Research – Empowering women through fiction and history.

Historical Research: A Chicken and Egg Paradox

Many writers do some kind of research for their books. Even contemporary authors often need to research experiences in life of which they have no first-hand knowledge. This could be anything from what a five-year-old will and will not eat (if you’re like me, with no kids and not much exposure to young kids) to the ins and outs of a career as a registered nurse.

Historical authors have the added burden of researching the past. Their research isn’t always related to well-documented events or facts (such as housing prices in the 1950s). In fact, often, their research is about the obscure details, such as how people stored meat in the 17th century (or even if they stored meat at all — we can’t assume the things we take for granted today were possible in past times). Their research isn’t necessarily related to major plot points or main characters either. Only this morning, I was researching the hours of operation for a produce stand in a small town in the early 1920s for some minor characters appearing in my work-in-progress.

Photo Credit: The Bookworm, Carl Spitzweg, 1850, oil on canvas, Museum Georg Schafer, Bavaria, Germany: Iryna Harpy/Wikimedia Commons/PD Art (PD Old 70)

There is no hard-and-fast rule about when researching should be done and how much. Every author goes by his or her own comfort level. Some authors prefer researching everything down to the last detail before they even begin that first draft. Others prefer to get the story down without worrying about historically accurate details and then go back and “fill in the blanks” during revisions.

I tend to do a combination of both. I research general aspects of history when I’m outlining the story because these can affect what direction the story will take. If I have an idea for a murder but research suggests it wouldn’t have been accurate for the time period in which the book is set, then that’s going to affect how the plot moves forward. An obvious example would be if I wanted to write a story where DNA testing plays a role in identifying the real killer and set the book in the early 1970s, I’d be 20 years too early, since DNA testing became common in the early 1990s (bet you didn’t know that, did you?) The appearance of a mob boss in my Grave Sisters Mysteries would be fine, since the series takes place during the Jazz Age, but the mob boss might be out of place in my Adele Gossling Mysteries, set some twenty years earlier.

Now, this last example brings up an interesting point about historical research and storytelling: The idea that just because something is historically accurate in one time frame but is associated with a later time frame doesn’t mean an author should include it in their book. We have to think of reader expectations. If I were to include a storyline in my Adele Gossling Mysteries involving a mob boss, it might be historically accurate (mob bosses existed since the late 19th century), but it would confuse readers since we’ve come to associate mobs and mob bosses with the Prohibition Era of the 1920s.

The outline is just the beginning of my historical research. While I’m writing the first draft, lots of little details come up. My process is to include them in the first draft as I know them in the 21st century, tag them with a note in bold and square brackets, and then go back later and research them. I do that mainly because when I’m writing the first draft, I want to focus on getting the story down from beginning to end. I don’t want to be distracted by popping onto Google and going down the research rabbit hole. One example that sticks in my mind was when I was writing one of the earlier Adele Gossling Mysteries, I decided it was time for the Arrojo police force to wear uniforms. Except I had no idea if police in America even wore uniforms in the first decade of the 20th century! Those are the kinds of details we might think are obvious, but when you’re dealing with the past, you have to suddenly stop and think about them. Spoiler alert: American police did wear uniforms in the first decade of the 20th century.

So doing research can be like the old paradox of the chicken and the egg — do you research first and then write, or can you only research once you start writing because you don’t know what you’ll need to research until you write?

If you’re new to my historical cozy mysteries, why not take the plunge into my Adele Gossling Mysteries? You’ll find a lot of interesting research plus a compelling story about Adele Gossling getting pulled into the murder of her next-door neighbor in the first book of the series, The Carnation Murder. It’s free to download on all bookstore sites. Find out more about the book and where you can get it here.

