Unraveled (Turner, #3)

The Bristol Riots that Old Blazer describes in 1831 were the result of a large number of disenfranchised citizens who became very angry when a bill that would have increased the number of eligible voters was scotched in Parliament. The result of the riots, and similar unrest throughout Britain, was a series of changes affecting Britain’s government from the local to the national level. The Reform Bill passed Parliament the next year. Increased scrutiny into Bristol’s governance over the next years yielded some embarrassing results. For a lengthier account, including some indications that Bristol’s ruling class had been embezzling from charitable institutions prior to reform, Graham Bush’s Bristol and its Municipal Government is excellent.

Parliament passed the Municipal Corporations Act, which was supposed to be a major reform. In truth, however, many of the same people who had been running the show before were simply put in charge once more. The result was a ruling class who cared a great deal about the few enfranchised voters (still not a large proportion of the population) and not at all about the working poor.

At the beginning of this book, Miranda notes that in the years before Smite sat as magistrate, only one person had been found innocent in the petty sessions. I know this sounds unbelievable, but it’s exactly what I discovered when I visited the Bristol Records Office and examined the notes from the petty sessions from that time period. I saw conviction after conviction after conviction. The only people who weren’t convicted were those who had some strong indicia of wealth—for instance, a person could afford to hire a lawyer, or who owned substantial property. In all the records I examined, I found precisely one person who was not convicted and who appeared to be poor. In that case, the court reporter was so sure of a conviction that he had actually written down that he was convicted before the verdict was handed down—and had to cross off the erroneous result and write in the acquittal.

But I did take a bit of a liberty with regard to other actions by magistrates. In Unraveled, the other magistrates essentially rubber-stamp police requests for warrants and the like. In reality, my trip to the records office suggests that the magistrates did exert at least a modicum of real oversight on these questions.

The ending is a bit of a fairytale, I’m afraid; I’d love to fantasize about a version of Bristol where the constables served the entire population, not just the wealthy and middle-class citizens as early as the 1840s. But history suggests that just wasn’t so. I prefer my version.

Richard Dalrymple, in the first handful of chapters, gets the 1840s version of a parking ticket. Those really did exist; you can find a picture of an early-Victorian parking ticket on my website.

The SS Great Britain was one of the first iron steamships constructed. It really was docked for months after its launch in the Floating Harbour because its hull was unable to fit through the locks. Eventually, the harbormaster agreed to enlarge the locks and, almost a year after it was officially launched, the Great Britain finally sailed. The Great Britain has been restored to its original condition; if you visit Bristol, you can (and should!) visit it.

I took a few liberties with regards to the interior of the Great Britain; I invented an interior for Temple Church and another for the Royal Western Hotel and the theater. There is no opera house in Bristol. I suppose an opera could have played in the theater. Since the theater wouldn’t have been officially opened in November, in this book it could have been hired out for a short space of time.

Astute readers with legal backgrounds might wonder about two elements of law in this book. The first is this: would it not be a violation of principles of double jeopardy for Smite to charge Billy Croggins with arson after he had already been charged with another offense based on the same underlying conduct? The answer is that in England in that era, double jeopardy didn’t attach to non-felonies, and it didn’t attach preconviction.

Readers might also wonder about Smite’s refusal to hear cases in which he had an interest. The concept of recusal existed at the time period, but the principles that Smite applies to himself are substantially more strict than the historical norm. Justices were supposed to act impartially, but the procedure by which that impartiality was procured is described, for instance, in George Oke’s The Magisterial Synopsis: “Cases also frequently arise to which…local circumstances…attach a fictitious or imaginary importance, which renders them fit to be discussed in the presence of several magistrates, in order that their administration of justice may not only be impartial, but beyond suspicion.” In other words, if there was the possibility of a suspected interest, the solution was typically to have many magistrates decide together, not to have one magistrate walk away. Blackstone is even clearer on the question: “The law will not suppose a possibility of bias or favor in a judge, who is already sworn to administer impartial justice.”