When a character has a past - Kitty's (and my) family background

Lovers of the 18th century will be very familar with this Hogarth, called The Orgy. The original hangs in Sir John Soanes Museum in London. It's part of The Rake's Progress, a series of paintings that show the progress of Tom Rakewell from young man about town to his eventual degredation in Bedlam. This particular picture shows the Rose Tavern, Covent Garden, so it is only right that I reference it here. After all, our whore, Kitty, would have been very familar with it.

But she didn't always frequent such low dives and keep such rakish company. Once upon a time she lived in Norfolk with her parents and sisters. Her father's death brings her to London to take up a position in a household, but she is waylaid by Mother Shadbolt and promised lavish clothes and a lifestyle to match. Kitty is young and foolish and so she goes with Mother Shadbolt, only to find herself financially indebted to the old bawd and unable to leave.

Hogarth, very kindly, illustrated this scene too, in his series, A Harlot's Progress.

All this makes for a great back story for our Kitty Ives, but, is she really just a character? Or is there some basis in reality?

When I began to flesh out the idea for The Finish I needed a name for my main character and decided there and then I would raid my family tree. I've been an avid family genealogist since I was eleven. My grandfather, a man called George Leslie Mumby, told me about his grandfather, whose name was John Ives Mumby. John Ives Mumby had been married to a woman called Sophia Carden. At first, I thought I would call my main character Sophia, but I'd just written another story, The Remaining Voice (which is now undergoing something of a rewrite) and I didn't want to confuse the issue by using the same name twice. My cat is called Kitty Lala (she is something of a tart) - and one of the most famous prostitutes of the 18th century was also called Kitty - Kitty Fisher. It seemed appropriate then, that I named my whore Kitty Ives.

But there's more to it than just using family names. My grandfather, who was born in 1902 and has been dead for some years now, told me that his grandfather, John Ives Mumby was so named because he had lived in St. Ives in Huntingdonshire. For a long time, I had no evidence to the contrary, until I started to investigate through the records. When I did, I found that John Ives Mumby was born in 1815 in Newark upon Trent, Nottinghamshire, to another John Ives Mumby. The aforementioned Sophia Carden was born in 1832, so there was quite a gap in their ages. In fact, Sophia survived until the 20th century, whereas her husband died in his mid 60s, leaving her a widow with seven children.

Anyway, that there were two John Ives Mumbys intrigued me. Plus, Newark upon Trent isn't anywhere near St. Ives in Huntingdonshire. Upon further investigation I found that the first John Ives Mumby's father was a Joseph Mumby, born in 1757 in Lincolnshire. In 1781 Joseph married a woman called Anne White. At this point the trail went cold. I couldn't find a record of Joseph's birth. Instead, I looked at Anne White's parents, thinking this might take me back further. They were Samuel White and Mary Ives. Ahah! The Ives name. Far from being named after a place, the first John to be given Ives as a middle name was the grandson of Mary Ives. She, it turns out was quite a character.

Samuel, her husband died fairly young, and Mary only had one child. At a time when women could only come into money if they were widowed and had no sons, Mary was in a unique position. I found her will in the Nottingham University archives. She was a fairly well to do woman. She never remarried and so she kept all the money. She made her grandson, the first John Ives Mumby, executor to her will. He ran his own business in Nottingham as a fabric dyer. She left money to her daughter Anne (John's mother) with the stipulation that Joseph (John's father) should never get his hands on it. Joseph had been a grocer Horncastle, Lincolnshire, but in later years was an Innkeeper in Wisbech, which is rather close to...

Wait for it.

Joseph retired. Yes, he retired at a time when no one retired because no one had a pension and no one could afford to retire.  That means he had amassed enough to keep himself and his wife without working. Where did he retire to? Why St. Ives of course, where else?

My grandfather was incorrect about his grandfather being named after St. Ives, but he must have heard something about St. Ives and it stuck with him.

When my father read a little of The Finish, he said, 'oh, her name's Kitty Ives. We had Ives in our family'. He said it as if I hadn't written the book; as if someone else had done it. My Dad is 90 so, it's to be forgiven if he can't quite get his head around the concept of his daughter as a writer.

