Author Archives: Eleanor Kuhns

About Eleanor Kuhns

Librarian and Writer Published A Simple Murder, May 2012

The Next Big Thing: A Blog Hop

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bloghopbutton (1) What is the working title of your next book? “DEATH OF A DYER” is the final title of the second book.

Where did the idea come from for the book? I had a lot of loose ends to tie up after my first book. Since I am interested in textiles, I thought it would be fun to use dyes and dyeing as a piece of the background. *

What genre does your book fall under? Historical Murder Mystery *

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? Wow, this is tough. I think David Wenham (Faramir in The Lord of the Rings) and Scarlett Johansson.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? Rees returns to his home town, which he fled several years previously, and investigates the death of a childhood friend.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? Minotaur will be publishing this one too.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? The first draft took me about 6 – 9 months but the revisions took several months more.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? I love historical mysteries and I aspire to write as well as Barbara Hambly and Anne Perry.

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Whalemen and whales

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Conditions were rough. If the whalers were hunting in the Arctic, it was cold. But it was worse if the ship was in southern waters. The boiling down of whale blubber went on for days so a fire was burning in the brick fireplace on the deck. The combination of the warm seas and the fire meant that the temperature on board could be over 100 degrees F. Most of the crew slept below decks; it must have been unbearable. If the journey was a long one, the food began to spoil.

Whaling was not for the faint of heart, even before engaging a whale.

Six men set off in a small boat. If they succeeded in harpooning a whale, they could be dragged a good distance. One smack by the whale’s tale could shatter a small boat and many whale men were killed.

But plenty of sperm whales lost the battle, and very cruelly too. The harpoons didn’t usually kill the whale, that was the job of the lance, That had to be thrown accurately and twisted. Descriptions mention the bloody sea all around the dying whale.

Then the whale was towed back to the ship to be cut into pieces.

whalemen

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Most jobs  before the twentieth century were difficult and dangerous. Serving on a whaler was no exception.

Voyages were frequently months, and sometimes years, in length. Once the Right whales and Bowhead whales were diminished, whalers went after the Sperm whale. A creature of the warm waters, hunting the Sperm whale meant longer voyages/ And the Sperm whale was a fighter. He had teeth and a powerful tail.

Crew slept in tight bunks, three high. Mattresses were first invented for the whalers that went after the Bowhead whales; it was too cold for the sailors to sleep without them. Because they were stuffed with straw, the common term for them was ‘Donkey’s Breakfast.’

Even when there were no whales, the work of maintaining the ship was hard. But when whales were spotted, the job immediately became extremely dangerous. Men were killed every trip.

The whale boats were lowered, six men each, and pursued the whale. The harpoon was fired into the whale by hand, which meant that the boat had to be fairly close. Then rope was played out as the whale took off in what became known as the Nantucket Sleigh Ride.

Sometimes the whale escaped. When it didn’t, and was killed, it had to be brought back to the ship. Sometimes the whale boat was so far away, it and the whale were not found.The whale ship usually tried to follow the smaller boat.

Then the work of extracting the oil from the whale began. More to follow.

Shakers and Christmas

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Unlike the Puritans, the Shakers enjoyed the Christmas holiday and celebrated it. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Many fundamentalist groups shun dancing and the Shakers used dancing and singing in their services. When they first began, these forms of worship horrified their neighbors almost as much as their celibacy and pacifism.
But back to the holiday.
Although the Shakers practiced celibacy, they were not monks and men and women were not cloistered from one another. They lived communally, although separated, and met regularly in ‘union meetings’. In these sessions, they sat opposite one another, far enough apart so their knees did not touch, and chatted.
According to several Eldress accounts, during the winters, the Shakers also went sleigh riding and enjoyed other fun pursuits. By 1920, most houses had adopted the Christmas tree and the Shaker communities had as well. They utilized natural ornaments: popcorn strings, nuts, pine cones and so forth.
They also apparently enjoyed what we now call Secret Santa. Everyone selected a name from a bowl, which remained secret, and gave that person a gift.
Food and clothing were offered to the poor at this Season. Again, one of the accounts I read says that everyone was supposed to give something they loved since it was not a true gift if they gave something they no longer used.
I used some of this in my third Will Rees mystery, which is so far called “Cradle to Grave”.

Christmas Customs and the Puritans

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Christmas Customs and the Puritans

In 1517 the Reformation arrived in England. Although many holiday customs continued for some time, well into Tudor times, but by the time of Cromwell, Christmas celebrations were prohibited, even in Churches.
This is another British custom that crossed the Atlantic. We know these people as the Puritans. William Bradford described the gloom in Plymouth Colony in his Journal of 1620. “On ye day called Christmas-day, ye Gov’r caled them out to work…but there should be no gameing or revelling in ye streets.”
In 1659 the Puritans enacted a law in the General Court of Massachusetts announcing that “anybody who is found observing, by abstinence from labor, feasting, or any other way, any such days as Christmas Day shall pay for every offense five shillings.
With the immigration of people who followed the Church of England, the law was repealed in 1681.
Why were they so opposed to Christmas festivities? Well, it was thought that the secular celebration interfered with religious devotion.

“Thar she Blows”

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In doing research for my fourth Will Rees mystery, I studied the whaling industry of the 1790’s. And I have to say, with all the problems associated with the oil we extract from the ground, taking the whales for their oil is a far less defensible practice.

What a dangerous and bloody job.

Although the Native Americans and early colonists whaled from shore, the right whales that were easily caught in canoes and with simple harpoons were rapidly depleted. But in the early 1700s, a new kind of whale was discovered: the sperm whale. Unlike the peaceable right whale, the sperm whale was a 55 ft hard fighting whale with teeth. But its head was filled with a pure oil called spermaceti that, when exposed to the air and hardened, was prized for candles. Sperm whales were also much faster. The harpoons were fastened to long ropes and the whale, when it ran, pulled the boat after it. In New England, this was called the Nantucket Sleigh Ride.

