How worm thread ties you, me and history together

Author Alison Lloyd's newsletter #58

Do you ever look at your wardrobe, or at clothes to buy, and think ‘I don’t know whether that’s appropriate for me?’ This newsletter takes you on an excursion into cross-cultural fashion — it’s vibrant and interwoven history between China and the west particularly.

This week I heard a podcast refer (negatively) to ‘mainstream’ culture as ‘white’. Well, ‘white’ might be ‘mainstream’ in that podcaster’s surrounds. But I’ve just come back from a holiday overseas. China reminded me, powerfully, that in most (~60%) of the world, mainstream = Asian. I was bemused to find my foreign face is still a walking curiosity there, even in the internet age. Local tourists remarked on my clothes. Some even wanted photos!¹

If you don’t care about cultural commentary, stick with me, or at least scroll down, because I’ve got some lovely historical clothing pics for you too.

China also reminded me that cultural borrowing is fertile ground for artists and activists, and it’s pretty much unstoppable. We started our trip in the mega metropolis of Shanghai. In Shanghai East meets West. You can see the tide marks of history, especially in the city’s architecture.

Shanghai’s central shopping strip, Nanjing Rd. L:1930s; R: 2025 (on a quiet day, when it was about to rain).

Today’s Shanghai wouldn’t exist without colonialism. Two hundred years ago, the area was agricultural. But Shanghai is in a strategic spot — it’s where the huge Yangtze River, winding from inland China, finally meets the sea. In 1842, imperial China lost the first Opium War. As part of the peace deal, the British, French and Americans demanded that parts of Shanghai be signed over to their control. Foreigners were given navigation rights on the Yangtze River a few years later (in 1857). Shanghai took off as a trading hub. An enormous tide of textiles, tea and money flowed through Shanghai and out the Yangtze river mouth.

Silk was one of Shanghai’s major exports. (Incidentally, it’s how my husband’s great-grandfather made his fortune. He was a silk middleman, buying in Shanghai for sale upriver in Nanjing. The business, and the fortune, was later appropriated under the Communist government. But let’s stick to silk.)

A traditional silk factory in Wuzhen, closed only in recent years. L to R: cocoons; a treadle spinning machine; brocade loom; detail of brocade weaving.

Silk is made by unwinding thread extruded by an insect — the silk worm. China has been transforming this unlikely source into glorious works of textile art for millennia.

R: Qing dynasty (1644-1911) women’s embroidered silk jacket in Shanghai Museum. L: detail of jacket.

How Qing dynasty women’s clothes looked on the wearer. L: women in Han costume, like the jacket above, taken by Lai Afong in 1880. See how capacious the jacket is, and how it comes below the knee. R: the Chinese ambassador’s wife in 1895, in the long robe worn by the ruling Manchu minority.

The European world has coveted Chinese silk since the Roman empire. In eighteenth and nineteenth century boudoirs, the imitation of Chinese style was a mark of sophistication.

Man’s banyan (dressing gown) and long sleeve waistcoat, made in Italy around 1750, from a Qing court robe. The dragon’s eyebrows are made with peacock feathers! Source: V&A

But styles and ideas flowed in both directions. In the early twentieth century, Chinese students were the first to adopt a more European look, as a political statement, expressing a desire for change and modernisation.

Detail of photo of students at the women’s college of Yanching University, taken around 1920. The tops and skirts have shortened a little compared to the Qing dynasty, and the shoes are changing shape. If you look carefully, the woman in the front centre has bound feet.

The new look spread. Below are two 1930s women’s outfits from the region of Wuzhen, 125km/80 miles from Shanghai.

1930s women’s clothes, in a museum in Wuzhen. Taken by myself, 2025, with apologies for the glass reflections.

These are such graceful clothes, to my eyes. You can see how they integrate both traditional patterns and (a little bit of) western influence. They’re not as stiff as the earlier woman’s jacket above.

But they’re still relatively loose-fitting and modest. Shanghai changed that! Awash with both foreigners and money, Shanghai was outside traditional government structures. It was renowned for its racy and revolutionary lifestyle — it was where the Chinese Communist Party held its first national congress in 1921. (Communism is itself a cultural import to China, Karl Marx being German.)

76 Xingye Rd, the building in the French Concession, Shanghai, where the first Communist Party congress happened in 1921

Horse-racing, nightclubs and ‘sing-song’ girls were also big business in the city.

As you can see above, Shanghai loved the flapper look. Young Shanghainese women cut and crimped their hair and lifted their hemlines. But, as the Chinese government is fond of saying, this was western fashion ‘with Chinese characteristics’. In Shanghai, female clothes kept the mandarin collar and the brilliant silks. Under the ministrations of Shanghai tailors, the silks now clung to the wearer’s figure. Behold the new qipao, or cheongsam.

1930s, girl in qipao against Shanghai backdrop, 1930s. By Yuan Xiutang (dates unknown) collection of the Shanghai History Museum

Front cover of the ‘Shanghai Sketch’, 1929.

I adore both Qing styles and cheongsams. Those flowing lines and rich colours and intricate swirling patterns! Costume photo shoots are currently popular at Chinese tourist destinations. I’d love to slink around in a cheongsam or swish about in royal robes. I thought about it. But I was embarrassed that my European face and grey-brown hair was going to look weird perched on top of the Oriental finery. I didn’t hire a costume package.

Western culture has become very sensitive about over who wears what. Sure, the forms and symbols of clothes do have meaning. Once, only the imperial family were supposed to wear dragons. Han women wore one style; Manchu women another; the flappers another again. But they’re always shifting. No place or people group gets to own them forever. Besides, I believe in shared humanity.² I’d rather see in Qing robes or the cheongsam an expression of common human desires, for beauty and meaning. Even if you don’t own Asian styled clothes, you’ve probably got some form of imitation silk in your wardrobe.

