The Old Bailey

The Old Bailey has been the central criminal court of England for hundreds of years. You can imagine how many thousands of criminal cases they've heard.

The records of the Old Bailey, from 1674 up to 1913, are now online, at OldBaileyOnline.org. I've already wasted hours reading them, and I bet you will too. The web site is beautiful, has an outstanding search system, and the most fascinating records. It's just wow.

The first thing I did, of course, was go name surfing. In only a few minutes I found this record. Let me introduce you to my ancestor, in the criminal trial of...

WILLIAM CORBY, Theft > pocketpicking, 6th July 1835

WILLIAM CORBY was indicted for stealing, on the 3rd of July, 1 handkerchief, value 2s. 6d. the goods of Charles Frederick Edgar, from his person.

CHARLES FREDRICK EDGAR . On the 3rd of July I was in Clerkenwell—I had this handkerchief in my pocket, and lost it—I do not know who took it.

THOMAS HEADWORTH . I live in St. John-street. About three o'clock, I saw the prosecutor walking in that street, and the prisoner was close behind him, touching his pocket—I went to the door, and saw his hand in the pocket—he drew the handkerchief out, and passed it form his right hand to his left—I immediately ran and laid hold of him—he threw it down—I told the gentleman, who took it up.

Prisoner. Q. Did you not say a man in a velvet coat threw the handkerchief down, and it went on my breast.

A. I did not.

GUILTY . Aged 20.— Transported for Seven Years.

Or at least, my relatives who've researched the family history tell me this is the fellow from whom we're descended.

It's a good thing my ancestor took to a life of crime. Based on his defense, he would never have made it as a lawyer.

Why didn't Corby argue that he was walking behind Edgar, saw the handkerchief fall, and picked it up to return it? He still needs to impugn Headworth as a witness, but he can argue the angle of sight, and Headworth's natural suspicion, led him to misinterpret an innocent event. The agreed fact that Edgar felt nothing helps the claim of an accidental fall.

Yes, yes, I know...my illustrious forefather is obviously a petty thief, but seriously, almost any defense is better than asking the prosecution's only witness to change his mind with a leading question.

The earliest record of a criminal Corby is another William Corby in 1770 for highway robbery, violent theft, receiving, and grand larceny. Needless to say he dangled for that lot.

I also discovered that there was a police officer called George Corby, variously described as a beadle, a constable, and a street-keeper who, if the number of times he appears is any indicator, touched an amazing number of collars. GC (same initials!) appears to have been more Lestrade than Holmes, but nevertheless the temptation to write some short stories is almost overwhelming.

Acropolis Now

Back when we were searching for a title for the first book, one of the more demented suggestions came from my friend, the gloriously inventive Stuart Neville, who I'll note in passing is the author of the excellent paranormal thriller The Ghosts of Belfast.

Stuart suggested we call it Acropolis Now. When we finished laughing, we realized Acropolis Now was brilliant, original, amusing, and had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the book. Still we thought his idea was so funny, we took it to the Powers That Rule The Universe, which means the editors.

Here's what happened with Acropolis Now (I've pulled this from a comment in a post of about 2 months ago):

The Scene: Janet (agent), Kathleen (editor), Keith (executive editor and He Who Pays For Lunch), and I are standing outside a Greek (of course) restaurant in New York.

Janet: We have a brilliant title idea for the book.

Keith: Tell me the title.

Janet: Acropolis Now.

Keith: (manic laughter) NO!

So it was with some amusement that I received an email from Keith just now, suggesting we look at the cover of the current issue of The Economist.

All right, I admit it looks better on their cover than it would have on ours. Also, on theirs it actually makes sense. Nice to see Acropolis Now got up somewhere.

Word counts, and word targets

I've always used a 1,000 words a day as my target. Which means I'm not allowed to go to bed until I've written a thousand good words. Or at least 1,000 decent words. All right, 1,000 barely tolerable words. Thank goodness for revision.

Every now and then I've experimented with a different system, but I've never found anything that worked better.

In the last few days I've tried something which might, just might, replace the thousand a day rule.

It's 500 words in an hour.

The problem with 1,000 words in a day is it's so very achievable. I fiddle around, doing research, writing a few neat phrases, thinking I can finish the thousand any time I like, until ten minutes to midnight, at which point I decide maybe I should get this done, and start writing properly. I finish by 1am, or 2am. That wouldn't be so bad if we didn't have children who needed to be taken to school.

So I've tried 500 words in an hour, and so far I've impressed myself. Productivity has gone up. (But don't tell Janet, Kathleen, Keith or Belinda, or they might start having unreasonable expectations about me getting stuff done on time...)

With the 500 word per hour system, when the hour starts I don't allow distractions and I hit the target. Every time. Amazing how much those distractions hurt.

Word count for a book varies wildly between genres. Writing historical mysteries, I've always targeted between 80K and 100K, and no one's ever told me I should do otherwise. Beyond 100K, my observation is agents and editors become skittish. Below 80K, I become skittish. Anything within that range is goodness as far as I can see. Once I'm in the zone, I don't care how long it ends up.

