The Fog of War

Women doctors in the late nineteenth century

A bit about... Women Doctors in the Late 19th Century

Sylvia Marks qualified as a doctor in 1910, which makes her a) a bit of a prodigy because I messed up my timeline and b) someone who really knew what she wanted and went for it against all sorts of prejudice.

I’ve put a shed-load of wiki links in this, because a blog post is stonkingly inadequate to cover it all; this is a very brief summary of the actions of a load of very able, determined and amazing people. For actual proper references see at the bottom of the wiki pages, they’re pretty well annotated.

Sylvia Marks’ character was originally based on stories my grandmother used to tell about a local doctor-friend of her mother’s, who’d come and visit and sit on the kitchen table with her skirts hitched up and smoke whilst they chatted. However, once I decided she needed her own book, I needed more than just that to base her on–so I went reading.

The first woman doctor in England was Elizabeth Garrett-Anderson, who along with Sophia Jex-Blake, the first women doctor in Scotland, fought long and hard for the privilege. Garrett-Anderson exploited loopholes in the articles of the Society of Apothecaries and the British Medical Association that were immediately sewn up for a couple of decades once she’d passed through and were therefore closed to Jex-Blake.

Initially getting the education was difficult and the women paid for private tuition and had to wheedle their way into practical and observation sessions with various levels of success. There was a lot of resistance–all the usual stupid stuff about women’s poor little brains overheating with facts, being sensitive creatures who should be protected from icky medical nastiness and the like. As time went on, however, the tide gradually began to turn.

Across the UK there was a growing pressure for women to be able to formally access university education. Jex-Blake eventually became one of the Edinburgh Seven, the first women to ever be admitted to university courses in the United Kingdom in 1869. However, although the Edinburgh Seven joined the university as undergraduates they were not allowed to qualify as doctors. They scattered across Europe and most qualified in either Paris and Berne to get their M. Ds..

Finally, in 1876 new legislation meant that examining bodies were able (but not forced) to consider women medical candidates and eventually, in 1877, legislation was finally passed to enable women across the UK to be awarded degrees.

After qualifying through her loop-hole, Garrett-Anderson founded The London School of Medicine for Women (1874), along with Jex-Blake and Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the USA to qualify as a doctor. Jex-Blake also set up The Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women (1886). It sounds as if she wasn’t a people-person–she fell out with some of her students and one of them, Elsie Inglis, left her school and founded the Edinburgh College of Medicine for Women (1889).

These handful of women who pushed and pushed through the patriarchal mid-nineteenth century education structures forced a path for other women to follow. They were proactive in lifting up their peers and those that came behind them. However, despite all this, women doctors were pretty much confined to treating women and children and not accepted in general hospital practice. Many of them were active women’s suffragists and when war broke out in Europe in 1914 they saw it as an opportunity to show that women could serve and be useful alongside men.

Inglis, who sounds like a truly amazing person, founded the Scottish Womens Hospitals for Foreign Service in 1914, where I made Sylvia do her war-work. Louisa Garrett-Anderson initially went to Europe to set up a hospital in Paris, which impressed the military authorities so much she was invited to come back to London and set up the Endell Street Military Hospital along with her partner Flora Murray. Sylvia is a sort of composite of these amazing people–not forgetting Dr Frances Ivens, who commanded the hospital at Royaumont.

The tenacity, the dedication to both professional and personal development and the willingness to engage in public life to lift other women up is very evident when you read about all these people. It must have been a truly exhausting struggle for them. I am really pleased to be able to bring them to people’s notice again a century and more later, even in a terribly fictionalised way.

The Fog of War, out today!

And…we’re off! The Fog of War is live today! I am so grateful to everyone who has reviewed and let me drop in to their blogs with posts and such-like. It’s a sapphic, historical, paranormal, romantic mystery set in rural England in 1920.

To celebrate today, I’m hosting a party at the Lester Towers facebook group with lots of friends dropping in to say hi and offer giveaways.

