Sleuthing in Regency England is a tough gig, especially for a lady. And even more so for that that lady’s creator. Namely me.
Like most writers of historical mysteries, I had to solve several problems created by the realities of my historical setting to write my Regency lady sleuths in The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies.
The ‘Ladies” of the novel are Lady Augusta and Lady Julia Colebrook, two fierce 42-year-old spinster sisters who use their privilege and invisibility as ‘old maids’ to solve mysteries and extract other women out of perilous situations in 1812. I call the novel a serious romp, and I chose to reach for a very high level of historical authenticity and accuracy; if it was not possible in the Regency, then it didn’t make it into the novel. A real problem when some of the basic tropes of the sleuthing story were not even in existence.
For instance, the Regency era – officially from 1811 to 1820—was well before England had a police force. So where does a lady sleuth get her official back up and assistance?
What’s more, record keeping was patchy at best and, if it did exist, was not centralised or easy to access. This was particularly the case for women because a vast majority of them could not read. Education, my dear fellow, is wasted on women—or at least that was the majority opinion of the time. How then, does a lady sleuth track down the information she needs to solve her mysteries?
So, when it came to written information, my lady sleuths had to be the kind of women of that era who would be feasibly taught to read, and secondly have access to the various places these records were kept. That is why I decided to make Lady Augusta (aka Gus), and Lady Julia part of the highest rank in Regency society, the aristocracy. At this rank, they would have a chance of some education, as well as having access to private libraries (public libraries as we know them were not yet in existence). They would also have the social clout and contacts to obtain information from other sources. At that time, most of the government officials were men from the gentry class or the aristocracy and since Gus and Julia move in those circles, they literally have friends in high place: excellent sources of information.
I also wanted Gus and Julia to have independent financial resources which was a possibility for aristocratic ladies. Even so, it would still have not been that common since a woman—even a highly-bred one—handed over all her assets, including her own body and legal identity, when she married. This bit of nefarious misogyny was called Coverture and parts of it still exist even today in some of the attitudes towards women and the way women’s bodies are treated by the law.
Aha, but now you see my cunning plan. Gus and Julia are spinsters, and so have control over their own inherited money. In the Regency, the idea of a woman earning her living was only for the lower classes. A middling or upper-class woman was expected to marry and if she did not, her options were very limited: either she became a governess, a paid companion, or a burden upon her family. Thus, Gus and Julia are very much amateur sleuths who use the prejudice against unmarried and older women—the invisibility of the old maid—to their advantage.
In terms of police support, the best that Lady Gus and Lady Julia can do is find an ally in the Bow Street Runners, a very small group of men who worked for the London magistrate courts to bring criminals to justice. Interestingly, the Runners were initially formed by the author Henry Fielding who was also a magistrate. London’s population was growing at an extraordinary rate when Richardson headed the Bow Street Court in the 1750’s and he noted the criminal world growing gangbusters alongside it. In response, he formed the Runners, who initially were little better than the criminals they chased, but eventually became a more coherent and trustworthy group of lawmen. And so, in my novel, I created Mr Kent, known around town as Kent the Gent, who becomes a reluctant ally of Lady Gus and Lady Julia.
But sometimes sleuthing requires one to investigate amongst the lower ranks. How then, would an aristocratic lady sleuth gain access to such ruffians? Why, by accidentally shooting a highwayman, of course. And not any old highwayman, but a disgraced son of a marquess who was transported twenty years ago and is now back in England for his own reasons. Enter Lord Evan Belford, charming purveyor of banter and guide to the criminal class. And, although it pains my egalitarian sensibilities to say so, it would probably have been easier for an upper-class person to investigate within the middling and lower classes, than someone from the lower ranks trying to access the uppermost echelons of society.
As you can see by the above, creating a feasible and authentic lady sleuth in the Regency era is not impossible, but does take some intense research about the society and its values. As I research, I always look for the threads of my characters’ beliefs and abilities within the possibilities of the era. For example, Lady Gus is an apostate—a person who has lost her faith—and I was able to include that aspect of her character because the threads of atheism are present in Regency society. In fact, the poet Shelley was expelled from university in 1811 for writing about atheism. By grabbing hold of these types of threads, you can develop a character who has the agency, beliefs and abilities that sit authentically in the era you are writing about but is still accessible to a modern reader.
So, I invite you to hang on to your bonnets and hats and enter the authentic 1812 world of Lady Gus and Lady Julia as they sleuth and romp their way around Regency England.
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