So, while I didn’t do a costume photo shoot, I did buy a Tibetan coat. Plus some silk gifts, to wind the shimmering threads of culture round the world…

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you have a favourite cultural borrowing? Textiles for me I think… Or stories…

1. In case you’re wondering, I speak Chinese, although people don’t know this by looking at me! My husband is from China - we met as students. That’s a story for another day. If you’re interested, leave a comment or send a return email :)

2. Because I’m a Christian, which is itself a religion that came out of the Middle East, speaking of cultural borrowings. Despite the sins of Christians, including racism, Jesus’ church is a body of people amongst whom there is ‘no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female’ (to quote the New Testament). Personally, I think this is a more attractive and positive approach than fracturing the world into competing identity groups.

When Home Décor was deadly - A Tale of Toxic Beauty + more short fiction

Alison Lloyd's newsletter #57

Because you dear readers liked the stories about apprentice Jack in Dickensian London, I’ve written you another one 😀 But first some salutary historical background.

Deadly Décor

For most of history, interior decoration was only for the rich. But the Industrial Revolution brought steam-powered printing presses, and brilliant new dyes. Put these two technologies together, in the nineteenth century, and you get wallpaper, at prices almost everyone could afford.

Three Victorian wallpapers held by the V&A Collection. L to R: Jeffrey & Co, manufacturer, designer Owen Jones; rebus wallpaper for Lady Macdonald Lockhart, designer A.W.N. Pugin; architectural wallpaper, designer unknown.

Victorian homes were full of it. Chippendale made wallpaper; so did Liberty, and William Morris. Designs were lavish and complex. Colours were rich.

L: The Squire’s Garden, designed by C.F.A. Voysey, 1896. R: Swan, Rush and Iris, by Walter Crane, 1889.

(This newsletter is heavy on pictures - I found so many gorgeous wallpapers! The short story is coming, if you Scroll on down.)

But there was a hidden problem with these decorations. They were steeped in poison, basically. Particularly the green ones. Scheele’s Green, and Emerald Green were two of the new chemical colours — they were vivid and cheap. And they were made with arsenic. Emerald Green was also known as ‘Paris Green’ (Reputedly this is because it was used on rats in the Paris sewers. I didn’t find evidence for this claim, and I suspect the name might have come by association with the French art world.)

Van Gogh’s self portrait painted in 1888, with liberal amounts of Paris Green.

In 1857, toxicologist Alfred Swaine Taylor told a House of Lords Committee that he estimated there were at least 30 million square yards of green wallpaper in Britain.

By the mid Victorian era, doctors were investigating cases of suspected arsenic poisoning. In 1857, a Dr William Hinds reported abdominal cramps, light-headedness and nausea every time he relaxed in his green-papered study. When he had the paper removed, his symptoms disappeared. In 1862, four London children in the same family died of respiratory illness. At first their deaths were put down to diphtheria. But when the illness didn’t spread, the nursery wallpaper was analysed, and found to contain lethal amounts of arsenic.

Dining Room at York, by Mary Ellen Best, 1838. Note the bright green stripes on the wallpaper.

Factory workers were also exposed to the dye toxins. If you’re interested in arts and crafts, this video shows how the well-known pattern of a more expensive wallpaper was made by hand:

Not everyone exposed got sick. Some people were more susceptible than others. Manufacturers therefore disputed the idea that their products were poisoning people. They did begin to advertise ‘arsenic-free’ wallpaper later in the century, but chemical tests cast doubt over these guarantees. Green was not clean. The brightest hues fell out of favour.

As dear old Kermit the frog says:

A Safety Tip for You

Scheele’s Green and other toxic pigments weren’t only used in wallpapers. Nineteenth century paintings and fabrics used them. And books too, in their covers and marbled end papers. What’s more, green was not the only toxic colour. Vermilion can contain a mercury compound. So the advice from professional conservationists: always wash your hands very well after handling old objects. (Thank you to the State Library of Victoria staff for this tip.)

This nearly brings me to the new story. After this…

Side-note: I Discover a Real Monopoly Property

Another historical side-note: the Angel Islington most likely sounds familiar. It’s one of the cheaper properties on the Monopoly board. When I was researching maps of London, I found the actual Angel hotel was not far from a major wallpaper factory and shop. The name has such a ring to it that I looked into its history. By the early Victorian era the Angel was past its glory days — just the place for this story.

My Latest Short Story for You

My last couple of posts introduced a jewellery apprentice, and his mother, Hetty. If you missed those stories, you can read ‘Luverly’ here, and ‘Jack-the-Beanstalk’ here. I’m delighted that ‘Jack-the-Beanstalk’ got recommended by Substack’s Top-in-Fiction last month.

This time, I’ve gone back a bit, to when young Jack’s father, also known as Jack Neave, was courting Hetty. He was keen and so was she. But on a factory worker’s wage, it’s a challenge to be romantic…

The Angel Islington

London, 1842

While St Mary’s minister intoned the Sunday service, in a back pew Jack Neave thought over the problem of his lodgings. They were an unsatisfactory piece of work. ‘The Angel Islington’ was anything but heavenly. Jack had been drawn to the lumbering pile by the stone ornamentation, a relic of better days. A sign offered: ‘Angel Inn Tavern and Hotel for Gentlemen and Families’. On closer inspection, the mortar was crumbling, eaten away by the yellow London fog. Or the Angel was crumbling under the weight of sins committed within its walls. Inside, the corridors reeked of tobacco and chamber pots. The wallpaper in the better rooms was blotched. ‘Gentleman and Families’ his arse.

Sitting in the pew beside him was Jack’s own living angel. Hetty worked on touch-ups in the factory. He could pinch himself that she was willing to wed him. She was so graceful, with a sway to her waist like a fleur-de-lys. No, a fleur-de-lys was too stiff. Hetty was more like a wreathed border, flowing and blossoming. He was looking forward to a taste of heaven with her, when they finally got somewhere private. His windowless cupboard didn’t cut it. He wanted better for Hetty.

The lesson was being read:

‘…and God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work…’

Hetty’s shoulder pressed into Jack’s upper arm. The trust of that touch made him want to be a good man. Someone who could be proud of his work. Like God, if it wasn’t blasphemy to think it.