If you love fun, engaging mysteries set in the past, you’ll enjoy The Missing Ruby Necklace! It’s available exclusively to newsletter subscribers here. By signing up, you’ll also get news about upcoming releases, fun facts about women’s history, classic true-crime tidbits, and more

Forensic Pathology in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries

Mourning practices were an art form in the 19th and early 20th centuries. When I did research on mourning for my Gilded Age family saga, the Waxwood Series, back in 2022, I found no shortage of information. People during these eras had a fascination with death that is almost the antithesis of how we approach death in the 21st century.

However, when I started doing research on the more technical and scientific aspects of dealing with the dead for my Grave Sisters Mysteries series, the information was surprisingly lacking or difficult to find. As Deborah Blum emphasized in this TED-ED video, in our CSI-friendly era, crime investigation relies heavily on picking apart the corpse (both physically and emotionally). But 19th and early 20th century crime investigation focused much more on clues, witnesses, and suspects, and less on the victim’s body.

In the 19th and early 20th century, you couldn’t even say American forensic pathology was in its infancy. More like it was in the womb. The role of medical examiner was pretty ad hoc and didn’t officially exist in many places until the 1930s. In addition, many medical examiners were not trained specifically in pathology, consisting mostly of local doctors who were good at treating the living but had little experience with examining the dead. Both my Adele Gossling Mysteries and Grave Sisters Mysteries feature this type of medical examiner, though both doctors have enough experience to know what they’re doing. In contrast, in the latter series, Helena Wright (the middle Grave sister), is the mortician of the family funeral home, and her training provides her with more in-depth knowledge of pathology (something the medical examiner resents!)

Medical examiners and pathologists were, like policemen and mayors, government-appointed, and as such, subject to the kind of corruption that ran rampant in the 19th and early 20th centuries (until the Progressive movement called for reforms). They could be bribed to cover up evidence for various reasons. Maybe the victim was a well-respected citizen, and the pathology brought up something that pointed toward a less-than-stellar life the influential family didn’t want made public (like certain diseases). Or maybe the examination of the victim showed foul play that would require important people to be involved in the case, who didn’t want to be involved. The examination might even implicate someone important to the town in a dastardly crime, so evidence needed to be covered up or distorted. I’m reading a true crime book right now about the death of a woman in the early 20th century, where the writers surmise this is exactly what happened.

Photo credit: Leather doctor’s bag and its contents dated between 1890 and 1930, Wellcome Collection Gallery: Fae/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 4.0

Thankfully, things started to change in the 1920s. Law enforcement began to take forensic experts and medical examiners more seriously and saw them as a vital part of the investigation rather than just part of their standard procedure. One example that changed the way the New York police thought about forensic pathology happened in 1923. A housewife living in one of the tenement buildings in the city was found dead in her apartment. At first, the case seemed cut and dried – accidental death by poisoning from a gas oven (not an uncommon thing in the early 20th century, as gas was the main source of power in tenements). However, because of reforms going on in the city at the time, the coroner was also a trained medical man and was able to determine that death had not occurred due to carbon monoxide poisoning (interestingly, based on the color of the dead woman’s skin) and in fact had been strangled (as there were marks on her neck). Later, it was discovered her husband had indeed strangled her (for the insurance money) and had tried to stage the murder to look like an accident, which the authorities almost bought.

Pathology plays a role not only in my Grave Sisters Mysteries (as I discussed above), but in Book 3 of my Adele Gossling Mysteries. A doctor is asked to write out a new death certificate because what looked like an accident proves to be anything but. It was possible to retract the death certificate if further examination suggested otherwise. This is what starts off the investigation into Thea Marsh’s death in the book.

Death At Will has been chosen by Barnes & Noble as a favorite reading year pick! To celebrate, I’ve discounted the book to $2.99. You can grab it here. And did you know Book 1 of the series, The Carnation Murder, is free? If you haven’t yet gotten into this series, you can start now by getting your copy of the first book for free here.

And if you want to see some more fascinating early 20th century pathology at work (without the gore!), check out my Grave Sisters Mysteries! Book 2 of the series was just released last November and is on Barnes & Noble’s Top Indie Favorites list for this month. The book is still at a nice discount of $3.99, so you can get The Missing Witness now.