I’ve also got a Rafflecopter draw running from the 13th-17th of August with a chance to win a $10 Amazon gift-card if you fancy throwing your hat into the ring.

Finally, I’m doing a bit of a blog-tour talking about the characters, settings and the history behind it and you’ll be able to find the other posts listed on my website as they come out this week. I’ve already visited Anne Barwell’s blog to talk about the village of Bradfield, Elizabeth Noble’s blog to talk about where I’d go if I could time travel and The Sapphic Bookclub to talk about the women-led hospitals in WW1.

Publisher: JMS Books LLC
Editor: Lourenza Adlem
Release date: 14 Aug 2014
Word Count: 50,000 words
Genre: Sapphic, found-family, historical, paranormal romantic mystery set in 1920s England.
Content Warning: Mention of domestic violence.

The quiet village of Bradfield should offer Dr Sylvia Marks the refuge she seeks when she returns home from her time in a field hospital in France in 1918. However, she is still haunted by the disappearance of her ambulance-driver lover two years previously ,and settling down as a village doctor is more difficult than she realised it would be after the excitement of front-line medicine. Then curious events at a local farm, mysterious lights and a hallucinating patient’s strange illness make her revisit her assessment of Anna’s death on the battlefield.

Lucille Hall-Bridges is at a loose end now her nursing work is finished. She felt useful as a nurse and now she really doesn’t know what to do with her life. She hopes going to stay with her friend Sylvia for a while will help her find a way forward. And if that involves staying at Bradfield with Sylvia…then that’s fine with her.

Will the arrival of Lucy at Bradfield be the catalyst that allows both women to lay their wartime stresses to rest? Can Sylvia move on from her love affair with Anna and find happiness with Lucy, or is she still too entwined in the unresolved endings of the past?

The first in the Bradfield trilogy, set in the Border Magic universe.

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Excerpt

It was a beautiful late August day when Sylvia motored down to Taunton to collect Lucy from the railway station. The sun shone through the trees as she followed the lane down the hill from the village and the sky above was a beautiful summer blue. She had left the all-weather hood of the Austin down and wore a scarf and gloves against the wind, topping her trouser outfit off with her new hat, which she pinned firmly to the neat coil of her long hair.

Walter had watched her fussing with her appearance in the hall mirror, stuffing his pipe. “Are you sweet on her?” he asked, somewhat acerbically.

“It’ll be cold with the hood down,” she said, crushingly.

“Yes, yes, so it will be.” He turned his attention back to his tobacco, face straight. “Be careful on the bends.”

“I will,” she said. “She’s a beast to drive, smooth on the straights and handles well on the corners, but I’ve no desire to end up in the ditch.”

The Fog of War. Historical, paranormal, 1920s England

She’d bought the big Austin coupe late last winter when she’d got fed up riding her motorcycle out to some of the more remote houses she was called to in the dreadful weather. It was huge, far bigger than she needed really, although the back seat was useful to transport a patient if she had to. She still preferred her ‘cycle, but it wasn’t exactly suitable as a doctor’s vehicle. Not very staid at all. The Austin wasn’t very staid either, in that it was huge and expensive; but one of the benefits of a private income was that she could afford it; and so why not be comfortable?

She pondered all this and more on the drive down to Taunton, mind floating along with no real purpose. She loved to drive and for some reason it calmed her thoughts and allowed them to drift.

It would be lovely to see Lucy again. As Walt had said, she was a sweet little thing. Although Sylvia didn’t want to revisit the grim minutiae of some of the worst times at Royaumont, it would be lovely to reminisce about some of their happier moments of camaraderie. It had been four years of extreme stress and grim terror lightened with moments of laughter and fun. Working with a team of competent women all pulling together for one purpose had been extraordinary. She’d never experienced anything like it before and she doubted she would again. She was delighted some of the staff had set up a regular newsletter so they could all stay connected.

