Very excited to announce that I am participating in a blog tour for the Mystery Writers of America. A group of us were chosen to participate with a short reading from our latest work. I chose a passage from A Circle of Dead Girls.
Your can see the postings on Facebook, (https://www.facebook.com/mwanewyork), on Twitter (https://twitter.com/mwanewyork) or YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHQbBSG3fd3UJoPYQU4Kpxg
In almost every Will Rees mystery, I include at least one profession and one illness. In Simply Dead, for example, I studied hoop making (for barrels) and lumbering. One of the characters is severely ill with diabetes.
In A Circle of Dead Girls, tuberculosis was the disease of choice. Because the story is set against the early days of the circus, I included details about wagons and early magic tricks.
In Will Rees Number 10, A Murder of Principle, I am including smallpox. Like Covid-19, smallpox was a viral disease and greatly feared.
The initial symptoms were similar to the flu, Covid-19 and many other viral diseases: fever, muscle pain, fatigue and headache. Before the distinctive rash erupted, small reddish spots appeared on mucous membranes of the mouth, tongue, and throat.
The characteristic skin rash form within two days after the reddish spots on the mucous membranes. The rash was formed of pustules with a dot (that became filled with fluid) in the center. These spots scabbed over and then the scabs fell off, usually resulting in scarring.
The origin of smallpox is unknown although the theory says the virus developed in certain African rodents 60,000 or so years ago. The earliest evidence of human illness dates to the third century BCE with Egyptian mummies It is a lethal disease with a fatality rate for the ordinary kind of about 30 percent. Higher among babies. The Malignant and Hemorrhagic forms are over ninety percent fatal. Occurring in outbreaks, it killed hundreds of thousands, including at least six monarchs in Europe. In the twentieth century it is estimated to have killed 300 million alone. As recently as 1967, 15 million cases occurred worldwide.
In 1796, Edward Jenner discovered that milkmaids who had contracted cowpox, a much less serious disease, did not come down with smallpox. He began a trial and proved that inoculation with cowpox prevented smallpox. Inoculation with the live virus had already begun but, although the disease tended to be less severe and less fatal, some people still died. The cowpox was safer.
Later, the vaccine was made of the killed virus. In Great Britain, Russia, the United States vaccination was practiced. However. My father contracted small pox as a toddler and lived to tell the tale. I am old enough to remember my smallpox vaccination and still bear the scar on my upper arm.
A concerted global effort a to eradicate smallpox succeeded with the last naturally occurring case in 1977. (The last death was in 1978. A researcher contracted the disease from a research sample.) WHO officially certified the eradication of smallpox in 1980.
In The Circle of Dead Girls, my latest Will Rees mystery, the circus comes to this small Maine town. It is hard to believe, but the American circus was still in its infancy in 1799.
Although the circus has a long history – the Egyptians are commonly credited with inventing acrobatics – all forms of entertainment including the jugglers and the acrobats were banned during the Puritan era. It was not recreated in England until Sergeant-Major Philip Astley began exhibiting his equestrian prowess on the outskirts of London in 1768. He performed in a circle (a ‘circus’ in Latin).
In 1770 he decided to expand the appeal of his show by adding acrobats, ropedancers (or wire walkers) and jugglers. (The trapeze, which evolved from the high wire acts, had not yet been invented.) He finished the production with a pantomime, a farcical play that included characters from the Commedia del Arte: Harlequin, Columbine and Clown. His new circus was a huge success.
Like many parts of American culture, this new version of the circus came to the United States from England. As Europe prepared for war, one of the many between England and France, a pupil of the English equestrian tradition, John Bill Ricketts, brought the circus across the Atlantic. He set up a riding school in Philadelphia in 1792 and established the first circus the following year. It was not a traveling circus but was, like the Astley entertainment, housed in a wooden amphitheater.
From the first, despite the social and cultural mores that repressed women, they performed in the circus. They were career women before the term was invented. And they were frequently the stars. In 1772 Astley’s circus featured two equestriennes. The wives of Astley and another trick rider J. Griffin were so popular and famous they were invited to perform before the royal families of England and France. Following their lead Ricketts included a woman in his circus who not only worked as an equestrienne but also doubled as actress and dancer.
Many of the women who performed in circuses were the wives and daughters of male owners or performers. In Europe there was already a culture in which the children raised by circus parents became performers in their turn. A famous ropedancer, familiarly called Bambola, was one such in Italy. I borrowed the name for a character in A Circle of Dead Girls.