Today was the third reading of the banns. Jack had wanted to skip the fuss. But Crofter, the foreman at the factory, had taken him aside for a word, man-to-man.

Jack was burning offcuts in the corner stove. The paper smoked and burned with lurid flames. Jack had to wait while the old fellow coughed his lungs into his handkerchief.

‘I’m not long for this,’ Crofter said.

Jack didn’t argue. A wallpaper factory wasn’t the same gnashing beast as, say, an iron foundry, but the air got to some.

‘I’ve told the boss you’re the man to keep the floor working,’ the foreman said, his breath hissing as he tried to whisper. ‘You’ve got an eye for detail. You know the ropes.’

Jack thought he did. He’d been at Jeffrey & Co, since he was a nipper. He knew wet print from dry, Scheele’s Green from Apple Green. He could spot an imperfection at nine yards.

‘You’d like that?’

Jack nodded, trying not to let on just how much he liked it. He wished Crofter well, but if Jack were promoted to foreman… He could support a family tidily on that wage.

‘Thing is,’ Crofter hissed like a boiler. ‘The company’s on the up. Them new colours and designs is bringing good custom. Very respectable custom. So the boss wants a respectable foreman. Get my drift?’

Jack didn’t. He had no blots on his copybook.

Crofter clapped him on the shoulder, then coughed. ‘A family man,’ he said eventually. ‘With a shiny ring on his finger, that’s the mark. Righto?’

‘Righto.’

Nothing for it then, but a proper marriage to Hetty. Rings and banns.

So Jack took his savings to the boss, and asked to change all his shillings for a gold sovereign. He had to admit he’d felt proud as Punch, handing over his hard-earned. He’d slipped the gold sovereign inside his waistcoat. He felt the small disc there as he worked, pressing against his chest, imprinting Her Majesty’s fair head over his heart. He pretended it was Hetty, his own queen-to-be. After knock-off, he handed the coin to a jeweller in Clerkenwell, who melted it into two rings. The pair of them were now snug in his waistcoat, pressed together, ready for the big day.

But first he had to sit through this third morning service at St Mary’s. He’d complained, the first time. He needed his sleep on a Sunday and hadn’t been to church in years. But he saw Hetty glow, the first time their names were read out together. There were better things than sleep.

The bloody trouble was — Jack looked apologetically at the stained glass angel in St Mary’s nave. His trouble was, the wedding rings had taken almost all his bread and honey. He couldn’t afford a house, far less a palace, for his lady.

He was reluctant to pray. He felt like an apprentice who didn’t want to draw the master’s attention. He also felt that it was weak. It showed up a lack in him – he’d failed to fix his own problem. But he was getting desperate. The best he’d found was the third floor room offered to him by the Angel manager. The room faced south, but the extra light only showed up the foulness of the walls.

The manager refused to pay for paint.

‘What’s yer problem?’ he said. ‘Don’t you work for a paperer?’ He tapped the side of his veinous nose. ‘Couldn’t you take a roll or two for a walk out the back door, ay?’

And get himself sent to the colonies? Not Jack’s kind of lark. How would Hetty feel about that? He looked sideways at her. No, she would rather the pig’s trough of the Angel’s third floor than marry a thief. She deserved better.

‘… in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens…’

A beam of spring sun spilled into the church. St Mary’s wasn’t a rich parish, and most of the windows were clear diamond-patterned glass. The light frisked along Hetty’s hair, curled for church. Jack wanted to touch the lock – twist the ends of it around his finger, consider the colour. It wasn’t 107 Hair Brown. Despite the name, 107 was the shade of mouse fur. Hetty’s hair was more 102 – Umber Brown. With streaks of Gallstone Yellow in the light. Bad name for a rich colour. When she dropped her head for the prayers he got a peek under her bonnet at the nape of her neck. The strands were silky Chocolate Red, on Skimmed Milk skin. He was going to lift that veil of hair, and kiss that tender, hidden hairline… When he had the chance. Soon. Very soon.

‘…and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew…’

Even plants had their place. Except here in the city, where the ground was paved and there wasn’t room. Not for him neither.

Privately, and awkwardly, he petitioned the Almighty for help. Erm, excuse me, but can you help me find somewhere nice to bring Hetty when we’ve tied the knot?

The angel in the nave looked down on him kindly. That’s Scheele’s in the background, Jack thought. It struck him that green wasn’t the most common colour in windows – must be hard to manufacture in glass.

The Bible reading continued, almost in answer.

‘And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it…’

That’d be nice, Jack thought. A place like that. The world had gone downhill since then, for all its science and industry.

‘…made he a woman, and brought her unto the man…’

Yes, but where? Jack had no garden.

Then it came to him – the offcuts. He’d ask Crofter for them. Crofter would let him take the cuts, when Jack explained what he meant to do. Back at the Angel, Jack would sort them, and stick them on the brown stained walls. Make a garden for Hetty. Of Emerald green, Mountain green, Verdigris, Pistachio and every green there was. With rambling roses and posies of violets and fleur-de-lys — a patchwork of wallpaper.

Their own Eden.

The reading had finished. As if she knew his thoughts, Hetty reached for Jack’s hand. A colour he couldn’t name fired in her eyes, as the curate cleared his throat:

‘I publish the Banns of Marriage between James Neave of this parish, St Mary’s Islington, and Hetty Fitch also of this parish. If any of you know cause, or just impediment, why these two persons should not be joined together in holy Matrimony, ye are to declare it. This is the third time of asking.’

Third and final time. And finally, to Jack’s mind, there was no impediment.

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Because you asked...

Alison Lloyd's newsletter #56

Welcome if you’re new (r old!) to this newsletter — I’m delighted you’re here. I’m author Alison Lloyd. In the Scroll you’ll find history for your heart — a thoughtful mix of fact and fiction.

