The Daughters of Gentlemen (33 page)

T
he Bayswater Academy for the Education of Young Ladies and Doughtys’ chemist shop are fictional, but all street names and public buildings in London named in the book are or were real places.

In 1880, entrepreneur William Whiteley owned a row of ten shops on Westbourne Grove and was busy converting eight houses on Queen’s Road (nowadays called the Queensway) into warehouses and shops.

Salem Gardens used to run east-west from Salem Road, which was a cul-de-sac in 1880. It was demolished in the 1890s.

Hyde Park is little different today from its appearance in the 1880s. The Serpentine is part of the improvements begun by Queen Caroline in 1730. The tradition of Speakers’ Corner dates from 1872. The Receiving House of the Royal Humane Society (RHS) was built in 1835 to receive the bodies of people who had been pulled from the Serpentine, and was manned by volunteer medical staff. One of the examining doctors was Dr Blackett. It was demolished in 1954. The RHS also had its own boathouse for rescuing bathers in difficulties. The bodies of the drowned were taken to the mortuary at Mount Street and the inquests held in the Board Room there before the coroner, Mr St Clare Bedford.

Westbourne Hall was built in 1861 and was used for musical entertainment and plays as well as public meetings. The hall could hold 1,000 people. Today, the ornate frontage remains at number 26 Westbourne Grove. The riotous election meeting at Westbourne Hall on the 16th of March 1880 is described in the
Bayswater Chronicle
of 20th March 1880.

The villages of Havenhill and East Hill are fictional, although Havenhill would be on the route of the Great Western Railway, not far from West Drayton.

In 1880, parliaments lasted a maximum of seven years and the previous General Election had taken place in 1874. The Prime Minister was Lord Beaconsfield (Benjamin Disraeli), although by the start of 1880 prospective candidates for the next election had been selected; it was generally believed that the election would take place in the autumn. When the parliamentary session opened on the 5th of February, there was no hint of the Prime Minister’s intentions and the dissolution of parliament announced on the 8th of March took everyone by surprise, and telegraph offices were swamped. Bayswater was part of the constituency of Marylebone which put forward four candidates, two Liberal and two Conservative, for two seats. Recent Conservative by-election successes may have led to overconfidence on the part of the government. At the election the Liberals swept to victory and seventy-year-old Mr Gladstone accepted the office of Prime Minister. Daniel Grant, a former director of Grant & Co., a Farringdon printing firm, was elected Liberal MP for Marylebone.

The National Society for Women’s Suffrage was formed in 1867.

While the Bayswater Women’s Suffrage Society is an invention of the author, there were similar societies in the 1880s, which were holding well-attended public meetings and petitioning parliament to grant votes to women.

Mr Jacob Bright MP (1821–1899), Mrs Fawcett (1847–1929) the former Millicent Garrett and sister of Elizabeth Garret Anderson MD, (1836–1917) were all supporters of women’s suffrage.

Isabella Skinner Clarke (later Keer) (1842–1926) was the first woman to become a full member of the Pharmaceutical Society.

In 1882, a new Married Women’s Property Act finally permitted women to retain ownership of their property after they were married.

Reverend Benjamin Day (1850–1936) was a Paddington curate who looked after the parish of St Stephen’s.

Mr James Flood (1828–1886) was the chairman of the Paddington Vestry (a precursor of the Paddington Borough Council).

The Community Sisters of the Church is an order of Anglican nuns which, in 1880, was associated with the church of St Augustine, Kilburn.

Linda Stratmann is a former chemist’s dispenser and civil servant who now writes full-time. She lives in Walthamstow, London.

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First published in 2012

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