The circus allowed women to exhibit their bodies and their physical strength in public. The equestriennes certainly could not do tricks on the backs of galloping horses in long trailing skirts so, horrors!, they wore knee-length skirts that clearly showed the shape of their legs. To modern eyes, this reveal would look remarkably tame. But in the eighteenth century this was titillating. Women of that time were tightly corseted and completely covered. It was not proper for them to attend the circus, which was on a par with Burlesque. Until the Civil War (1861 – 1865) the audience of the American circus was predominantly male. The female performers, like actresses, to whom they were compared, were suspect, considered little better than harlots. But unlike the actresses, who only had to be pretty and seductive, the women in the circuses had to have talent and be willing to undergo the grueling training required for the acts. They, like their male counterparts, had to be unusually healthy and fit.
The circus proved extremely popular in the United States and Ricketts expanded to include New York and Boston and even cities in Canada. To reach more people, the circuses began to travel, building and then tearing down the wooden arenas as necessary. In 1825, Joshua Purdy Brown decided to present his show under a canvas tent instead of the temporary wooden structures. The modern circus was born.
Although there is no record of traveling circuses before the 1800’s, I suspect some enterprising fellows would set up their own small companies. Outside of the few big cities at that time, (which were primarily New York, Philadelphia and Boston, most of the U.S. was rural. Picture how exciting the arrival of such entertainment would be. And how exotic the performers would appear to the farmers and small shopkeepers who came to see them. And imagine how seductive such a beautiful ropedancer would be in a tiny town in Maine . . .
But the publication day last Friday was in Great Britain. Publication of the new Will Rees in the United States does not occur until the beginning of March.
The circus is coming to town. Although primitive by our standards – the circus would not even have had a canvas big top – in 1800 where entertainment options were few, the circus would have been huge. No trapeze artists, but there would be a high wire act, a clown, maybe a magician and also animal acts. Not lions or even elephants, but the more common animals such as horses, dogs, and pigs.
Who could blame the children from being excited – even the children living with the Shakers. Sadly, only the boys would be allowed inside, and the men, as women were not permitted to view such frivolity.
Circuses also provided a haven for refugees. This was only 7 years after the French Revolution and Napoleon was marching across Europe with his armies.
One of the main characters in A Circle of Dead Girls is a tightrope walker, Called rope dancers, the tightrope walkers have been a feature of the circuses for centuries. The Romans called them funambulists.
My rope dancer is nicknamed Bambola, a name that I borrowed from a famous Italian tightrope walker. These aerialists have always been popular acts. I imagine the excitement in a small farming community at seeing this act would have been high.
Many of the rope dancers were women but not all. In fact, as the circuses traveled around, dynasties that were known for aerial acts formed and became famous in their own right.
Will Rees and others in the audience of that time would not have seen an act that became arguably the most popular of all: the trapeze artists. The trapeze was developed from the tightrope; more accurately from a slack rope that the artist then hung from. The first tricks were done from a static trapeze; a rope that hung without moving. The flying trapeze was not invented until the mid-1800s by a young aerialist: Jules Leotard. He invented it by practicing over his father’s swimming pool.
For many decades, the flying trapeze was one of these most popular acts ever.
Acrobats are another piece of the circus story that has a long history. The first known depictions of acrobats jugglers appeared about 5000 years ago, in Egypt, in the early dynastic period (3000 B.C.). The Egyptians developed a strong tradition of these arts and later taught them to the Greeks. They in turn taught the arts to the Romans.
The Romans spread them throughout their Empire via itinerant troupes of performers.
Acrobatics rose independently in China.
Although the earliest performances had religious overtones, the entertainers soon realized the audiences enjoyed the performances as entertainment. This created tension with the religious powers, culminating in the Middle Ages who accused the performers of being in league with the devil. During the Reformation in England during the 1660s, all such forms of frivolity was forbidden.
When Philip Astley set up his equestrian show in England, he hired clowns to amuse the audiences between equestrian acts. Although those clown owed their history to Italy’s Commedia del’ Arte from the 16th century, with a little bit of court jester thrown in, the trickster character has a long long history. Folktales from around the world showcase the tricksters, sometimes amusingly and sometimes scarily.
Although the more modern clowns are figures of fun, they did not start that way. (I think Stephen King really put his finger on an atavistic fear of clowns in IT. I wonder if it is part of the same psychology that makes zombies and vampires scary; something that is looks human, or once was human, but isn’t.) Even some of the characters who were supposed to be funny were also monsters. Think of Punch (from Punch and Judy) who beat his wife and murdered his children. I remember visiting the Taos reservation during a celebration. The clowns were punishers, running through the crowd and throwing people who had disobeyed customs or cultural norms into a pond of water. I was merely an onlooker and I was terrified.
Clown from the Commedia was a buffoon, a foil to the sly Harlequin, but the two characters have been rolled together. According to Wikipedia, the word clown was first recorded in 1560 meaning boor, peasant. It took on the meaning of fool. Clowns have evolved from the fool to other characters. Think Emmett Kelly’s weary Willie, Charlie Chaplin’s tramp. Funny and Sad both.