Last month I got many positive comments on the new story about Jack, an apprentice jeweller in Victorian London. If you missed that short story (called ‘Luverly’), you can read it online here.

Another new short story

Good news — because of the readers who wanted more of him, I wrote another story. This one is about Jack’s mother, and her difficult choices in bringing up her son. If you like Dickensian settings, and/or character-driven historical fiction, I think you’ll like it.

Good news x2 — Jack Neave is a character in the new novel I’m working on, so there’s more to come. But it will be a while coming, I confess. I’m not a one-draft-and-done author. I like to get the words, the characters, and the story right.

So in the meanwhile, get to know Jack, a boy with promise, and attitude…

Photograph of London boy named Charlie Long, born 1892, by Horace Warner. Sourced from this touching Guardian gallery of ‘Spitalfields nippers’.

Jack-the-Beanstalk

Hetty was hard put to feed her son. He was barely nine, but his limbs and his appetite were getting ahead of him. At tea he stowed the bread away like he was stuffing his trouser legs. When she watched him in the alley playing with the other urchins, fast as a pack of rats, she was afraid. That one day, he’d dart from her sight, and be lost to the hard, grey, streets.

But her Jack had another side to him. When he saw something he liked, he had the knack of being still for a long time. It was like he ate through his eyes, and filled himself on the shapes and colours. Look how he loved the pictures in that book of his father’s, how he drew them on his slate instead of his sums. He wrote the alphabet very pretty. In a few years she hoped his letters would get him a safe job, behind a desk.

Jack senior, the boy’s father, was like that too – his heart fell into his work. She used to think his spirit left his body and travelled through the patterns he made. Cor, he was a one for that. She loved it in him, and in his son.

Jack senior done well, made a decent living as factory foreman. But in the end it cost him. His bones eaten, his life drained by the poisons at his work. That green wallpaper he was so proud of – it smelt like mouldy onion. Off. She was convinced it had got into him, although the factory said the sickness was none of their doing. When they lost him for good, she swore she’d never let the same happen to young Jack. She’d never let her son go to a factory.

Last week she’d seen a bit of paper up in the window of Dingley’s, the jeweller she passed by on her deliveries. ‘Wanted: an apprentice.’ The notice was written ever so nice, in fancy capitals with curls top and bottom. Hetty had stopped to look, just for the writing. She’d learnt to see through Jack’s eyes, while he was still alive, as if he’d lent her a pair of glass specs. So when something caught her fancy, when she was up the finer parts of town, sometimes she’d stop and look. She felt her husband was close, then. Standing at her shoulder on the pavement, nudging.

‘So ‘ow ‘bout it, Hetty?’

No.

Dingley’s wasn’t a factory. The jeweller had a workshop out the back of his store. But Hetty was no fool. Workshop, factory, they was sparrows and starlings – much the same thing. Just because the jewellery was so dainty, didn’t mean the work was easy.

Hetty could take in extra laundry, if Jack took on deliveries. He was tall enough to carry the baskets. Her hands wouldn’t thank her, but her son would stay in school.

‘Don’t stop and talk to nobody,’ she told Jack, loading him with the basket.

Inside, the hotel linens were snowy and folded, ticked off Hetty’s list. The cushion covers were tucked like a baby between sheets, so their fine brocade didn’t catch on the basket canes. A ragged cloth was tied over the top, so passers-by didn’t see what was inside. She warned Jack again about laundry thieves. She couldn’t afford to repay the hotel if she lost a piece.

Jack waved her away, itching to be gone.

‘Show me your hands.’

Jack flashed his palms at her.

She caught his hands and turned them over. The ‘u’ of his nails was free of grime. She felt a flush of pride at the care he’d taken to scrub up. His long fingers were just like his father’s. Clever hands.

Jack pulled away from her grasp.

‘They’re cleaner ‘n yours,’ he said. ‘Carter’s waiting.’

Hetty’s hands weren’t dirty. They were too clean – the skin was red and cracked from rubbing and soaking with the laundry. She let her son go.

All went well – the first trip, the second trip, the third trip. Jack was tired, but at the end of the week Hetty bought a small joint of pork with the extra cash.

‘Put some meat on your bones,’ she said.

He relished that. Her heart filled with grand satisfaction at the sight of him tucking in.

Jack spent the rest of the rainy Sunday doodling quietly on his slate. But he wiped the drawing off with his sleeve when Hetty came to look. That saddened her. His father had always shared. He brought designs and samples home from the factory just to show her when he was pleased with them. He used to look at Hetty herself like she was the loveliest piece in all London.

‘So ‘ow ‘bout it, Hetty?’ he’d say with a wink.

The next Monday, with the dirty linen, there was a note for Hetty, from the hotel housekeeper:

Dear Mrs Neave,

A bolster cover was missing from last week’s wash – green brocade with gold tassels. Could you please return it at your earliest convenience.

Hetty knew the one. A lovely pattern – a climbing vine over a gold trellis.

‘Look!’ Jack had said. ‘A beanstalk.’ When she read him that story he was such a little fellow, but he’d never forgot. The first time he was tall enough to see through a jeweller’s window, his eyes had lit like lamps. ‘Mam! Magic beans!’ He was very cut up that they couldn’t buy any.

Now Hetty was cut up. How could the bolster cover be missing? She’d got the wax off, then washed it separate because the dye ran. Once the wash was hung, she didn’t leave the yard. No thief got a chance to pilfer from her lines. She’d checked off her list as always, written in chalk on an old slate roof tile. Something must’ve happened during delivery.

She questioned Jack like he was up before a magistrate. Better her than someone else.

He swore he hadn’t talked to anyone, hadn’t dawdled anywhere. He said the hotel must’ve made a mistake.

Hetty hoped the manager found the piece soon. Otherwise she had a week before she’d have to sell something. The bed, maybe.

The manager did not find the missing cover. Neither did Hetty, although she looked everywhere at home – the tubs, the buckets, under the blanket, even down the back alley in case it had blown away. Not a single green thread.