Sometimes the whale pulled the boat so far away from the mother ship, they could not find it again. Sometimes the whale, in pain, used it’s tail to flip and smash the boat and the sailors were killed.

Even whale hunting in the Atlantic might take several months. The ships were small and most of the crew slept in narrow bunks stacked in threes. If the trip was long enough, the food spoiled and even the water went bad. There were long periods of inactivity in which the crew carved whale bone – scrimshaw or made elaborate rope forms.

But these trips were, of course, much worse for any whale spotted and pursued.

Santa Claus

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Santa Claus has a far lengthier history than we realize. Saint Nicholas was Nicholas of Patara, a Bishop of Myra, during the Fourth Century. His Feast Day is celebrated on Dec 6, the day of his death. This Saint Nicholas appears in paintings from the 1400s on.

Another strand in the creation of the modern Santa, which explains how he became the patron saint of children, rests on a story about an innkeeper who murdered three boys, dismembered them, and put them in a vat to pickle. Saint Nicholas found them, reunited the pieces and restored them to life.

A pagan Father Christmas was a folk figure in Europe, but a much less sweet and ‘jolly old elf’ than the Santa we know.

Dutch settlers brought our Santa Claus to New York in the seventeenth century. By then, many of the familiar parts of the legend had already been established. Good children received gifts, bad children did not and he was already in red robes and white beard.

No discussion of Santa Claus would be complete with  mentions of Clement C. Moore, the author of “Twas the Night Before Christmas” and Thomas Nast. Until the nineteenth century, St. Nick had traveled by horse, donkey, or in a chariot pulled by horses that flew through the sky.  The reindeer were certainly an American invention but by whom no one is sure. Moore’s St. Nick was an elfish figure. Nast, a political cartoonist, began a series of Christmas cartoons in which the appearance of St. Nick became the Santa we know today.

Christmas Customs – Early Days

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Early Days

I’d intended to write this post before and during the holidays but was far too busy. So even if this is a little dated, I will do it now. Bear with me, eventually I will reach Christmas customs for the Shakers.

From its early days, Christianity celebrated the Nativity. The giving of presents, the decoration of the houses with evergreens, the suspension of enmity and the proclamation of peace were all features of the festival from the beginning.

Some of the early customs aren’t so familiar to us now. The Lord of Misrule? The switching of masters and servants ? Likewise, some of our most treasured rituals were not invented yet. The Tree, for example, although known in England before Queen Victoria married Prince Albert, did not achieve its popularity until the Queen adopted it. Like so many British customs, this one crossed the Atlantic.

Disability in the 1790s

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My brother Steve had a variety of cognitive disabilities: Autism, mental retardation, anxiety and others. I began to wonder how someone like Steve would manage.

Read a very interesting book : a Disabled History of the US. As long as we had a farm, Steve would have been able to manage. He could have helped with the animals and would have lived out his days with his parents (which he did anyway.)

But what if you were blind? Or deaf? Of unable to walk well?

Well, in some ways, you might do better than now. No one would expect you to read. And many farm chores can be done by someone who can’t hear. But any of the crafts (printing, weaving, brick making) might or might not be available to you. Blindness would be particularly difficult.

And, of course, living in the bosom of one’s family would make one’s life much easier. Disabled people who had no one had short brutal lives,even those who inherited money. Other people just can’t help but steal it, and the literature has many examples of lawyers, hired to protect, who embezzled every penny.

Interestingly enough, some of the Native American tribes were far in advance of the white man in their treatment of the disabled. A deaf person might be a basket maker, and thus would suffer no stigma for the deafness. Disability might prevent a tribe member from becoming a warrior, but not everyone attained that status anyway. And, because the tribe took care of its own, an orphan would be cared for in the absence of parents.

Another advantage in the tribal setting: the regular use of sign language. The deaf would learn and use sign language and so would be able to communicate.

The Shakers accepted All Children of God and I expect for some, the Shaker Family provided a welcome refuge.

Warning Out: Welfare in the early US

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This sounds like a dry topic, doesn’t it? Well, when one reads contemporary accounts of the women and children affected by this cruel system, it rapidly becomes, instead of dry, horrifyingly real and really awful.

What was warning out? The poor, it is said, are always with us. And the poor tend to be disproportionately women and children. Mortality was high and although there were plenty of widowers, there were a significant number of widows also, many with dependent children. Women didn’t have ‘careers’; they were taught to rely on a man and everything in the culture excluded them from paid employment except for domestic chores. They worked as help or wove out of the home.  (Hence the rise of wet nursing as a profession.) So what happened if a woman fell ill? Or a young woman became pregnant out of wedlock? Or it was a bad year?

The first step the town fathers took was to c0nfirm that this family deserved help. Had the adult been born in the town? If not, she and her children were ‘warned out’ to her town of birth. It did not matter that she had left the town for a very good reason; back she went. If she was pregnant, and late in the term, the town fathers would pay for the birth and care until she could travel. (And the accounts are full of bitching about the expense!) Back she went, even if the baby’s father was still in town.

Some towns were relatively progressive for the times and tried to pay for the trip. Others not so much. A woman’s children could be snatched away and sent out to work and she might never see them again. (And the care of the kids under these circumstances was dire: see post on Orphans.)

What this charity came down to was this: The affluent men who ran the town did not want to pay for the care of anyone out of town coffers. Grudgingly, they would do so for people who they knew and whose families were long time residents, if these people were deserving. Everyone else was sent away or allowed to starve.

Does any of this sound familiar? This country has evolved in baby steps but there are some who would send us back to this.