If you love fun, engaging mysteries set in the past, you’ll enjoy The Missing Ruby Necklace! It’s available exclusively to newsletter subscribers here. By signing up, you’ll also get news about upcoming releases, fun facts about women’s history, classic true-crime tidbits, and more!

Making Progress: Thanksgiving in the Progressive Era

It’s that time of year when Thanksgiving is upon us (at least it is if you’re in the US). A few years ago, I wrote a blog post about Thanksgiving in the Gilded Age. But since I’ve been diving into the Progressive Era with my Adele Gossling Mysteries, I was curious to know how turn-of-the-century Thanksgiving traditions compared to those of America’s Gilded Age.

The Gilded Age was, remember, all about excesses, wealth, and showing off when it came to the holidays. Well-to-do Americans saw the holidays as a time to get into their best dress and parade themselves in hotel dining rooms or swank restaurants for a multi-course Thanksgiving meal that included non-traditional Thanksgiving fare such as oysters and lobster (if you don’t believe me, take a peek at the menu I included in the blog post mentioned above.)

Photo Credit: Cover of Puck magazine showing a mother making a pumpkin pie in the kitchen while her four children look onward, emphasizing the family nature of Thanksgiving, 1903, chromolithograph, created by L. M. Glackens: pingnews.com / Flickr/Public Domain Mark 1.0

Americans started to get a grip on all those excesses and realized their country needed to make some changes in the Progressive Era. Reform was the order of the day, including worker’s rights, women’s rights, and environmental concerns. There was also more emphasis on intimate social circles (family, friends), probably because the modern era made many people feel fragmented and isolated (something I daresay we struggle with today in our social-media-heavy 21st century.)

For all these reasons, Thanksgiving became more of a family affair at the turn of the century. Magazines and books came out with Thanksgiving recipes to help encourage Americans to stay home for the holiday rather than let hotels and restaurants do the cooking. The recipes were much more what we consider traditional Thanksgiving foods, such as roasted turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. The 1902 menu on this site still has some oddities, such as oysters, but it looks much more like the kind of Thanksgiving meal we feast upon these days than the menu on my previous blog post.

Progressive reformers carried their work into the holidays as well. One thing we see with turn-of-the-century Thanksgiving which was less prevalent in the Gilded Age was the idea of giving thanks and gratitude by helping others. Missionaries and other charitable organizations hosted large Thanksgiving feasts for the poor all over the country. In addition, holiday gift boxes became popular just as they are today (my local Sprouts Market prepares gift bags with food every year that customers can purchase and have the store give to a family in need). Overall, the spirit of gratitude and giving was not lost on early 20th-century progressives.

While none of my Adele Gossling Mystery stories feature a Thanksgiving murder yet, be on the lookout for one in the future! In the meantime, check out The Carnation Murder, the first book of the series, which is totally free on all bookstore sites.

One Thing Leads To Another: The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906

America is no stranger to natural disasters. We’ve seen it all: hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires, earthquakes. Only last month, Florida experienced two hurricanes back-to-back (Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton) and the damage and lives lost from these two disasters combined was devastating.

Whether due to Mother Nature’s temperament or human error, disasters seem to come in packs. In the case of the above-mentioned Hurricane Milton, damage was caused not only by the winds and floods it brought but also by the tornadoes that formed even before the hurricane hit the ground. Looking back in history, this is not something we can blame on climate change or global warming. One of the worst natural disasters in the history of Northern California endured a back-to-back disaster: the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. While there is no doubt that the earthquake itself caused a lot of damage in San Francisco and smaller cities along the coast, reports show most of the damage (nearly eighty percent and some sources state it was closer to ninety-five) happened because of the fires that followed.