And so what if Lucy was sweet on her. Sylvia wasn’t interested in that kind of complication anymore. She didn’t want to cause gossip in the village for a start…although she supposed people wouldn’t make any assumptions about two women living together these days after so many men hadn’t come home from France. But anyway, even if it wouldn’t cause gossip, she didn’t think about Lucy like that. And she doubted Lucy thought about Sylvia like that, despite Walter’s teasing. He was stirring the pot a little to see what bubbled up, that was all.

Those musings took her to the station.

The train was on time and was just pulling in as she got out of the car. She walked out onto the platform as the smoke was clearing and through the clouds, she made out Lucy.

She was beside the guard’s van, directing the guard and porters to what seemed like an unnecessarily large pile of luggage. Despite the clement August weather, she was wearing an extremely smart velvet coat with a fur collar over a beautiful travelling suit that hung to mid calf, topped with an extraordinary confection of a hat.

She looked competent and sophisticated and exceptionally beautiful. Not at all the slightly scapegrace young person of 1916 who had persuaded the hospital powers-that-be she was a suitable candidate for France, although she’d been only twenty-one and inexperienced as a nurse.

Well. Gosh.

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Why ‘The Fog of War’?

As I may have mentioned, just in passing, The Fog of War is out tomorrow. One or two people have pointed out that it’s a slightly peculiar title juxtaposed with the 1920s art-deco cover and what the heck is going on?

The Fog of War. Historical, paranormal, 1920s Englandl

I have a confession, then.

Mr AL named it.

I mean, of course I thought it was a good title and went with it, he didn’t elbow me out of the way to fill in the PUT TITLE HERE bit on the submission form or anything. But he came up with it. He did the same for a couple of my other stories, too–he seems to have a bit of a gift for it. He doesn’t read my books or beta for me or anything, we write in very different genres. But he does listen patiently as I whine about plot-holes and helps me tighten up my blurbs. I do the same for him and it works quite well, I think.

When he came up with it, just throwing potential titles out at me at lightening speed, it immediately struck home.

It’s an evocative phrase first used exactly in the 1890s, although fog, twilight, moonlight and similar concepts had been used earlier in the century by a chap called Carl Von Clausewitz. It describes the confusion of battle, how uncertainty about capability and action on the battlefield are a hindrance or can be used to ones advantage.

It immediately resonated for me because Sylvia and Lucy and their friends are drifting round trying to work out what happened to Anna without having enough information to understand the bigger picture. In retrospect I think it probably clashes terribly with the cartoon cover; but I love the title and I love the artwork, so here we are!

Remember tomorrow there’s a release-party in my facebook group to celebrate the book going live. Lots of author friends are popping in the say hi and both they and I have giveaways and games galore. Do pop in and join in! I also have a Rafflecopter draw going to win a $10 Amazon gift card that you can join today.

Why the 1920s?

Sylvia Marks is coming soon! A 1920s lesbian romance. With magic and suspense. And tea. The first of a new trilogy set in the Border Magic universe.

It may have come to your attention by now that I like to write in the 1920s! So, what inspired me to do that and why do I keep coming back to it?

My first foray into the decade was Lost in Time, and that was a sort of incidental kind of period piece. I began writing as the hundred year anniversary of World War One was marked and I was doing a lot of thinking about my grandparents. My father’s father was the only survivor of a tank crew; and my mother’s great-uncle was a runner between the trenches who was killed before he hit twenty.

I began thinking about how our experiences a hundred years later contrast with the experiences of that earlier generation. Those thoughts grew into Lost in Time, with Lew from 2016 bringing his modern lens to bear on the 1919 world he found himself in.

At that point in my writing I really didn’t have a plan. I discovery-wrote Lost in Time without any idea of what I was doing—I was just telling the story. It’s a happy-for-now rather than a happy-ever-after and Shadows on the Border was a natural extension that allowed me to explore the happy-for-now a bit more; and then I ended up needing a resolution for Will and Fenn, so The Hunted and the Hind came about. Once I began the story in book one, I just had to carry on until I got to the end. And of course, people’s stories don’t end when they begin a relationship, quite the opposite. That’s always something I’ve found difficult in my writing and my reading too.

