History is Real People

Newsletter #18

History is Real People

November 2023

The real world hit me in the face this week. 

The Descent of Chloe Jackson is a work of fiction, and all the characters are inventions, the products of my imagination (with a few minor exceptions). But I have to get my inspiration from somewhere and, as you know, I do like a bit of historical research. So, this Wednesday I drove down to Maidstone to the Kent County Archives to delve into the history of St Augustine’s Psychiatric Hospital in Chartham, the inspiration behind the asylum in my fictional village of Harnham. The idea was to flick through the old patient records and other archive sources to get a feel for the place, to give texture and authenticity to my stories.

I spent the morning working my way through patient records from the 1920s. It wasn’t exactly fun, but it was fascinating, and I found all sorts of bits and pieces I could use.

It wasn’t until I popped out for a bite to eat that I realised something that should have been obvious. I do a lot of genealogy, digging into my own family history, and I remembered that I actually have a relative who spent some time in Chartham Hospital (two, actually, at least, but only one of them’s relevant right now). 

A great great uncle of mine died in the hospital in 1928. The family story was that he was in hospital for shell-shock, having served in the Royal Navy since the age of 16, and all through the Great War. 

Those records I’d been “browsing” through probably included his.

After lunch, I went straight to the records for 1928, and there he was.

There were medical details of his illness and how he was treated. There were records of his family circumstances, and of his employment, because he appealed to the Royal Navy for a pension in recognition of his condition. 

And there was a photograph.

I was allowed to record all of this for my own use, but the licence doesn’t allow me to share the images here. And I don’t think I would have done so anyway. Even though he’s been gone nearly a hundred years, I’m not going to name him either.

Because he wasn’t just a bit of research any more. He was real. The blood link to me made it personal, of course, but it was the photograph that brought it home.

It’s a portrait. Bigger than a passport photo, but not so very different. Black and white, but full of detail. He’s wearing the same woollen jacket and waistcoat that all the male patients seemed to wear. A soft collar and loosely-tied necktie. His hair is short, but not shaved, a receding hairline partly hidden by some neat comb-work. He’s clean-shaven, with a tidy moustache. He was 37 when the photograph was taken, and had just been admitted. 

But he’s not staring at me out of the past, because his eyes are shut, as if he wants to keep the world at bay. And the only reason I can see his face is because someone else’s hand is holding his chin up to face the camera.

It’s a truly unsettling image.

And the description of his condition is worse. Two and half years of what used to be called General Paralysis of the Insane, but which they knew by the 1920s to be fourth stage syphilis. Confused, mute, tremulous and uncoordinated. Unsettled. Impulsive. “Demented, and defective in habits”.

He never left the hospital, dying there of broncho-pneumonia and general paralysis.

Syphilis was a cruel disease. It hurt the body and the soul, destroying families and reputations as much as it left physical scars. But it also had a terrible secret – after the pain, discomfort and disfigurement of the first and second stages, it would go into a latent stage with no symptoms, and stay out of sight for ten to thirty years, before re-emerging as a degenerative, and fatal, brain condition.

In his appeal against the refusal of a medical pension from the Navy, he claimed his illness was due to exposure to the “terrific firing” of naval guns, or from falling on board ship, or from witnessing Turkish atrocities against the Armenians. He may even have believed it. The truth is clear from the supporting letter provided by a specialist who gave evidence on his behalf to the tribunal. He never mentions syphilis, but he doesn’t have to. And, in supporting the case for a pension, he has an interesting take on the prevalence of the disease in the military.

“Although General Paralysis essentially owes its origins to factors which have nothing to do with military or naval service, it has generally been held that military or naval service was decidedly to be regarded as an aggravating factor.”

I don’t know whether he, or rather his family, got his pension. He left a wife and three young children, so I hope they got something. But I doubt it.

The whole experience of seeing that face in the casebook was disturbing. 

I spend so much time digging around in historical records, stealing little nuggets to make up my stories, I sometimes forget that I’m raiding the lives of real people.

My characters are designed. I create their flaws. I force them to make choices. I control the narrative. By the time I’m done, they seem real (to me, at least).

But they’re not. Real people are found in real history. They come ready-made, with built-in flaws. They make their own choices, so far as they can. And there is no narrative, just the flow of history. At the time my great great uncle was in Chartham Hospital in the 1920s, he was just one of more than a thousand patients. I could have told you a story like his a thousand times over, illustrated with a thousand haunting photographs.

As always, if you’ve enjoyed this Newsletter, and if you have like-minded, book-reading, story-loving friends who might enjoy it too, please do pass it on to them. They sound like just the kind of person I’d love to share this journey with. 

Let’s sign them up at subscribepage.io/paulcmercer.

All the best