But she did make a find in the back alley. The back fence was covered with chalk drawings. Her son Jack had turned the alleyway into a garden of art. A trellis, wound through with a climbing vine, blossomed with heavy heads of flowers. She was struck with the wonder of it, until she recognised the pattern.

Hetty dragged herself to the street, feeling like her boots were lined with lead.

‘Oy, Jack!’

He looked across from his game, his face pink and sweaty. His eyes slid back to the newspaper ball, ready to run.

Hetty went and nobbled him by the back of his jacket. ‘Inside,’ she ordered.

‘What are you? A copper?’ the boy muttered.

‘No, thank God,’ Hetty said. May it never come to that.

Inside, with the door latched, she put her hands on her hips. ‘Where is it?’

‘What?’

‘The green cover.’

Jack shrugged. His gaze skittered away from hers again.

‘Don’t you feed me any porky pies. I saw the back fence.’

Jack didn’t say anything. He scuffed his feet on the floor and wriggled, as if his clothes were itching him.

That’s where it is, Hetty thought suddenly.

‘Take off your jacket,’ she ordered.

Jack unbuttoned his jacket reluctantly, making a deal of every button.

‘And your shirt.’

He grabbed the fabric by the back of the neck and hauled it over his head. The bolster cushion slid out, and landed on the floorboards.

Hetty scooped it up. It was warm, and smelt of Jack. She checked it over – no damage she could see. She folded it, shakily, and held it to her chest, like she was trying to stop her heart falling out onto the boards with her son’s clothes.

‘Why did you do it Jack?’

‘I didn’t do nuffin’. Just looked.’

He stood in front of her, the thin bones of his shoulders jutting sharp and defiant.

‘You know it’s thieving.’

‘I seen how much that hotel got. There’s a room just for linen. With shelves –’ Jack stacked his hands, one over the other, above his head.

She knew it was true. She liked to see them herself, the neat, starched stacks, white as angel robes. Sometimes there were curtains down for turning and mending, in rich, heavy folds. Or bolster cushions as had been washed. Gentry could be careless with their food and drink.

‘It int yours.’

‘I hate our things.’ The anger was hot in his voice. ‘I hate how everythin’s dirty and old and brown.’

‘You mustn’t never nab anything Jack.’ She couldn’t stand it if he turned into a sneak. The other urchins on the street might be running pell-mell for a life of crime, but not hers. ‘Your father wouldn’t stand for it. You’re better ‘n that.’

She saw the boy was trembling on the edge of tears. She didn’t know whether he was sorry for being caught, or properly afraid for his soul.

‘Tonight you’ll go to bed with no supper,’ she told him. ‘Cos that’s what it’ll cost you to hop in a hackney now and get yourself to the hotel. With that cushion cover and your best apologies.’

She hoped this would hold everything together. That their life wouldn’t split like a worn sack and spill them onto the street. Maybe she should deliver the cushion cover herself. But she had a strong notion that Jack had took it, so he should return it. She hoped he’d do as she told him. He might keep it and lie to her. He might nab the bolster and sell it. Perhaps he’d believe the promises of some silver-tongued rogue for an easy life, and never come home.

Either way, she’d soon know. If he didn’t come home, he was lost to her.

Jack came back. He was tired and quiet, folded into himself. He looked thinner without the bolster cover wrapped around his chest. Flat and cold, as if the brocade had kept his heart and his hopes warm.

He handed over a note of thanks from the hotel housekeeper. Hetty hugged Jack in relief, but he was stiff as a poker to her touch. She released him. She couldn’t hold her son any longer.

The next day she scrubbed him up. ‘I want to show you something,’ she told him. ‘Then it’s your choice.’

She marched him down to Dingley’s. They stood on the pavement and looked in through the windows. Hetty pointed to the notice. ‘See that? They want a h’apprentice. If you show ‘em ‘ow you draw, I bet my boots they’ll have you.’

‘Really?’ Jack couldn’t drag his eyes away from the gleaming display in the shop window. Oh, she knew that look. His heart was in there already, tracing the shapes of the jewellery, falling into the deep pools of sapphire and the burning fires of ruby.

‘It’ll be hard work, Jack. Six days a week. You’ll only see me Sundays.’

She wondered if it would be too much. If he might rather stay with her. If she might be enough for him. She hoped.

He turned away from the window, but she could still see the glassy light in his eyes.

‘I can do it,’ he said, his shoulders set, his chin up. ‘And when I’ve learned ‘ow, I’m going to make one of them necklaces for you. Something properly beautiful.’

When she’d signed him away, she stood on the street and watched through the window. She could see his face, pale and glowing, in the shop interior. She could see him so clearly, now she’d let him go. But there was the glass between them, a separation.

She felt Jack’s father at her shoulder, watching their son. He was standing close enough to feel her pride and fear.

‘Ow ‘bout that, Hetty?’ he whispered in her thoughts.

How ‘bout that. She only hoped Jack found himself something properly beautiful.

---

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A Luverly Bit of Short Fiction for you

Author Alison Lloyd's newsletter #55

In this post you’ll find a brand new, entire story to bring a shine to your day. I scrapped my first go at this newsletter halfway through because it bored me, and wrote this short story instead. Much more sparkle to it, as I hope you’ll see!

This story is great for fans of Dickens or Downton Abbey, or The Paradise (if you’ve watched that BBC series). It’s about work, hope, creativity — I can’t pin it down to one thing. You might remember I mentioned a jeweller in my current novel last month? Here’s his early story, as an ambitious apprentice in 1850s London. Meet Jack…

Luverly

On his second Monday behind the jewellery counter, as he was doodling a design, Jack saw the carriage pull up. The grid of the window glass graphed its arrival. Top left: liveried coachman. Centre left: hindquarters of matched greys. Bottom left and right: imperial blue wheels. Centre square: a varnished door, green as emeralds. A smart equipage.

Look lively, he thought.

