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Ripperology
Mar. 14th, 2019 12:40 pmCouldn't sleep last night for some reason, so I found myself diving down a Victorian research rabbit hole. Last nights topics included wedding dresses of the various periods, police uniforms, and Jack the Ripper. Some of this was curiosity— I'd started wondering what sort of wedding dress Clara Hawking would have worn, seeing as she and Nathaniel were married in 1876, while my previous research has focused on the early '60s for Mrs. Hawking and the late '80s for Mary. Also I wanted to know if 1880's policemen would have had dress uniforms. As far as I can tell, Arthur would wear civilian formalwear in dress occasions, and it turns out I've been bringing in the leg of mutton sleeve a touch early; it was more of an 1890's thing.
While it was mostly musing that drove this, both these subjects are at least peripherally relevant to writing the next Mrs. Hawking story. None, however, more so than the Ripper stuff.
I'm planning on making the Ripper murders the substance of the next play's case, which means I need to know the particulars of what happened. I'd like to fit my story into the history as neatly as possible, particularly when it comes to the timeline. I know the broad strokes of it quite well, but the specifics are very complicated. One thing that presents both a challenge and an opportunity is that the facts of the case are not exactly what you'd call clear. Police procedures of the time were limited and often slipshod. Cops relied mostly on eyewitness accounts and catching people in the act to apprehend criminals, and did not have much in the way of forensic techniques— it's why Sherlock Holmes's evidence-based deductive tactics were so revolutionary. It means there are a lot of details and events to take into account when I'm building my story, but it does also allow me to take advantage of how much uncertainty, error, and poor record keeping affected even the contemporary understanding of what happened. I'm going to be have to be judicious, since I definitely don't want to throw the history out the window. But I know the general purpose of the story I want to tell, and fitting it in may be difficult.
I've got to do more research. Incidentally, I see Clara wearing something like what Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia wore to marry Prince Arthur:
While it was mostly musing that drove this, both these subjects are at least peripherally relevant to writing the next Mrs. Hawking story. None, however, more so than the Ripper stuff.
I'm planning on making the Ripper murders the substance of the next play's case, which means I need to know the particulars of what happened. I'd like to fit my story into the history as neatly as possible, particularly when it comes to the timeline. I know the broad strokes of it quite well, but the specifics are very complicated. One thing that presents both a challenge and an opportunity is that the facts of the case are not exactly what you'd call clear. Police procedures of the time were limited and often slipshod. Cops relied mostly on eyewitness accounts and catching people in the act to apprehend criminals, and did not have much in the way of forensic techniques— it's why Sherlock Holmes's evidence-based deductive tactics were so revolutionary. It means there are a lot of details and events to take into account when I'm building my story, but it does also allow me to take advantage of how much uncertainty, error, and poor record keeping affected even the contemporary understanding of what happened. I'm going to be have to be judicious, since I definitely don't want to throw the history out the window. But I know the general purpose of the story I want to tell, and fitting it in may be difficult.
I've got to do more research. Incidentally, I see Clara wearing something like what Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia wore to marry Prince Arthur:
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