Naming the Dead: Inspiration from the Haden Family Bible

 

17th Century hardship, personal loss and a family record

When writing my second Alexander Baxby mystery Naming the Dead, I tried to imagine what life was like for ordinary people in the early seventeenth century. A murder-solving physician such as Baxby would have witnessed much suffering and death. Average life expectancy in England was 36.4 years, with 160 babies in every 1000 dying before their first birthday worse figures than present-day Gaza. Even King James and Queen Anne buried five of their seven children. In addition, Baxby had been traumatised by horrific warfare in my previous novel Paying in Blood. I did not want him to become a detached observer, but to experience pain, and deal with the consequences, in a historically authentic way.

My father’s family experienced more hardship than me, preoccupied with affording food rather than pondering the past. His parents Arthur and Mabel Shrubsole, born in 1894 and 1896, outlived three of their nine children, with two dying before my father was born. Arthur served as a marine in both world wars and their home was destroyed in the Portsmouth blitz, but the family did not talk about such things as I was growing up. I did not learn about D Day despite the operational headquarters being only four miles from my childhood home. The Shrubsoles embraced humour and alcohol, and my grandmother claimed she had a good life especially as her husband did not hit her when drunk. However, an ambitious, questioning character like Baxby might have reacted differently.

 Later, my father discovered he had an uncle called Naunton who died at the Somme. I cried when I found Naunton Shrubsole on a Portsmouth war memorial, surprised by the strength of the emotions I felt. Although Arthur had not been able to talk about his younger brother during his lifetime, the City had remembered him. However, there was no equivalent recognition for those who died in earlier wars and ordinary people could not afford headstones in Baxby’s time. How could he remember his mother and others he cared about?

Inspiration came when my husband inherited a battered old family bible. Nineteen century middle class families such as the Hadens had sufficient income to buy these heavy, leather-bound books. It is a King James Bible, but with chapter introductions, pictures and annotations, often associated with the earlier Geneva bible. They were written by Rev John Eadie, a Scottish Presbyterian theologian who shared the same Protestant Reformed (Calvinist) roots, a Christian tradition which emphasised personal bible study and self-improvement rather than sacraments and ceremonies performed by bishops and priests. The preface laments the way things were deteriorating in the 1850s, as some people do now. I was drawn to the pages with templates for listing family births, deaths and marriages. The earliest names were William Haden and his wife Martha born 1851 and 1846, with later additions for their children and grandchildren.

 Modern psychologists often advocate the benefits of writing things down, so I decided that Baxby would write the names of those he missed on the back page of a bible which was itself a treasured gift. The idea grew with time, giving rise to the title Naming the Dead. The act became a turning point in Baxby’s life, which helped him begin to make sense of his experiences and the emotions he felt. Subsequently, I added a scene where the physician was incensed by a pamphlet writer who misrepresents the views of a murder victim, believing everyone should be remembered honestly and respectfully.

 

With time, I realised that writing such names in a bible would have had deeper significance for fictional Baxby and his historical Baptist and Mayflower Pilgrim friends. For believers, associating one’s own story with those in the bible, can be seen as an affirmative act. Such precepts helped those in the infant middle class to see themselves as significant. They gained confidence to pursue their own ideas and aspirations, rather than accept earlier norms. In the third Alexander Baxby mystery, the murder-solving physician will return to England more self-assured than when he left.

Naming the Dead, set in 1608 Amsterdam, is available from Sharpe Books on Kindle Unlimited and to buy at Karen Haden Books

  

Life expectancy figures are taken from Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine, 1550-1680 by Andrew Wear p12