He swivelled the customer mirror and tweaked up the loops of his necktie. Dingley the master jeweller had promised commission on sales. Not much of a commission, a blighty five pence in the pound. Not even a round sixpence. Jack only got behind the counter on Mondays, the slow day. The rest of the week, every day but Sundays with his mother, he was in the workshop, smelting, soldering, buffing. Last Monday he sold a gold watch for two pounds. Ten quid of sales and he could make his mum something pretty.

The windowpanes were divided like tic-tac-toe, the game Jack and the other urchins had scratched it on walls and footpaths, before he was apprenticed. Jack liked to go for the centre square, where he now saw the coachman, opening the carriage door. A pale, gloved hand reached for the coachman’s assistance, then a woman in a bonnet and veil ducked her head to step out.

Luverly.

He took in the soft lilac of her silk dress. She would set off the sapphire parure something marvellous. Necklace, earrings, brooch – a tidy three hundred and fifty pounds worth of tom foolery.

Or the diamond choker. Diamonds went with anything, although they looked most flash on crimson, or black velvet.

Jack wasn’t planning something so fancy for his mother. Even if he could afford it, she wouldn’t wear it. ‘Mutton dressed as lamb,’ she’d say. Poverty was like coarse sandpaper — it wore a person down. Ground away their expectations. But the time she first brought him here, when he was a lad of nine, the two of them stopped to look at the window display. He’d promised her then, fiercely, that he would make her something beautiful. He hated their life of chipped crockery, wooden washboards, and worn seams. He’d drudged through his apprenticeship for the sake of the smooth and shining jewellery. Now he knew how to make it. He’d have the needful to spend on materials when he made enough sales.

Which he might do in one strike with Lavender-lady, now alighted on the footpath. Unless she was shopping for a gentleman’s gift. In which case the best Jack could hope for would be a watch paired with a gold-handled cane. Not ten quid’s worth.

The young woman entered the shop door with a little pirouette that swung her crinoline deftly away from the hinges. She was quite the package this one — gift-wrapped with a large silk bow at her waist. She lifted her veil with both hands and folded it over her bonnet. Dainty, like porcelain. She should wear amethysts, Jack thought. Or aquamarine. And pearls. White gold, the same shade as the long curl of hair draped over one shoulder.

He saw the surprise in her large blue eyes when she looked at him. She’d been expecting someone else behind the counter. She could be here to pick something up. No, she would expect delivery to the house. Her eyes wandered greedily around the shop, looking for something. She was not much older than he was. Somebody’s daughter, Jack would have thought, except she’d no mama in tow.

He could do this. Better than old Mr Dingley.

‘Afternoon, ma’am.’ He spoke softly. The senior jeweller was taking his lunch out the back. Jack didn’t want to alert him to the presence of a customer.

‘What if I’m ‘miss’?’ she said archly.

He smiled.

‘The ring.’ The glove wrinkled on the third finger of her left hand.

‘Clever boy.’ She rubbed at the ridge on the glove, and pulled the seam tip on her ring finger, as if it bothered her slightly. ‘Are you clever enough to sell me what I need?’

‘What do you need, ma’am?’

She lowered her voice conspiratorially. ‘To impress my husband’s business partner. Potential business partner. But –’ she whispered, ‘within an allowance.’

If she was after glass, instead of jewels, they didn’t do that here. Jack reined in his expectations a couple of notches. ‘May I ask how much, ma’am?’

‘No. I’ll tell you when it’s too much.’

She had a sharp business sense under the silk exterior.

Jack smiled again. ‘Our best pieces are on display here.’

May as well start at the top. He ushered her to the locked cabinet.

The best way to sell jewellery was to dress the customer in it. Let them wear it. Feel the drape of the setting on their breastbone. See the sparkle at their throat. Let them imagine the piece as theirs. Jack had seen it. He’d felt the same want in himself. But he didn’t have the cabinet key. He’d have to ring the bell and ask Dingley, and there would go his fee.

He let her look, while he hovered at a respectful distance.

Her eyes were drawn to the sapphires. She tilted her head to read the price tag and pursed her lips.

‘What’s the occasion?’ Jack asked.

‘That’s confidential.’

‘You don’t have to tell me where, or who,’ Jack said. ‘But lunch is a different proposition to dinner.’

She looked at him, pert and a little sly, as if there might be a hidden meaning to his words. There wasn’t, but Jack was flattered. He wondered who the lucky cove was with the fortune to lure a pretty piece like her, and dress her in jewels. Not aristocracy; there was no crest on the carriage.

‘How so?’ she asked.

‘Dinner means candlelight. And a neckline.’ He scooped one hand suggestively across his breast. Dingley would never say that. Most customers would take offense.

Not this one.

‘Ah yes!’

‘May I ask what you’ll wear, ma’am?’

‘You may, but I haven’t had it made. Yet.’

‘Might I suggest grey velvet?’ That would shine like silver under the candles. The cloth was luscious in Jack’s imagination. ‘With a tiered necklace like the sapphires.’

‘Yes, it would.’ She touched her lips with a finger, contemplating the jewels behind the glass. ‘But I wasn’t thinking of the sapphires.’

Oh yes you were, Jack thought, and they were too expensive.

But if her dress hadn’t been ordered yet, there was time…

‘Not sapphires,’ Jack suggested. ‘Amethysts are warmer. And classy. Especially with pearls.’ Amethysts were also less expensive.

‘But you don’t have any.’

‘Not on display. We can make something — just for you.’

‘Like that one?’ She tapped the cabinet.

‘Certainly.’ Jack was still hoping not to call Dingley. ‘Although, for you…’

He let his eyes measure her up – the length of her neck, the width of her shoulders, and the depth of her bust. Something delicate for her small frame. But a proper necklace, not just a pendant.

‘Can I see your hands?’ he asked. He wanted a better look at the colour of her skin.

She pulled off her left glove, and touched her wedding ring coyly. The ring was very clean and new. She had fine, slim hands. Ivory-white. Not like his mother’s, which were permanently reddened and chafed by laundry lye, because her main customer, a posh hotel, wouldn’t pay for soap. Jack didn’t like the caustic stench, and he hated looking at her hands. He wanted her to have better. This customer was his opportunity.

