Graves regarded his companion sadly. “I think Henderson got everything he deserved, sir.” Inspector Bowman seemed to have shrunk by a good few inches before his very eyes. “I shan’t mention it to the commissioner,” Graves continued, quietly. “If you can promise me that you are quite recovered.”
“I can, Sergeant Graves,” Bowman whispered. “I am quite recovered.”
Nodding in silent understanding, Graves reached into a pocket to retrieve a folded up newspaper. Bowman could tell it was The Evening Standard. Unfurling it in his hands, Graves placed it gingerly on the desk before him then turned on his heels too quick to notice the tremor in Bowman’s hand. He closed the door behind him with a soft click, leaving Bowman to consider the headline; ‘SCOTLAND YARD REDEEMED’.
Alone in his office, Detective Inspector George Bowman stared at the door then let his eyes pass along the map on the wall to the window. He fancied that, somewhere beyond the horizon, he could sense a life that might have been. His thoughts were interrupted by a dove landing on the sill beyond the window. The inspector was struck by how clean it looked, its beady eye scanning the streets below for food. And then it took flight over the city. Over the river towards the south bank it flew, along the course of the Thames for several seconds before soaring back to the city and on towards the horizon. The morning sun flashing on its feathers, the bird wheeled away into the bright blue January sky.
End Note.
In researching the care of those with a mental illness in the latter half of the nineteenth century, I was very interested to learn that treatment was not so barbaric as one might expect. The Lunacy Act of 1846 established the Commissioners in Lunacy to inspect plans for asylums and required them to be registered with the Commission. Asylums were to have written regulations and to have a resident physician. The Commission monitored the conditions in the asylums and the treatment of the patients and made a point of reaching out to patients in workhouses and prisons and getting them to the proper institutions where they could be treated. ‘Life In The Victorian Asylum’ by Mark Stevens offers ample evidence of the Victorians’ surprisingly progressive attitude to mental health.
Bowman’s visit with Elizabeth Morley to a Spiritualist meeting at Covent Garden was a pleasure to write. Whilst The Empire Rooms are entirely fictional, the Victorians’ near obsession with the Spirit Realm is not. Famously, none other than Arthur Conan Doyle himself had a fascination for all things paranormal, attending a lecture on the subject as early as 1881. In 1887, he published an article in The Light, a spiritualistic magazine, detailing a séance that he’d attended. In the early decades of the twentieth century, he would likewise develop an interest in subjects ranging from the infamous Cottingley Fairies to the contacting of Harry Houdini’s long dead mother by means of automatic writing.
Finally, I am often asked whether Jack the Ripper has any bearing on Bowman's world. In fact, I have to admit he doesn't. Anyone looking for Jack the Ripper in the Bowman Of The Yard series will be disappointed. I decided to set my series of books four years after the Ripper murders, giving the stories, I felt, sufficient distance so that they wouldn't be mentioned. That meant I could introduce each new investigation without the reader (or indeed, the characters) thinking, 'It must be Jack the Ripper!' Secondly, I wanted to be very clear that Bowman's world is a work of fiction. Besides the odd historical character (Queen Victoria being mentioned, for example, or Sir Edward Bradford, the Scotland Yard commissioner from 1890-1903) every character and just about every event in the series is fictional. That's not to say Jack the Ripper never existed in Bowman's world, just that perhaps it's enough that he existed in ours.
Richard James, March, 2020.
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