I incorporated several of those “too good to pass up” historical facts into this volume, and as promised, I describe them more fully below. In addition, as usual, the streets I have my characters strolling, running, or skulking down are real to the time. The map I use as reference is by Cross, dated 1850.

So, to the nuggets of history buried in this book:

1) the Worshipful Company of Carmen

- is officially the 77th Livery Company of the City of London. Yes, it still exists today. The company was granted livery status in 1848, the only such grant made in Queen Victoria’s time. However, the company dates from 1517, although the controlling of carts and carriers (carrs) by the City first formally commenced in 1272. The Corporation of the City of London has exercised its rights over cartage since the corporation’s inception as transport is so obviously vital to commerce.

After 1655, all licensed vehicles had to carry the City’s arms on the shafts and a specific number on a brass plate—much like modern license plates. In 1835, there were 600 licensed carts. The “Hallkeeper” was/still is empowered to license and mark carrs and carts to “stand” at places known as “carrooms” and there to ply for hire in the City’s streets. I suspect these were the equivalent of modern taxi-ranks, but for carts. The criteria for a cart or carr to be licensed was that the owner had to be a freeman of the City and also a member of the Fellowship of Carmen (i.e. the Worshipful Company of Carmen). Once a year, every vehicle had to be brought to the Guildhall for examination and to be re-marked. This was necessary to enforce the rule that no cart could ply for hire within the City of London unless licensed by the Carmen. As noted in this book, this rule was not lightly or easily broken and was strongly enforced. Consequently, the carters who collected the gunpowder from Kent and drove it into London would have had to be members of the Worshipful Company of Carmen.

Plaisterers Hall, the building I have used to house the Worshipful Company of Carmen, is in fact their current address at Number1, London Wall. As far as I can determine, Plaisterers’ Hall existed in 1850, and the Worshipful Company may even then have had their offices there. However, London Wall did not exist in 1850. The location given in the book—the western end of Falcon Street where it runs into Aldersgate—is the equivalent location. The interior of Plaisterers Hall described in the book is entirely fictitious.

2) Gunpowder and the Manufacture of Fireworks

Much of the details of gunpowder itself and the difficulties of its storage and transport were given in the Author’s Note of the previous volume.

Fireworks were hugely popular in England from Elizabethan times on (Elizabeth I was a fan) and in 1850 there were numerous firework manufactories dotted around London. These included Brocks Fireworks, recently moved to Sutton from Whitechapel after an accident (detailed below), Madam Coton’s factory in Westminster Road, and Pains Fireworks in Brixton. Indeed, firework manufactories were located in inner London well into the 1900s—Wizard Fireworks were still in Shoreditch in 1949.

While I have hypothesized that warehouses supplying the firework manufactories existed and several were located in Morgan’s Lane in Southwark, it is possible, even likely that such warehouses existed. Their location in Morgan’s Lane, however, is entirely imagined.

Gunpowder was an essential ingredient for fireworks, along with saltpeter.

The explosive capacity of gunpowder is illustrated by the report of the accident (noted above) that in 1832 caused the removal of Brocks Fireworks factory from its then location at 11 Baker’s Row, Whitechapel, in a residential area and nearly opposite the London Hospital. A boy ramming gunpowder into a firework tube accidentally created a spark, which ignited the firework—in a blind panic, he tossed the tube aside and fled. Fifty pounds of gunpowder plus a large amount of saltpeter exploded, blowing off the roof, setting fire to the building, and breaking every pane of glass for several blocks around. In the late 1850s, Madam Coton’s factory in Westminster Road also went up rather spectacularly.

Given that our protagonists are chasing over one thousand pounds of gunpowder, it is pertinent to note the damage done by a mere fifty pounds.

3) the Chartists

Chartism was a working-class movement for political reform that was active in Britain from 1838 to 1857. The name derived from the People’s Charter of 1838 and in a nutshell, the aim was to achieve adult male suffrage.

The People’s Charter of 1838 laid out six simply-stated aims, the achievement of which would give working men a say in law-making—they would be able to vote, their vote would be protected by secret ballot, and by abolishing the requirement for owing property as a qualification for running for Parliament and introducing payment for MPs, working-class men would be able to stand for election. None of the demands were new, but the People’s Charter became one of the major political manifestos of the century.

Given that the Chartists wanted to participate in Parliament, their strategy was to influence Parliament via demonstrating the scale of support for their cause—primarily via massive “meetings” and peaceful demonstrations. Consequently, in 1839, the 1838 Charter was presented to Parliament with a petition backed by 1.3 million (male) signatures. The MPs of the Commons voted not to hear the petition.

In 1842, a second petition was presented to Parliament with 3.5 million signatures. Again, it was rejected.

On April 10, 1848, in the spring during which political uprisings occurred throughout Europe, the Chartists held a massive meeting on Kennington Common. They planned to march on Parliament to present the latest petition, this time signed by 6 million men. The authorities had recruited 100,000 special constables to bolster the police force, and the crowd was not permitted to cross the Thames. Subsequently, the petition was delivered by a handful of leaders, and Parliament once again rejected it.

After the “defeat” of 1839 and again in 1842, uprisings of various sorts were planned and some occurred, but were ineffective and were severely repressed.

The Chartist leadership was diverse, but over time, Feargus O’Connor, owner and publisher of the Leeds’ Northern Star newspaper, became the ultimate leader. He was devoted to achieving reform through peaceful parliamentary means, and was eventually elected to Parliament in 1847.

The “defeat” of 1848 lead to a significant rise in Chartist plots and insurrection, led by so-called “physical force” Chartists, but none of these plots or uprisings were supported by the established Chartist leadership and were, once again, suppressed by the authorities.

Gradually, Chartism as a movement faded into obscurity. However, while the movement did not directly achieve any reform, all of its six stated aims eventually became law. Many ex-Chartists swelled the ranks of the Reform League which campaigned for manhood suffrage and partially succeeded with the passage of the Reform Act of 1867, which granted the vote to urban working men.

While the hotbeds of Chartism lay in Wales and the north of England, from 1836, London was established as the home of Chartists in the southeast of the country. More on the London Chartists in the next volume.

The third volume of this trilogy incorporates further historical facts. For your interest, I will describe those in a similar note at the back of that volume.

Stephanie.