The facts of the earthquake are well-documented, and I go into them in the author’s note included in my upcoming Adele Gossling Mysteries book. The earthquake began on April 18, 1906, at 5:12 a.m. in, ironically, the ocean. But it quickly moved to land and tore up cities along the coast, including San Francisco (though to call it the San Francisco Great Earthquake is misleading, since many smaller cities in the area, including Santa Rosa and San Jose, suffered massive damage). The magnitude of the earthquake has been debated, but most experts put it at 7.9-8.25 which stands today as the biggest quake in the area. The strong shock lasted about 45-60 seconds. While that might not seem like a long time, it was enough to completely incapacitate the entire city. The quake broke gas and power lines, damaged water pipes, and made telegraph lines useless. Houses and buildings of the time were made of wood (and still are, so they easily crumbled with the strong tremors, especially in the downtown area. There were a few buildings that withstood the disaster and survive even today in their more-or-less natural state, including the Flood Building (a majestic-looking office building on Market Street) and St. Mary’s Cathedral.

Photo Credit: Residents looking toward the downtown at the fires breaking out during the 1906 Great San Francisco Earthquake, 1906: U.S. Geological Survey/Flickr/CC0 1.0 Universal

While the earthquake did its damage to buildings, infrastructure, and pavements, leaving some places with such huge cracks that horses fell through them, many argue the majority of the disaster came not from the tremors but from the multiple fires that broke out in the city almost immediately after the earthquake. Gas lines broke all over the city and ignited fires that were difficult to stop. There’s the famous “Ham and Eggs Fire,” for example, where a housewife in Hayes Valley turned on her gas stove to make breakfast for her family soon after the earthquake. Little did she know the chimney had been damaged by the quake. The stove ignited a fire that spread throughout the downtown area. Before it was finally quenched, it had destroyed some of the city’s most important and iconic buildings, including City Hall. To add insult to injury, water lines were broken so firefighters had trouble getting water out of the pipes to put the fires out. And human error had a hand in it as well. When water was clearly not going to be the answer to putting out the massive flames, the military resorted to dynamiting buildings (in an effort to prevent the fires from spreading), but their lack of experience in this area only made the fires worse.

Photo of San Francisco downtown area after the earthquake and fires had ceased, taken from a camera attached to a kite and suspended some 1,000 feet from the air. The large street going down the center is Market Street. Note how nearly all the buildings on either side are completely destroyed.

Photo Credit: Taken by George R. Lawrence, 28 May 1906, Panoramic photographs, Library of Congress: Grook Da Ogre/Wikimedia Commons/PD US

All told, by the time the fires had subsided (and it would take four days for this to happen), they had claimed three thousand lives across the Bay Area and eighty percent of San Francisco. It took two years for the city to rebuild.

My book, Murder Among The Rubble, features this disaster and focuses on the rebuilding phase just a few weeks after the earthquake (featuring a murder, of course). You can pick up a copy on preorder now at a special price here.

I’ll be talking more about the 1906 San Francisco Great Earthquake, its aftermath, and the effect it had on the lives of the residents in my newsletter as the release date for this book gets closer in December. You won’t want to miss that! If you’re not already signed up for my newsletter, I encourage you to click here and do so. You’ll get lots of free goodies, including my book The Missing Ruby Necklace (not available anywhere else!) if you do.

The Treatment of the Chinese in San Francisco after the 1906 Earthquake

Today is a special day for the people of China as it’s National Day of the Chinese Republic. On this day in 1911, a group of revolutionaries led a revolt against the Qing Dynasty. They overthrew the imperial rule that had dominated for centuries, declaring the country a republic. You can read more about the revolution here.

Why am I mentioning this? First, we are all connected to one another in some way, so knowing about the history of other countries besides our own is part of that connection. Second, I’ve come to appreciate the struggles of the Chinese not only in their own country but in others as well, especially during the early 20th century. In fact, it was researching the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and the rebuilding that happened afterward for my upcoming book, Murder Among the Rubble, that led me to not only appreciate the way the Chinese were treated during this time but also to include this community in that book.

