Music and Murder in Newcastle

The latest in Roz Southey's Charles Patterson series is now out. The books, set in and around Newcastle upon Tyne in the 1730s, are historical crime fiction with a supernatural twist. Roz says she didn’t set out to write a paranormal crime series - the idea just came to her as she was writing the first one. Now with each book Roz has to think of a mystery that will challenge her hero, and the reader, within the rules of the universe she has created.

Charles Patterson is an impoverished musician who also has a talent for investigating murder. The character is based on Charles Avison, a Newcastle man who was one of England’s most important composers in the eighteenth century. The flourishing music scene scene of north east England in that period plays a major role in the books, as does Newcastle itself, with its quayside, narrow alleys and elegant squares.


Newcastle was a fast growing town in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Its prosperity was based first on the coal mining in the region, and the export of coal to London and elsewhere. A hundred years after Charles Patterson’s time, around a million and a half tons of coal a year were being shipped out of Newcastle.

As the Industrial Revolution gathered pace, a wide range of goods was manufactured in and around Newcastle. ‘Every description of goods in cast and wrought iron, and brass; steel goods; sheet and pipe lead; patent-shot; white, orange, and red lead; paint; crown, flint, and bottle glass; earthenware and pottery; alkali and other chemical preparations; copperas, soap, salt, and various other articles…. There are other foundries and forges for the manufacture of steam-engines, machinery of all descriptions, and agricultural implements; and extensive works for building railway and other carriages.’ Shipbuilding too was a major industry on the Tyne.

In 1827, the author of a history of Newcastle declared ‘The richer classes in Newcastle consist of the descendants of ancient and distinguished mercantile families, or of those who have accumulated a fortune by a long exercise of superior knowledge and industry. They are therefore well-informed, polite, and unostentatious; and to the influence of their manners may the respectful demeanour of the other classes be mainly attributed…. The insolent, vulgar, purse-proud upstarts, that swarm in some places, are almost unknown here.'

Charles Patterson would probably have disagreed.
　

A brief history of time

The clocks went forward for British Summer Time last night.

The idea of Daylight Saving was first proposed by William Willett. On his early morning rides in summer he noticed how many hours of daylight were being wasted when the sun rose at four or five in the morning.

William Willett published a pamphlet advocating the idea in 1907, but although Daylight Saving attracted the support of MPs and bills were placed before Parliament, it was not taken up by the government until 1916. Then it was introduced as a means of saving resources during the War.



Less than a hundred years before 1916, different parts of England still had their own local time. People measured time by the sun, and sunrise and sunset in the West of England were twenty minutes or so later than in London.

It was only when the railways arrived that it became essential for the whole country to have a uniform measurement of time. In 1840 the Great Western Railway decided that all its timetables and stations should operate according to London time. Other railway companies gradually followed.

From 1852, the installation of telegraph lines alongside railway tracks enabled an electric time signal to be sent throughout the country from the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, so that clocks could be properly synchronised.

Mariners also needed to know the time accurately for navigation purposes. Time ball towers, the ball dropping at a fixed time each day, were established at Greenwich, visible to shipping in the Thames, and elsewhere around the coast.



At a conference in Washington DC in 1884, Greenwich was adopted as the  prime meridian of the world. Greenwich Mean Time was established as the standard by which time all over the world would be calculated.

Give us our eleven days -

- was supposedly the slogan of people protesting against calendar reform in 1752.

In the past, the New Year had begun on 25 March, the Feast of the Annunciation, or Lady Day.

During the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, more people began to use 1 January as the New Year. The two dates were referred to respectively as Old Style (O.S.) and New Style (N.S.).

For dates in January, February and most of March the year was often written as (for example) 1738/9, to avoid confusion.


By the eighteenth century, because of adjustments that had been made on the Continent but not on this side of the Channel, the English or British calendar had fallen eleven days behind Europe.

In 1751 Parliament passed legislation stating that henceforward the year would begin on 1 January, and the calendar would skip eleven days in September 1752 in order to bring it into line with Europe. Wednesday 2 September was followed by Thursday 14 September.

It was once believed that many people thought that they had been deprived of eleven days of their lives, and that riots and demonstrations took place demanding the restoration of those days.

However it is now thought that these riots never actually happened. A painting by William Hogarth, 'An Election Entertainment', is believed to be partly responsible for starting the story. ‘Give us our eleven days’ is written on the placard on the floor at the front of the picture.


Many events, such as Christmas, continued to be celebrated on their traditional dates. Others had to be moved. It was found that when fairs and markets dealing with agricultural produce were held on the same calendar date, but in fact eleven days earlier than previously, the goods were not ready for sale.

Financial transactions still required a full year of 365 days. In 1753 therefore the financial year, which had previously begun on 25 March, started on 6 April - and has done ever since.