Turning the Tide

by Edith Maxwell

  Copyright Information

  Turning the Tide: A Quaker Midwife Mystery © 2018 by Edith Maxwell.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Midnight Ink, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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  Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the author’s copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First e-book edition © 2018

  E-book ISBN: 9780738753881

  Book format by Cassie Willett

  Cover design by Ellen Lawson

  Cover illustration by Greg Newbold/Bold Strokes Illustration

  Editing by Nicole Nugent

  Midnight Ink is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Maxwell, Edith, author.

  Title: Turning the tide / Edith Maxwell.

  Description: Woodbury, Minnesota : Midnight Ink, [2018] | Series: A Quaker

  midwife mystery ; #3

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017047704 (print) | LCCN 2017050197 (ebook) | ISBN

  9780738753881 | ISBN 9780738750545 (alk. paper)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3613.A8985 (ebook) | LCC PS3613.A8985 T87 2018 (print)

  | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017047704

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  Manufactured in the United States of America

  I dedicate this book to the feminists of the nineteenth

  and twentieth centuries. Thank you for fighting for the rights

  of all women, those in your day as well as those to follow.

  Author’s Note

  This book takes place during the national election week of 1888. I was fascinated to learn the history of the candidates, the issues being discussed, the customs surrounding elections—including Election Cake!—and more. I read accounts of events taking place locally in the Newburyport Daily News on microfiche at the Newburyport Public Library and the Newburyport Daily Herald on microfiche at the Amesbury Public Library.

  As the book has a sub-theme of women’s suffrage, I studied whatever I could find in the library and online. I took the liberty of paraphrasing a few sentences from Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s essay, “The Solitude of Self,” which was not published until 1892, for her to speak in person in this book (at Bertie and Sophie’s evening gathering). I couched it as Stanton developing her thoughts on the topic, and I trust her departed soul will approve. The song “Daughters of Freedom,” which the women sing in this book, was a women’s suffrage rallying piece copyrighted in 1871, with lyrics by George Cooper and music by Edwin Christie. Thanks for supporting the movement, gentlemen. Alas, my schedule didn’t permit visiting the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York.

  I want to thank Peter Bryant of the former Salisbury Point Railroad Society for checking my train details. I cribbed the three things a detective needs from A Good Month for Murder: The Inside Story of a Homicide Squad by Del Quentin Wilber. KB Inglee again read for historical details and corrected several of my errors, and Alison Russell checked my facts for that election season.

  I’m always on the lookout for intriguing authentic names from the period. My writer friend Nancy Langmeyer mentioned her great-great grandfather Hilarius Bauer over wine one evening. I asked if I could use his name and she said, “Sure!” Mystery author, independent editor, and good friend Sherry Harris wrote a Facebook post some time ago about discovering interesting names of some of her ancestors. I borrowed her paternal grandmother’s first name for the character of Zula in this book. I know nothing about Ursula Gates Novinger, and am quite sure any negative characteristics and behavior of my Zula have no connection to the real Zula of the past.

  I used the wording of a couple of letters and invitations that I found in this resource: The American lady’s and gentleman’s modern letter writer: relative to business, duty, love, and marriage, University of Pittsburgh, Digital Research Library 2002. I attended the Strawbery Banke Harvest Festival in Portsmouth while writing this book. The festival features craftspeople and artisans in period dress making their arts, doing their crafts. I was delighted to encounter Rose Carroll’s own bicycle among a display of vintage cycles. I was able to put my hand on the split leather seat and learn that cycles of the time even featured a small headlight.

  The menu for the dinner for twelve at the Dodge’s is taken nearly verbatim from Miss Parloa’s Bills of Fare, found in Miss Parloa’s New Cook Book And Marketing Guide, 1880. Note: the fictional Dodge family bears no relation to the ancestors of my good friend from Newburyport Anne Dodge and her West Newbury cousin John Dodge—although I did borrow their name, and their forbearer did, in fact, own a successful shoe business in that town.

  I’m also always looking for sources of how people, particularly women, spoke in the era. For this book I perused several of Louisa May Alcott’s books for dialog, plus I gleaned bits from Sarah Grand’s Ideala, George Egerton’s (Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright) Keynotes and Discords, and The Wing of Azrael by Mona Caird, all books written by women in the late 1800s.

  Susan Koso is not only on the Board of Directors of the Amesbury Carriage Museum, she is also a fount of limitless knowledge about carriages and carriage driving of the period. While I was writing this book she took me riding in her own antique runabout, pulled by her mare Hope, on a former carriage road through Appleton Farm in Ipswich, Massachusetts. While we drove, I asked endless questions, all of which she answered, and she offered invaluable tips on everyday life. Susan also read an early draft of this manuscript, and corrected a few of my errors, but I’m sure more remain, which is no reflection on her expertise. The Amesbury Carriage Museum is also an invaluable resource with their collection of carriages from the period in which I set this series.

