Time-Travel Through Pictures

 Shelton Street (a tad from the Time Trap Trail, close to Seven Dials)

William Shelton was a holy man and a philanthropist who stipulated in his will that the poor of St Giles should be clothed and educated by his estate. From Shelton’s death in 1661, until 1763, a free school was established in nearby Parker Street which taught 50 local ragamuffins (usually, a child in rags) in English, humanities, classics and good manners, he also left a legacy to provide “the habit of a gentleman” to 20 beggars each year. Given that even the wealthier rookery-dwellers would go around in rags; these 20 must have been the best-dressed vagrants in history!

Until 1877, Shelton Street was known as Castle Street and it marked the unofficial south-eastern fringe of the sprawling St Giles rookery. This area inspired many of Dickens’s depictions of Victorian London’s seedy underbelly. Today, the narrow street, stretching from Drury Lane to St Martin’s Lane still gives clues to its iniquitous past with a number of alleys and courtyards where footpads and highwaymen would have skulked menacingly in the shadows, waiting for the next wealthy merchant to plunder.

Through the fog, Jamie glimpsed small children still out playing, despite the freezing weather. They would appear and then fade into the fog, hopping and skipping along. One group played a game where they rolled head-over-heels.
Jamie and Todd moved through a sea of paupers. Faces peered from everywhere; entire families gathered in the street. Outside one house, a goat stood chained to railings and chickens clucked in small cages. Outside another, Jamie stared up at a large woman barely visible, leaning from an upstairs window, tending to freshly laundered clothes. She hung a sheet over a protruding wooden pole to dry, though it was already grimy from the sooty fog. Jamie soon realised there were many poles along the street with washing fastened and likened them to masses of flags.

Time Trap

Charles Dickens’s son, Charles Dickens Junior describes it thus:

“Here poverty is to be seen in its most painful features. The shops sell nothing but second or third hand articles. 
The street swarms with children of all ages… Public houses abound and it is evident that whatever there may be a lack of, there is no lack of money for drink.”

Shelton Street today.

Historic backdrop to Time Trap II

American history has always fascinated me, so it was a pleasure to do the research for Time Trap II. The War of Independence and the American spy network - the Culper Spy Ring - to name but two. The spies did so much essential work for the war effort and then there was the mysterious Agent 355 whose identity has never been revealed. The spy ring and the unknown agent feature in TT II. 

Here is a brief telling of the background to the story when Jamie, Todd, Catherine and Hector go back in time to the 18th century to prevent a gun from the future being used at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

By 1775, a large number of so-called colonists – many of them British, with others from different European countries -had settled in the area we now call New England, in the north-east of the country we now call America.

Their colonies were called Massachusetts, Virginia, Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. (Each is now one of the states of the U.S.A) Eventually, the British had 13 English colonies, which were administered by governors appointed by the King of England, George III. That fact, and dissatisfaction with the taxes (payable to the British Government, which in no way represented the colonies or colonists living in them) and also with regulations concerning restrictions upon trading – all designed to benefit Britain, rather than its 13 colonists – eventually led to the American War of Independence, which lasted from 1775 until 1783, and ended in victory for America, who defeated the British. In 1789, all the colonies united under USA’s first president, George Washington, and gained their freedom from foreign control.

You should also know that there was, in the American War of Independence, a Battle of Bunker Hill – which is near Boston. It was the first sizeable battle of the war, and although a victory for the British, more than 1,000 of them were killed or injured in the battle, compared with only 420 Americans.

As well, there really was a Gatling gun (invented in 1861) named after the man who invented it: Richard Gatling. He was an American from North Carolina. He studied medicine before becoming an inventor. Gatling wanted to create a devastating weapon that would reduce the size of armies and so reduce the number of deaths. (But it didn't quite work out that way, unfortunately) His gun had many barrels, and was capable of firing 250 rounds in just one minute!

However, that is historical fact, if the gun is used in battle, the world's future will be ruined irreparably...

“It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine - a gun - which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease would be greatly diminished.”

Richard Jordan Gatling