In theory this means I finish a first draft in 80 to 100 days. Yeah, right. Still, I'm probably not too far off that. That's not the end of the story though. Personally, if you're using a target system like this, I suggest allocating three times as long for revision as you spend writing the first draft. Yes, three times as long. I'm sure there are people out there who can get it right the first time. In fact, I know there are. But I'm not one of them. On the plus side, when I send in an ms, I know it's as good as I can make it.

Location, location, location...

So I was inspired to this question by a comment in the last post from the inspirational Stephanie Thornton:

If you were a woman in the 5th century BC, where would you choose to live?

I include anywhere on the planet, not only Greece, or even necessarily the Mediterranean. If the 5th century is too specific, feel free to expand a bit.

My own suggestion would be Tyrrhenia, also called Etruria, home of the Etruscans, because the status of women appears to have been high there. If not Tyrrhenia, then perhaps a south sea island like Vanuatu because I like the place, and life would be relatively easy, if short.

The weirdness that was Sparta

It would need a book, probably in three volumes, to even begin to do justice to Sparta. The place was like nowhere else we know of, before or since. Spartan life was so removed from our modern experience, that it would almost be reasonable to say that while Athens strove to become us, Sparta was determined to be the exact opposite. It's no wonder the Athenians and the Spartans could never trust each other.

I won't try and write a book; instead I'll point out a few of the weirder parts of Spartan life:

Sparta had two kings, running in two ancient lineages. Presumably this was a carryover from when the city formed from multiple tribes. It did mean that a new, inexperienced king could be balanced by one with more experience. It also meant a certain amount of argument!

Each newborn baby boy was taken by his father to a committee, which decided whether the child was fit to live. If not, then the baby was exposed to die, by order of the state committee. But if, much more usually, he was fit to live, then the baby was allocated on the spot a plot of farmland which was his for life: his source of income and support. The plot came with helots to work the land; all the owner had to do was eat the produce. When a man died, his farm was returned to the state for allocation to the next baby that came along. It's hard to know what to call this by modern standards. Fascism? Communism? Beats me.

There was only one profession for a Spartan: to be a soldier. The other two classes were the helots—who were slaves—and a small band of free non-citizens called the periocoi.

Helots were a once-free people who were made slaves by the Spartans. The helots rose up on a semi-regular basis. Which is why the Spartans were dedicated soldiers: not to fight wars but to keep the helots in line.

Helots were not slaves in the normal sense that they could be bought and sold at will. They were tied to the land. In some ways they were more like serfs than slaves.

There was a rite of passage for young Spartans called the krypteia, in which the young men were sent alone into the countryside, with only a dagger, and orders to survive without being caught. Oh, and each young man was to kill a few helots. For practice, you know. It was a way of getting the young men used to killing before they had to do it much more dangerously in combat, and it seems as if helot troublemakers were particularly targeted, thus killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.

When a man came of age he was allocated to a mess, which also formed his fighting unit. He stayed in that mess for life.

Spartan women, surprisingly, were the most free of any of the Greeks. The theory went you needed women in good condition to produce strong children.

There was a council of elders, called the gerousia. Membership by invitation only, and you had to be 60 years or older (gerousia...geriatric). Any Spartan who lived to 60, considering the battles, had to be one tough guy.

5 ephors were selected each year from amongst the Spartiates. The ephors held veto power. Whenever a king left Sparta, 2 ephors would accompany him. Any 2 ephors together ccould overrule a king. All 5 ephors could overrule both kings. Ephors were rather powerful.

The first action of the newly elected ephors each year was to declare war on their own helots. So it was legal to kill them without fear of blood guilt, you know.

It was illegal to have a funeral stone unless you died in battle.

For a Spartan to surrender was the greatest shame. In fact to fail to die in battle with your comrades was pretty bad too. There was a man sent off on an embassy by King Leonidas, right before the last stand at Thermopylae. When this man discovered that he'd failed to be slaughtered along with his friends, he was so ashamed he hung himself. A small force of Spartans surrendered to the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War. All of Greece was shocked.

Sparta was structured like four connected villages, each with its own agora. It probably means Sparta coalesced in prehistoric times from four tribes. Unlike every other important city in Greece, Sparta had no defensive walls. The Spartans took the view that anyone who thought they could beat them was welcome to come on in and try.

The Spartans were totally convinced this new-fangled money stuff would never catch on. Instead, they used small iron bars for the few times currency was needed in their lives. Even a couple of hundred years after coinage was invented, the Spartans were still resisting.

The Spartans did from time to time hold general votes. How they voted was this: some men were sent outside the assembly hall. The Aye voters and the Noe voters then shouted as loud as they could, one group after the other. Whichever side shouted loudest won the debate, as decided by the listeners outside.

They called themselves Lacedaemonians, from Lacedaemonia. Try saying that ten times fast. Which is why you typically see the letter lambda on their shields.

Spartans were sometimes referred to amongst other Greeks as "crickets", because they were always ready for a sing-song and communal dancing.

The Spartans were renowned as a people of few words. Our modern term laconic comes direct from Lacedaemon. So the next time you describe someone as laconic, you're accusing them of being like a Spartan.

I could go on forever, but I'll stop there. If people read of a place like this in an epic fantasy, they'd say it was over the top.