Photo Credit: Chinatown, Waverly Place at Clay Street, 9 April 1900 (six years before the earthquake), glass plate negative: San Francisco Public Library/Flickr/CC BY NC ND 2.0

San Francisco is known as a liberal city that opens its arms to all and celebrates its diversity. But it wasn’t always this way. Many ethnic groups like the Latino and Asian communities, experienced abominable racism in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Before the earthquake, the Chinese, who numbered about 15,000, were seen as instigators of corruption and vice. They were regulated to a twelve-block radius known as Chinatown and forced to live under squalid conditions. Many couldn’t find decent work and resorted to earning a living with businesses catering to the tourist trade or related to vices, such as opium dens and prostitution houses. The community was stereotyped as one without morals and willing to engage in criminal activity such as the slave trade. This stereotype was so prevalent that a film made in 1965 portraying the Chinese in Chinatown in this way garnished protest from Asian-American actors and led to the creation of the East West Players. I wrote about that here.

When the earthquake hit San Francisco in 1906, Chinatown was, like eighty percent of the city, destroyed. About two-thirds of the Chinese living there fled to Oakland (where they weren’t welcomed – if you can stomach it, read this article that appeared in the Oakland Herald and really shows the attitude toward the Chinese at the time). The other third remained in the city.

Photo Credit: Chinatown after the earthquake, 1906, Harold B. Lee Library: Picryl/Public Domain

The committee that was formed after the earthquake to oversee the rebuilding was faced with what to do with these people. The remaining Chinese were first placed in makeshift tents on Van Ness Avenue, far away from any of the main camp locations, but officials feared they would slowly migrate back to their ruined homes in Chinatown (more about why this was a concern to the committee later). So they were transferred to the Presidio to a separate camp on the other side of the reservation, far away from the main camps populated by Caucasians. Their tents were much smaller, and the food, supplies, and medical attention they received were inferior to those of the whites.

During the rebuilding phase after the earthquake, one of the biggest debates was the question of the fate of Chinatown. Logic would dictate the city would rebuild Chinatown where it had been before, just as they were rebuilding all other neighborhoods in the city. But the real estate of those twelve blocks was prime and businessmen who had been trying to get their hands on it for years saw an opportunity to steal it from the Chinese (since records of their leases would have been burned in the ires). These businessmen tried to get officials to move Chinatown to Hunter’s Point, a remote part of the city used by the Navy shipyard at the time.

Luckily, they did not succeed. The Chinese community in San Francisco, though relatively small, was not without a voice or its supporters. A delegation consisting of American-Chinese and Chinese authorities like the Consul-General of San Francisco called upon the governor to protest against the move, threatening to cut off commercial ties with China. The delegation made the following powerful statement: “America is a free country, and every man has a right to occupy land which he owns provided that he makes no nuisance.”

Photo Credit: Chinatown in San Francisco (in all its glory), taken 2 December 2007 by Tony Webster from Portland, OR: Hiku2/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0

Moved by this plea (and by the idea of losing trade relations with China), officials nixed the idea of moving Chinatown to Hunter’s Point. Chinatown was rebuilt where it had stood before the earthquake and where it still stands today. The area lost its reputation for vice after the earthquake when the city “cleaned up” such places as the Barbary Coast and Chinatown. Instead, it became a tourist attraction, rebuilt with ornamental gates, panoramas, and pagodas. It’s now one of the most popular places to visit when in San Francisco.

If you want to find out more about how the Chinese faired after the San Francisco earthquake, be sure and check out Murder Among the Rubble, coming out at the end of this year. You can pick up a copy for preorder now at a discount on all online bookstores.

Works Cited:

“Chinese Make Strong Protest”, San Francisco Chronicle, 30 April 1906. https://sfmuseum.org/chin/4.29.html. Accessed October 4, 2024.