
Your challenge is to write a real letter to
post to someone you know. It’s a good idea to pick someone who is likely to
reply. (Hint: Grandparents and older people are usually thrilled to receive a
letter and to write back.)
The only rules are:
Write your letter by hand. It doesn’t have
to be long!
Use traditional letter writing conventions:
A traditional salutation: Dear _____, / My
dearest ____, / etc.
A message (Ideas: something about you,
questions about them, something you’re proud of, etc.)
A traditional closing: Yours truly, / Your
loving (grandchild), / Warm regards, / etc.
Your signature: Can you do a Copperplate
style signature with lots of lovely loops? Have a go!
Address the envelope and affix a stamp. You
might have to ask for help if you don’t know the address. And you might need to
ask for a stamp from your parent or carer. Don’t forget to write your return
address on the envelope!
Post it in a Royal Mail pillar box and
smile because your letter will brighten someone’s day!
Challenge Two 2: Code Cracking
(International Morse Code alphabet (Wikipedia: Public domain)
Alison D. Stegert has worked as an innovative school counsellor, a bumbling waitress, and an intrepid English (EFL) teacher, but writing kids’ books is her dream-come-true job.
Her latest book, Her Majesty’s League of Remarkable Young Ladies, was published in the UK in July 2023 and released in Australia by Scholastic in 2024. The book is the result of Alison’s 2021 win of the international competition The Times | Chicken House | IET 150 Prize.
Aussimerican Alison is a long-term resident of Queensland, where she serves as state director of the Queensland branch of SCBWI Australia East and the chief scribe at the Sunny Coast Writers’ Roundtable.
On Thursday 18th May 1536, a queen sat alone in a room in the Tower of London, waiting for her death.
Outside, on Tower Green, a scaffold stood draped in black, with wooden stands for the thousand spectators who would watch her execution the next day. A swordsman had been brought over specially from France: beheading by sword was quicker an cleaner than by axe. It was, in a way, an act of mercy.
The queen was Anne Boleyn, wife of King Henry VIII of England. She had been queen for about three years, and in that time had given birth to a girl who was to go on to become Queen Elizabeth I, one of the greatest rulers our country has ever known.
Anne had been crowned in triumph and splendour at Westminster Abbey, and had once been the subject of poems and love letters written by the king - so what had changed? What had brought her to that room, to that evening, to the sword that waited for her the following morning?
Anne Boleyn (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Guilty as charged?
Anne had been tried and sentenced to death for the crime of adultery: being unfaithful to her husband - and because her husband was the king, this made her guilty of treason. Five men - including her own brother, George - had already been executed for their part in her crimes.
But Anne's real crime was not adultery. Most historians now agree that the charges against her were false. So why had the charges been brought in the first place? What was Anne guilty of, that she had been arrested in the first place?
You could say she was 'guilty' of three things:
1. Not giving the king a son.
In Tudor England a king needed a son to rule after him - an heir - but King Henry VIII had no heir. His first wife, Katherine of Aragon, had given him a daughter called Mary, and Henry had eventually divorced Katherine and married Anne instead. Anne had also failed to give birth to a son, instead giving Henry another daughter, Elizabeth.
In Henry's eyes this meant that God was not pleased with him, and it gave him enough reason to start to look elsewhere for a wife, eventually settling on Jane Seymour, one of Anne's ladies-in-waiting.
King Henry VIII (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
2. Supporting religious reform
Anne was very religious. At that time, the church was very powerful in England and all across Europe, but Anne disagreed with the power of the church. She, along with a growing number of people, believed that only the Bible could tell Christian people how to live - and that people should be able to read the Bible in their own language. Most Bibles were in Latin, and translating the Bible into English was counted as treason.
Supporting these changes in religion (called 'reformation') was dangerous for anyone - and maybe especially so for the wife of the king.
3. Making powerful enemies
This was perhaps Anne's greatest crime. She was a woman at a time when women were expected to be obedient to men, and worse than that she was outspoken and confident! She was not afraid to speak her mind, and frequently clashed with the men who advised the king.
One of her greatest rivals was a man named Thomas Cromwell, who had risen from humble beginnings to the role of the king's closest advisor. Historians believe it may have been Cromwell who arranged for the false charges to be brought against Anne, eventually leading to her death ...
Thomas Cromwell (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
A timeline of death
2nd May - Anne is arrested for adultery and treason, and taken by barge to the Tower of London.
6th May - Anne writes a letter to King Henry VIII, begging his forgiveness for any offence she had caused but not admitting to adultery.
12th May - Four men are tried for adultery with Anne and found guilty.
15th May - Anne and her brother George are tried for adultery and treason and found guilty.
17th May - Henry's marriage to Anne is declared null and void - which means it is as good as if it never happened. The five men accused of adultery with Anne are beheaded.
18th May - Anne thinks that she is due to be executed on this day, but it is a mistake. Her execution is set for the day after. Her captors say that she is very calm and seems ready to die.
19th May - Early in the morning, Anne is taken to the scaffold on Tower Green. She is dressed very simply, and appears very calm. She gives a speech to the crowd who have gathered to witness her death (including Thomas Cromwell). She pays the executioner and forgives him (which was traditional). She is blindfolded, and kneels upright. The executioner swings his sword, and Anne passes into history.
Anne Boleyn's Execution (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Writing challenge
Anne was accused of crimes that she probably didn't commit. We all know what it's like to be accused of something we didn't do - how unfair it feels! But Anne was calm and graceful, and the letter she wrote to King Henry VIII was just as calm and graceful.
For your writing challenge this week, imagine you have been accused of something you didn't do. Maybe:
- Hitting someone else - Breaking something - Taking something that didn't belong to you
Write a letter to your accuser, explaining to them why you didn't do whatever it was. Be as persuasive and calm as you can. Don't accuse them of anything! Remember the idea is to convince them that you are innocent.
About the author
Matthew Wainwright is an author of historical fiction for young people. His latest book, 'Through Water and Fire' is set during the Tudor period and features an appearance by Anne Boleyn. It has been shortlisted for the Young Quills Award for historical fiction for young people, in the 11-13 age category.
.jpg)