  I continue to train as a docent at the John Greenleaf Whittier Home and Museum. In this book I quote one stanza of Whittier’s poem “The Lakeside.” Whittier’s comments on not remembering his own work are paraphrased from a quote in the November 1, 1888 Newburyport Daily Herald. The Whittier Home Association, along with the Amesbury Public Library, generously starred Delivering the Truth, the first book in this series, as the All-Community Read for 2016, and they staged a reading of the scenes from the book featuring Rose and Whittier at the Amesbury Friends Meetinghouse. I was honored and delighted. Chris Bryant
, President of the Association, continues to be endlessly supportive of my work and stocks my books for sale in the home’s gift shop.

  I continue to refer to the following historic references, among others: Marc McCutcheon’s Everyday Life in the 1800s (1993), John Greenleaf Whittier: a Biography by Roland H. Woodwell (1985), the Sears, Roebuck & Co. Consumers’ Guide for 1894, The Massachusetts Peace Officer: a Manual for Sheriffs, Constables, Police, and Other Civil Officers by Gorham D. Williams (1891), and A System of Midwifery by William Leishman, MD (1879). I consult the Online Etymology Dictionary endlessly to see if I can use a particular word or phrase, or if its first attested occurrence was after 1888, and often check Pinterest and other sites for examples of clothing from the era.

  I traveled to New Orleans for the Bouchercon mystery convention while I was working on this manuscript, and I happened across the Pharmacy Museum in the French Quarter. I discovered an entire room upstairs devoted to midwifery and childbirth from the 1800s. It was set up like a bedroom, complete with historic tools and medicines, with well-curated explanatory signage. Bliss.

  I very much enjoy reading the novels of my fellow historical mystery writers who set their books in close to the same period, especially those of my friends Jessica Crockett Estevao, Nancy Herriman, Alyssa Maxwell (no relation), Ann Parker, and Anna Loan Wilsey, and of course the long-running series of both Victoria Thompson and Rhys Bowen. You should check out all these well-written books. I hope I have absorbed only a general feel for the era from them and not subconsciously lifted anything too specific.

  Obviously, any remaining errors on anything historical are of my own doing.

  one

  Rowena Felch stood tall and graceful on the podium in the Free Will Baptist Church hall. “In this election season of 1888, we must work with ever more diligence to gain women the vote!” She sliced the air with her fervor. “We must convince our Massachusetts lawmakers to act. It is past time.”

  The Saturday-night meeting of the Amesbury Woman Suffrage Association was jam-full. I’d arrived a bit late with my friend Bertie Winslow, and we’d found places to sit near the side of the hall. I could see easily, being at least as tall as the speaker, but petite Bertie craned her neck to catch a glimpse of Rowena. It was my first suffrage meeting, although not Bertie’s, and I’d met Rowena only once before, at Bertie’s house. The full room was warm with female bodies and smelled of women: floral aromas, breast milk, and yeasty hints of sweat. Scents integral to my world of midwifery. The gas lamps on all the walls gave a welcoming aura and highlighted Rowena’s face glowing with fervor.

  “Do not lose heart, ladies,” Rowena went on. “We shall gather on Tuesday across from the main polling place in the new Armory. Frannie will hand you each a sash on your way out tonight.” She gestured toward the back of the room. “Please wear them proudly on Election Day.”

  I turned to look. Frannie Eisenman, the grandmother of a baby girl I’d delivered just last week, held a sunflower-yellow sash in the air and waved it for all to see.

  “Does anyone have a question?” Rowena asked.

  An older woman with hair the color of iron stood. It was Ruby Bracken, a member of the same Friends Meeting as me. “What is our plan if we’re met with opposition from the gentleman, as we surely will be?”

  A teenage girl with curly black tresses sat next to Ruby. The girl’s eyes widened as if in fear at the thought of opposition, but I was glad to see females of all ages at the meeting. An older lady with a comfortable corset-free figure and soft white sausage curls framing her face emerged from a side door at the front of the hall and walked to the podium. Rowena took a pace back, beaming at the newcomer.

  “If this comes to pass, we shall link arms and stand tall,” the woman proclaimed, her flat black lace headdress falling like a veil and accentuating her snowy-white hair.

  Bertie’s mouth fell open. “That’s Mrs. Stanton!”

  “The Mrs. Stanton?” I asked, shifting on the hard wooden chair.

  “Elizabeth Cady Stanton herself. Why, I never.” Bertie’s eyes were bright. “Right here in Amesbury. Let’s go greet her after the meeting finishes.”

  Murmurs of the name rose up all around us. My mother, an ardent suffragist in her own right, had gotten to know Elizabeth Stanton at the International Women’s Conference in the spring and had sent glowing tales of Elizabeth’s courage from Washington City.

  “Be not afraid,” Elizabeth continued. “We are in the right and we shall not be intimidated. Please stand and join me in song.” She waited until all rose, then began.

  Daughters of freedom arise in your might.

  March to the watchwords Justice and Right.

