The Lazarus Curse

The Devil’s Breath

“Excellent . . . Both literally and figuratively atmospheric, this will appeal to fans of Imogen Robertson’s series during the same period.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

The Dead Shall Not Rest

“Highly recommended.”

—Historical Novel Society

“Outstanding ... well-rounded characters, cleverly concealed evidence and an assured prose style point to a long run for this historical series.”

—Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“Populated with real historical characters and admirably researched, Harris’s novel features a complex and engrossing plot. A touch of romance makes this sophomore outing even more enticing. Savvy readers will also recall Hilary Mantel’s

The Giant, O’Brien
.”
—Library Journal

“Tessa Harris takes us on a fascinating journey into the shadowy world of anatomist Thomas Silkstone, a place where death holds no mystery and all things are revealed.”

—Victoria Thompson, author of
Murder on Sisters’ Row

Books by Tessa Harris

THE ANATOMIST’S APPRENTICE
THE DEAD SHALL NOT REST
THE DEVIL’S BREATH
THE LAZARUS CURSE

Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

To Katy, with thanks

T
he story of black people in Britain did not, contrary to popular belief, begin with the docking of the
Empire Windrush
in 1948. The ship’s arrival from Jamaica, bringing 492 passengers to settle in the country, is widely seen as a landmark in the history of modern Britain. Yet almost two hundred years earlier there were an estimated 20,000 black people out of a population of 676,250 living in London alone. Most of these were living as free men and women. Their number was swelled in 1783 by Black Loyalists, those slaves who, in return for their freedom, had sided with the British in the American Revolutionary War and been given passage to British shores.

Unsurprisingly when I decided that the story of these displaced Africans should form the backdrop of my fourth Dr. Thomas Silkstone mystery, I found research material quite hard to come by. While there were a few prominent black people in eighteenth-century England—the concert violinist George Bridge-tower and Francis Williams, who studied at Cambridge University, for example—there were hundreds more who lived as servants or beggars. One of the most famous manservants of the day was Francis Barber, who was in the employ of none other than Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great lexicographer.

The British attitude to those of color has been far from exemplary. As far back as 1731 the Lord Mayor of London issued an edict forbidding “negroes” to learn a trade, thus effectively sentencing them to servitude and poverty. Look hard enough and you will see these people everywhere, in the paintings of Hogarth and of Reynolds, in the caricatures of Rawlings and Gillray, and in poems and plays of the period. As Gretchen Gerzina put it in her excellent book
Black England,
eighteenth-century Africans occupied “a parallel world . . . working and living alongside the English.”

My own foray into this parallel plane was prompted by the remarkable story of a young African slave by the name of Jonathan Strong. Cruelly beaten by his master and left for dead on the street, he was found by a kind surgeon, William Sharp, who nursed him back to health. Two years later, however, Strong was recaptured by his master, who promptly sold him back into slavery. He was due to return to the slave plantations of Barbados when, in a last-ditch attempt to evade his terrible fate, he appealed to the surgeon’s brother, the abolitionist Granville Sharp, for help and was eventually freed. In 1772, Sharp was instrumental in securing the famous ruling by Lord Chief Justice William Mansfield that reluctantly concluded that slaves could not legally be forced to return to the colonies by their owners once they were in Britain. The judgment was widely seen as abolishing slavery in Britain, although the law was not necessarily practiced by all citizens. Nevertheless, the case elevated Granville Sharp to his rightful place as one of the most influential men in the British abolition movement.

Crossing the Atlantic to the West Indies, a number of fascinating but disturbing accounts of life in the colonies threw up more background material for this novel. A compelling collection of original documents was drawn together in an online project edited by Dr. Katherine Hann, called
Slavery and the Natural World,
and carried out at the Natural History Museum, London, between 2006 and 2008. The information is based on documents held in the museum’s libraries, and explores the links between nature (especially the knowledge, and transfer, of plants), people with an interest in natural history (mainly European writers from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries), and the history and legacies of the transatlantic slave trade.

Firsthand accounts from slave owners and overseers as well as botanists, naturalists, and physicians painted pictures of life with devastating and often brutal clarity that shock and appall our twenty-first-century sensibilities and, indeed, went some way to helping the abolitionist cause at the time. William Blake’s barbaric image of a woman being whipped,
Flagellation of a Female Samboe Slave, 1796,
had a huge impact on public opinion in Britain.

When calling African slaves “Negroes” I am using the terminology that was employed widely in contemporary accounts from the eighteenth century. While the backdrop to this novel is based on fact, all the characters are fictitious apart from Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson.

In my research I am indebted to the Natural History Museum, London, The Old Operating Theatre, Southwark, and to The Museum of London, Docklands. For her medical expertise I must thank Dr. Kate Dyerson. As ever I am also grateful to my agent, Melissa Jeglinski, my editor, John Scognamiglio, and to the rest of the team at Kensington, to John and Alicia Makin, and to Katy Eachus and Liz Fisher. Last but not least, my thanks go to my family, without whose love and support I could not write these novels.

—England 2014