He nipped around the counter, pulled out the designs he’d been sketching and laid them on the countertop. He’d drawn them from memory, copied from wallpaper in a place they’d delivered to in Park Lane. A scrolling pattern of stylized leaves.

‘See this.’

She inclined her head. ‘Pretty.’

‘What we could do –’ he liked that ‘we’. It sounded professional. Assured. Although this was his idea alone, and way above his station. But if he could talk the customer into it, Dingley couldn’t say no.

Jack spun the paper round and started sketching rapidly. ‘We can twist the leaves around each other to make a festoon, and hang a single leaf from the middle. If we make all the leaves in outline, it uses less gold. And we can set an amethyst in the centre of each one. Like this…’ He sketched in little hexagons, to give her the jist. If he had time he’d mix red and blue inks to liven it with colour. But he didn’t. He could hear Dingley in the back room, clearing his chest after his pipe. ‘There. You see?’

He wanted her to see. Because he wanted the sale fee, but also because this was his design. He’d been dreaming of a necklace like this one since he saw the wallpaper. He’d meant to make a single silver leaf for his mother. He could still do that, after this.

‘Oh yes!’ She flashed him a pearly smile. ‘But – how much will it cost?’

‘About half the price of the sapphires. Give or take.’

The young woman pressed her fingers to her lips again.

The door to the back room opened and Dingley came into the shop.

‘Ma’am.’ He acknowledged the customer with a solemn bow of his head. In talking to customers Dingley always dropped his voice so deep that he scraped along the bottom. Jack thought it was affected, but he wouldn’t say so while he wanted his job.

‘How may we help you?’ Dingley looked at Jack.

Jack knew he was supposed to hand over. But he said nothing, and let the young woman reply.

‘This young fellow has already helped me,’ she said.

The Lord bless her and keep her rollin’ in riches.

‘I want to know how much a necklace like this,’ she tapped Jack’s drawings, ‘will cost.’

Dingley’s face lengthened as he looked down at the sketches. Jack was going to cop it if the lady didn’t come through.

‘Fourteen karat,’ Jack hastened to explain. ‘Cast in outline. Amethysts. And pearls here.’

‘I see.’ Dingley’s had never made a design like it. Their look was usually more stately. But the young woman was looking hopefully at the senior jeweller.

‘We could do that for two hundred pounds, ma’am,’ he said.

She pursed her pretty lips. ‘I need it to cost under two hundred pounds.’

‘Hmm. If you exchanged the rope chain for a cable, that would be lighter. Say, £195.’

‘And nobody else will have one like it?’

‘Nobody, ma’am.’

She smiled triumphantly at Jack. ‘Lovely. Yes, please.’

Because she was a new customer, the jeweller asked for a deposit. Jack got out the accounts register and wrote in it as Dingley dictated the details of the necklace and its price. He put his initials, J.N., in the ‘salesman’ column, the letters sharp and perky.

‘What name shall we put it under?’ The jeweller enquired.

‘Brown,’ the young woman said.

A dull name for her, in Jack’s opinion.

‘As in…?’ Dingley wasn’t satisfied either. He most likely suspected some sort of dodge.

‘Brown of Brown’s Hotel, Mayfair.’

‘Ah.’ Dingley nodded to Jack to write it down.

Ah. A hotelier. That’s whose money the young woman was spending. That’s what was paying for Jack’s first commission. All those pennies and shillings saved on soap. Now Jack had to smelt down their value himself, and pour it into the necklace of his own design. He hoped it throttled her.

J.N. Jack Ninny. Jack Numbskull. What had he been thinking? That customers were fine, deserving folk, a cut above the crowd, because their clobber was swish and their pockets were deep? He’d fooled nobody but himself.

Then he remembered his mother — her chapped hands smoothing a pile of washed linen. Her pride in the cleanliness she’d achieved was undinted, even by his bitter complaints.

‘Doesn’t matter ‘oo it’s for, Jack,’ she’d said. ‘Do it luverly.’

And so he would.

---

F.L. Stuber, ‘Washing Day’, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, c1870. Source: Library of Congress

I’d love to hear what you think — what the story made you feel. Or if any parts were confusing, I’d be glad to know so I can fix it.

Blessings and best wishes until next month!

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How Safe is your Safe? Security Scandals of the Victorian Era

Alison Lloyd's newsletter #54

Let me drag you down cobblestone alleys in the midnight hours, into the devious Victorian world of burglary and break ins. We’re not talking Oliver Twist pick-pocketing here. No. This newsletter looks at the history of state-of-the-art security. And heist hi-jinks worthy of Sherlock Holmes.

I’m currently writing a historical novel set mostly in a jewellery shop. Biographies of pre-twentieth century jewellers are hard to find, so I turned to newspapers in my research. Jewellers advertised in nineteenth century newspapers like everyone else. But they appear occasionally in the news columns too. Here’s one story local to me:

A case of shop-breaking of a daring character is reported to have occurred at South Richmond early this morning. About a quarter to five o'clock Mr W. Wookey, who keeps a jewellery and tobacconist establishment at 338 Church Street, was awakened by hearing a loud crash. He was in bed at the time, and at once ran down to the front of his shop… The wooden shutters had been broken away by a jemmy, and [the plate-glass] had evidently taken a heavy blow to break. There was not the slightest trace of anyone about, but… jewellery of a very miscellaneous description, including a gold and several silver watches, and a number of Alberts, with brooches, bangles, etc., to the value of about £30, had been removed. Several watch chains were strewn over the footpath, and from the general appearance of the place it seemed that the robbers must have made very hasty disappearance…
The Herald, Melbourne, 23 September 1889

That was a pretty crude smash-and-grab. It has faded into obscurity, unlike the great train robbery of 1855. In that year £12,000 worth of gold bars were lifted from inside their safes, while travelling between London and Paris. The 1855 robbery was made into a movie starring Sean Connery in 1978. You can probably find it online somewhere to watch, so I won’t spoil the story for you.