In the meantime I was writing a serial for my newsletter subscribers. I had written a short-story called The Gate, set in 1919 as an introduction to the world before Lost in Time was published. It was short and full of paranormal stuff, but the relationship resolution was very tentative and I wanted to know what happened afterwards. That became Inheritance of Shadows. That’s a rural story, with a lot inspired by the old farmers I remember as a child—the ones who’s names are on the local war memorials as serving in the First World War.

These four books concentrate on men and the male experience of the war and what happens afterwards, when you come home.

With The Fog of War I’ve done various things a bit differently.

Firstly, it’s a book about women. Dr Sylvia Marks is a minor character in Inheritance of Shadows. I loved her when I wrote her and so did my editor, who encouraged me to write more about her. I think she was envisaging a kind of village doctor solves cosy mysteries kind of series, but it appears that I am congenitally unable to write long stories that don’t contain some sort of paranormal shenanigans. So here we are.

I began reading around women doctors and how they contributed to the war effort and I came across Dr Elsie Inglis and the Scottish Women’s Hospitals and Dr Flora Murray and Dr Louisa Garrett Anderson, who ran the Endell Street Military Hospital. The institutions were staffed almost entirely by women and additionally, Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson were together as a couple.

I then remembered my grandmother telling me about a local lady doctor who would visit her mother in the pre- and post- World War One years and hitch her skirts up and sit on the kitchen table, smoking and chatting. I have a friend who is part of that family and I asked if her husband could remember anything about her. She passed on that he remembered her from family gatherings in the 1960s and she was a tough old bird who smoked like a chimney. My friend, who is, handily, an archivist, also mentioned she had wind of another lady doctor who served in France but then came home and gave up the profession, got married and had children.

It was all grist to my mill.

Plus, the snappy dialogue and the Dorothy L. Sayers vibe I can bring to it makes it fun to write. I read a lot of 1920s and 1920s detective novels…The Toff, Miss Marple, Miss Fisher…what’s not to like?

So to answer my own question, I began with one idea and it’s all snowballed from there. I keep finding more and more interesting snippets from the 1920s that I want to explore.

The Fog of War will be published by JMS Books on 16th August 2021.

Publishing Delays

wood desk laptop office — Photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels.com

As those of you who follow my newsletter know, the last couple of weeks have been a real nightmare here at Lester Towers.

Littlest had an accident at school and broke her nose, which has caused all the fuss you’d expect, plus worry that she’d have to have it re-broken and re-set to ensure it’s still possible to naso-gastric tube her in the future if necessary. This has, thankfully, turned out not to be the case, but it’s taken ages for ENT to decide. I’ve had a visit to hospital for a minor procedure which was more tedious than worrying, Talking Child has been stressed about school and her sister and me. And finally Mr AL has put his back out lifting Littlest, which has caused our whole family raft to list alarmingly to one side.

So, we’re struggling, basically. Writing itself and my somewhat intermittent early morning writing sprints with my Office Colleagues, Ofelia Grand, Nell Iris and J. M. Snyder have been what’s keeping me going.

The cherry on the top of the disaster-Bakewell tart however, has been that my dear friend and editor has been hospitalised with covid. She is home and recovering now, which is an enormous relief, but as everyone knows, it’s a long haul.

The result of all this non-writing stress is that we are pushing the release of The Fog of War back until 16th August. I’m very sorry about it, but there it is, people are more important than stories when it comes down to it. The Starling story (which still doesn’t have a name, this is clearly my brand) is puttering along but again it’s all a bit up in the air.

School breaks up for summer in the last week of July, so I have no idea what my writing schedule will be over the weeks after that–last year I did quite well getting up before everyone else and getting on with it. The plan is to release the Sylvia trilogy three months apart, and I’m still hoping that will work, although I’m starting to wonder whether I’ve over-faced myself. Time will tell!

Anyway, that’s it. We’re all okay, but it’s been a tough few weeks. I hope you’re all doing all right too in these uncertain times.