  The women’s voices singing the inspiring lyrics in unison raised goosebumps on my arms. I hummed along since I didn’t know the words.

  Why will ye slumber? Wake, O wake.

  Lo, on your legions light doth break.

  Sunder the fetters custom hath made.

  Come from the valley, hill and glade.

  The song went on from there until the hall filled with applause.

  “Come on.” Bertie tugged my arm as the clapping ended.

  “Won’t we be intruding?” I asked, pulling back a little, even though of course I wanted to meet the famous and tireless advocate for women’s rights. I allowed Bertie to pull me to the front until we neared Elizabeth and Rowena. Rowena’s skirt was hemmed shorter than many and I glimpsed a pair of red leather shoes underneath.

  We waited while a mother with two young daughters spoke with the women. Elizabeth bent down and gave the children warm greetings, but Rowena was cooler, merely smiling and shaking their small hands.

  After they turned away, Rowena smiled at Bertie and extended her hand. “Hello, Miss Winslow, and Miss Carroll, isn’t it?” She shook first Bertie’s hand and then mine, with a firm smooth grip. “Thank you for coming to our gathering,” Rowena said. “Mrs. Stanton, may I present Miss Bertie Winslow? She’s Amesbury’s postmistress.” Rowena, about five years older than my twenty-six, wore her smooth flaxen hair gathered into a low knot under a flat-top hat decorated with only a single green ribbon and feather. Her well-cut green dress was fashionable without being frivolous. I knew she was a lawyer and I didn’t believe she had children of her own, at least none whom I’d delivered either during my three-year apprenticeship or in the last year and a half since I’d taken over my mentor’s midwifery practice. Our bustling town of well over four thousand held many residents whom I knew either slightly or not at all.

  Elizabeth Stanton extended her hand. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  Bertie shook her hand and said, “I’m much honored to meet you, ma’am. This is my midwife friend, Miss Rose Carroll.”

  “I am humbled to meet thee, Elizabeth.” Friends didn’t use titles, as we believe we are all equal under God. It sometimes shocked people of a certain social status when I called them by their given names, but I was well accustomed to their reactions by now. I waited, but this luminary of the movement didn’t bat an eyelash.

  “It’s my pleasure, Miss Carroll.” Elizabeth gazed at me for a moment. “I met a Mrs. Dorothy Henderson Carroll at our meeting in the capital in April.”

  I smiled. “She’s my mother, and she spoke very highly of thee.”

  She laughed out loud. “And you’re the Quakers.”

  “Indeed, we are.”

  “Like our dearly departed Lucretia Mott, gone these eight years now.” Elizabeth’s smile was a sad one. “Finest Quaker I ever met and my own mentor in this effort of ours.”

  Lucretia Coffin Mott had been in the forefront of the abolitionist and suffrage movements for many years, always in her Quaker bonnet and plain dress.

  “She was a model for us all.” Rowena nodded.

  Someone hailed Elizabeth from the other side of the room and she excused herself.

>   “Rowena, I thought thee spoke with power and elegance,” I said.

  “Thank you.” Her deep brown eyes looked directly into mine. “Let us hope and pray our increasing numbers will make an impact on those in power.”

  “We’ll both be there on Tuesday,” Bertie said. “Let’s go get our sashes before they run out, Rose.”

  I caught deepening lines on Rowena’s forehead as I turned to go. I followed the direction of her gaze toward the back of the hall. A young woman in a dark dress with her hair pulled into a severe knot, a black trilby topping it, stood staring at Rowena, arms folded across her chest. I glanced back at Rowena, but her back was to me now.

  My calling as a midwife makes me alert to small changes in expression. Often a pregnant woman will harbor worries to which she isn’t able or willing to give voice about the birth. Part of my job is to ease her fears. A body rigid with tension during labor can prolong and complicate the birth itself. What was the reason for the tense exchange I’d just witnessed? And who was the other woman?

  Bertie twirled her sash with one hand as we walked away from the church hall. “Do you think we’ll ever see women get the vote, Rose?”

  The full moon bathed the world in its bright white light as if God shone his approval on our suffrage movement, but clouds lurked on either side.

  “I certainly hope so.” I glanced to my right, glimpsing a movement. Two women walked in the opposite direction. When they passed under a street light, I noticed it was Rowena strolling with the woman I’d seen staring at her. The other woman threw her hand in the air. I couldn’t see their faces, but her gesture looked like an angry one.

  “But we seem to lose as much as we gain,” I went on, turning back to Bertie. Women in the Washington Territory had gained the right to vote five years earlier but the Supreme Court had struck down the law only last year, and a similar law in Utah had been reversed. I gestured to two posters plastered to the front window of a cobbler’s shop we were passing, one with President Cleveland and A.G. Thurman, the other showing Benjamin Harrison and Levi P. Morton. “It’s a pity Belva Lockwood didn’t see fit to run for President again. Wouldn’t that have been fine, to see campaign posters featuring a woman instead of these?”