Evidently Mr Wookey, and my fictional jeweller, needed better security. So what was available in the Victorian era? I discovered that the nineteenth century was the heyday of security inventions. They were very busy, the Victorians.

A Quick Pre-Industrial Recap

Once upon a time, from the Iron Age onwards, households rich enough to own valuables kept them in hefty chests like this:

Medieval coffer, early 16th century, Flanders. Victoria & Albert collection

As the European banking system developed, so too did the security measures used in the Western world. This is a locksmith’s model from eighteenth century France, used to demonstrate their strong room technology to potential customers.

Master’s lock, for sale at M.S. Rau Antiques

But private individuals, and smaller businesses, needed a more compact way of securing their goods. So the hefty chests turned into even more solid safes. This hobnail safe is designed so it can’t be drilled or blasted open. It looks tough as old boots. Yet it also has a stylish air of mysterious impenetrability. It would look great in a heist movie.

19th century wrought iron safe. Sold by Robin Kowalski.

Brute strength won’t break it. But know-how will.

The Great Safe Stand-Off

The Great Exhibition of 1851, held in the Crystal Palace, London, showcased the best in industrial design. The company founded by Joseph Bramah, (inventor of flush toilets and the fire hose), exhibited his ‘safety lock’, which had been unvanquished for 70 years. Chubb and Sons brought their innovative ‘detector lock’. This lock jammed up when tampered with. An advertisement printed beside the original instalments of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House read:

My name is Chubb, that makes the Patent Locks; Look on my works, ye burglars, and despair.

Love it — could have been written by Dickens himself.

But a brash Bostonian, Alfred C. Hobbs, sailed across the Atlantic to the Exhibition. He challenged Chubb and Bramah to watch him publicly pick their locks. The Chubb lock took him about 25 minutes the first time, and seven minutes on round two. The Bramah lock was tougher. That one took Hobbs 52 hours over a fortnight, using his own tools. But he did it, and caused a furore. Not even the most prestigious, well-defended establishments felt safe anymore. From a philosophical angle, what this security arms race suggests to me is that technology can’t fix problems that originate in the human heart (theft, in this case). Technology just ups the stakes and the expense.

Another contemporary newspaper story describes the lengths a mid-Victorian London jeweller went to:

First of all each tray of goods was placed upon a little steel tramway which ran under the counter and slid the cases into the strong room, a dial in the wall registering the number that passed in or out. At 7pm, an alarum rang and the door of the strong-room shut by itself…opening the door again at 9 every morning, except Sundays, Good Fridays and the usual other holidays…
The works of the clock had a calendar barrel which arranged all these dates for a year, and was altered every 1st of January by the inventor of the apparatus, named Schwarz. The room itself was built of cast-iron brick; it had no windows… The clock which opened and shut the door was not visible, and how it was got at to wind or alter it was only known to the inventor and the head of the firm. It kept absolute time, and they said it could never stop without warning…
Now you wouldn’t think, continued my informant, that the boldest burglars in the profession would waste two thoughts on such an impossible task as breaking in there…
The Mercury, Hobart, 3 January 1885

But did they? I’ll reveal all in due course…

Picking a Safe for my Story (that’s Picking as in Choosing)

First I’ll show you the safe I chose for my story. Obviously the strong room above belonged to a major establishment with high-tech precautions. My jeweller is a single artisan with a more modest shop, so I wanted a more modest safe.

Not a pretty parlour safe like this:

Lovely Victorian burr walnut cabinet with safe. For sale at Antiques Atlas.

But a combination safe. Alarmed by the Great Exhibition controversy, a young American locksmith named Linus Yale had a go at picking his own company’s locks. Too easy. He decided that keys were a liability, and instead turned his attention to improving combination (or dial) locks. I haven’t found a decent picture of a smallish nineteenth century Yale safe. This could be because safes were liable to get melted down for their metal during various wars. I decided on this one:

Cast iron Belgian safe c1850. Sold at First Dibs

It’s got a touch of classical elegance, which I think suits the artistic side of my character.

Back to the clockwork-protected strong room. Was it breached? Yes. This is how:

On December 31 (a Friday), the firm received a letter (forged) from a well-known customer, begging them to take charge of a safe containing some jewellery and a quantity of papers… In the evening, a little before closing time, the safe arrived in a van. It was duly deposited in a corner of the strong room…
On Saturday morning Mr Caret and Schwarz went into the strong-room to alter the calendar barrel of the clock, according to annual custom. They did not suspect that the old woman in the box was eagerly peeping from her concealment to see how the clock was opened…
A little before one on Sunday morning, she outs with her tools and breaks open the hidden clock machinery. None of her skeleton keys would tackle it, but a crowbar managed the job. She then found the connections with three bar-bolts which shot across the door. She unscrewed these and removed the bars just as her husband tapped at the door with his knuckles. She opened the door, doubtless with a feeling of triumph, but…like a clap of thunder, a second heavy door of solid iron, an armour plate 4 inches thick descended…
On Monday morning…what was our horror at seeing the legs of a man protruding from under the door of the safe, on which appeared for the first time in large letters the words
STOP THIEF!

The second door was apparently an extra, secret precaution put in by Schwarz, unbeknown even to the head of the firm.

However — there is a big ‘but’. I suspect the whole story is a heist, perpetrated on the trust of the reader. It’s supposed to have taken place at a famous jewellers’. But their name is a giveaway: Messrs Aytine & Caret. Looks French and fancy until you say it aloud… It might be a pseudonym to protect the establishment’s privacy. Most likely they’re as historical as the great Sherlock himself.

That’s all for this month. For me, I’m back to figuring out the combinations on my own fictional treasure trove.

I’ve been researching Victorian jewellery too. If you want to see a diamond-encrusted newsletter about nineteenth century gems, vote here:

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Wishing you a *safe* and happy summer. Or winter, if you’re down my end of the world.