You can read all about Kitty's exploits in The Finish and in the subsequent volumes, The Surety, The Debt and The Trade. Collectively, they are called Venus Squared.

What about location - Covent Garden

Kitty Ives, the main character in The Finish, lives in Covent Garden, which still exists today in pretty much the same state that it did back in the 18th century, save that in the middle now, there's what is called the Floral Market, and some of the buildings have been rebuilt, albeit on the same footprint.

Here, I take a look at Covent Garden then and now in this series of photographs and prints.

Covent Garden - Hogarth - It's often shown the other way round. Prints were copied and reprinted many times and the image flipped. The writing above the door on the left reads correctly, and if you compare the present day photograph below, you can see that the church and the building on the right are still in situ. Also, check out that square column on the church's portico. See above there it is? Now look at the photo I took. Yes, there's that square column. Hogarth had a good eye for detail. Btw, you can visit Hogarth's house for free in Chiswick.  I'll be paying it a visit soon to report back.

Here's another take on this, below. 

Here you can see the arches of the Piazza to the West of James Street

And here's those same arches today.

The arches below are those on the east side of James Street, in the Great Piazza.

And below, the same today, although now rebuilt.

At the end of this row of arches is an entrance to the Opera House, although in the 18th century this corner of the Piazza would have had the entrances to both the Bedford Head Coffee House on the right, and on the left the Shakespeare's Head Tavern. The Covent Garden Theatre, as the Opera House was called, was situated behind these establishments. There may have been a entrance here to the theatre too, but it would have been nothing more than a door. Well, in fact, that's all it is today.

 Here' then you can see Covent Garden from the east, looking West to the Church. King Street runs off the north side of Covent Garden and to the south side is Henrietta Street. 

Here's the Church today. The 'entrance' is actually just a blank. There's no door there and there never was. The door is at the rear, in the churchyard. 

The actual entrance to the Church in Covent Garden. It's accessed through this quaint alley from King Street. Just to confuse visitors to London, The Covent Garden Church is called St. Paul's, like the cathedral about a mile to the east.

On the corner of Henrietta Street was the Unicorn Tavern, where Kitty attends a coroner's inquest. Below is the building today - rebuilt as a Nat West Bank.

Here's the Floral Hall in the centre of the square. It wasn't here in the 18th century, but it was occupied by a large number of wooden shacks, of which one was called the 'Finish', so  named because it was the last place to close, in the early hours of the morning. The square building in the centre of the pic shows the location of the 'Finish'. In the pic above you can also see down the east side of the square. The little Piazza, on the far right of this pic, burned down in March 1769, so this is all rebuilt.

Opposite the 'Finish' was the brothel run by a Mother Gould. It was over a distiller's by the name of John Bradley. In my book, Mother Gould has been renamed Mother Shadbolt, but John Bradley and the distillery are one and the same. This is it today.

We've already seen the picture below, but this is now a blown up portion of it, which shows the little Piazza as it would have been before the fire.

Continuing into the corner of the Little Piazza, in the 18th century we would find the alley way to the privies, which also connected Charles Street with Covent Garden. Next to the alley was the Bedford Arms tavern.

Today, the London Transport Museum occupy this space in the corner, but there are still toilets here in what was then Tavistock Court.

Part two of this photographic tour of Covent Garden here

Part three is here

The Finish is part one of a four part series called Venus Squared. Set in 1769, it tells the story of Kitty Ives, a prostitute, forced to solve a murder for fear of swinging from the gallows.

Covent Garden before and after

At the end of the summer I took a walk around Covent Garden to take some photographs for the 'before and after' posts I'm going to make.

Here's the first - St. Paul's Covent Garden. The face that you see in the square is actually the back of the Church. There is no door here, although it looks as if there should be. The entrance is on the other side, in the Churchyard. Built by Inigo Jones for the 4th Earl of Bedford in 1631, it is also known as the 'Actors' Church'. Here's the 'before' by Hogarth.

And here's the after. 

Hogarth's Covent Garden

Here our old Friend Hogarth has given us a view of Covent Garden and the Church, St Paul's. See the big building in the background to the right as you look at the pic? That's still there.