In any event, when Astley set up his circus, the first modern clown, Joseph Grimaldi, was so popular he became a star in his own right.
When we think of circuses, we usually think of exotic animals: lions and tigers and elephants.
But the first animals that were used in the early circus in the United States were not those exotics (especially then). The first elephant l did not come to this country until 1794. One elephant was brought from the Orient (which covered India, China, Japan and more then) by the Salem merchants.
No, most of the animals that would have been used in a circus were more homey. Dogs, pigs ( like the pig used by Billy the clown in A Circle of Dead Girls), and maybe bears. Horses were the stars for many years since the circus begun by Astley in England had begun as an equestrian show.
Some of the primary sources I read quoted farm boys who went home after the circus and tried to train their farm horses to circus tricks.
The scantily dressed female circus performers are such a feature of American lore that few of us considers their history or how unusual they were when this entertainment first arrived in the United States. Although the circus has a long history – the Egyptians are commonly credited with inventing acrobatics – all forms of entertainment including the jugglers and the acrobats were banned during the Puritan era. It was not recreated in England until Sergeant-Major Philip Astley began exhibiting his equestrian prowess on the outskirts of London in 1768. He performed in a circle (a ‘circus’ in Latin).
In 1770 he decided to expand the appeal of his show by adding acrobats, ropedancers (or wire walkers) and jugglers. (The trapeze, which evolved from the high wire acts, had not yet been invented.) He finished the production with a pantomime, a farcical play that included characters from the Commedia del Arte: Harlequin, Columbine and Clown. His new circus was a huge success.
Like many parts of American culture, this new version of the circus came to the United States from England. As Europe prepared for war, one of the many between England and France, a pupil of the English equestrian tradition, John Bill Ricketts, brought the circus across the Atlantic. He set up a riding school in Philadelphia in 1792 and established the first circus the following year. It was not a traveling circus but was, like the Astley entertainment, housed in a wooden amphitheater.
From the first, despite the social and cultural mores that repressed women, they performed in the circus. They were career women before the term was invented. And they were frequently the stars. In 1772 Astley’s circus featured two equestriennes. The wives of Astley and another trick rider J. Griffin were so popular and famous they were invited to perform before the royal families of England and France. Following their lead Ricketts included a woman in his circus who not only worked as an equestrienne but also doubled as actress and dancer.
Many of the women who performed in circuses were the wives and daughters of male owners or performers. In Europe there was already a culture in which the children raised by circus parents became performers in their turn. A famous ropedancer, familiarly called Bambola, was one such in Italy. I borrowed the name for a character in A Circle of Dead Girls.
The circus allowed women to exhibit their bodies and their physical strength in public. The equestriennes certainly could not do tricks on the backs of galloping horses in long trailing skirts so, horrors!, they wore knee-length skirts that clearly showed the shape of their legs. To modern eyes, this reveal would look remarkably tame. But in the eighteenth century this was titillating. Women of that time were tightly corseted and completely covered. It was not proper for them to attend the circus, which was on a par with Burlesque. Until the Civil War (1861 – 1865) the audience of the American circus was predominantly male. The female performers, like actresses, to whom they were compared, were suspect, considered little better than harlots. But unlike the actresses, who only had to be pretty and seductive, the women in the circuses had to have talent and be willing to undergo the grueling training required for the acts. They, like their male counterparts, had to be unusually healthy and fit.
The circus proved extremely popular in the United States and Ricketts expanded to include New York and Boston and even cities in Canada. To reach more people, the circuses began to travel, building and then tearing down the wooden arenas as necessary. In 1825, Joshua Purdy Brown decided to present his show under a canvas tent instead of the temporary wooden structures. The modern circus was born.
A Circle of Dead Girls, my eighth Will Rees, is set against the newly formed circus in the 1790’s United States. Once the popularity of the circus was established, I thought it likely that other men would set up small traveling companies. Outside of the few big cities at that time, (which were primarily New York, Philadelphia and Boston, most of the U.S. was rural. Picture how exciting the arrival of such entertainment would be. And how exotic the performers would appear to the farmers and small shopkeepers who came to see them. And imagine how seductive such a beautiful ropedancer would be in a tiny town in Maine . . .
I am very happy to announce that A Circle of Dead Girls, Will Rees number 8, will be released March 3, 2020.
The Circus has come to town. Rees arrives for the performance but the sight of his old nemesis, Magistrate Hanson, sends him home again. On his way, he meets a party of Shaker Brothers searching for a young girl. Her body is found in a nearby field.
Who killed Leah? The circus trick rider? The strong man? One of the Shaker Brothers? Maybe even the Magistrate.
