Cozy murder mystery set in 1920s NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE

6th November 2020

The Art Fiasco by Fiona Veitch Smith, cozy mystery set in 1920s Newcastle upon Tyne.

This is no. 5 in the Poppy Denby series and I came to this without having read the previous novels. It easily holds its own.

Popping is up from London and staying with Aunt Dot and her friend Grace in their house in Heaton. She is spending a few days there before heading on to her father’s birthday party in Northumberland. She is a journalist and therefore has a nose for a story AND she is a bit of a sleuth on the side.

Early on we are given a little backstory of Agnes Robson who originally hailed from Ashington Colliery, just up the coast. She is now an impressive, avant-garde artist but the whiff of the death of her art teacher has followed her around like a bad smell. There is a strong sense that she was somehow involved in his untimely death, which occurred in 1897, and we know for sure that he made advances to her when she was only a young teenager. She too is staying with Dot and Grace  because the Laing Art Gallery is showing her work. However, at the show, she falls to her death. Poppy happens to have heard raised voices just before Agnes plunged from the cupola.

Of course there is plenty for Poppy to investigate, many threads to pull together, and what makes this story particularly engaging is the era and setting. Newcastle comes to life in the author’s capable hands – it seems her research has been meticulous. I live not far from the city and I could really visualise the locations – and of course it was interesting to see The Laing Art Gallery as it was then. Fashion and mores of the time are beautifully brought to life and the characters are colourfully drawn. Visits to Fenwick’s department store and the Scala Cinema on Chillingham Road really anchor the story in the bygone era.

An excellent novel for anyone who loves cozy crime mysteries (one for fans of M C Beaton’s Agatha Raisin series and Jennifer S Alderson’s Travel Can Be Murder series) and of course ideal for anyone who is familiar with Newcastle upon Tyne and environs! There is a real sense of echoes of footsteps past and the author goes on to say that she has derived much of her sense of era and place from her own family records.

Tina for the TripFiction Team

Over to Fiona Veitch Smith who expands on the fabulous setting and era of her novel:

All That Glitters is Not Coal – Newcastle in the 1920s

Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the early 1920s was a vibrant northern city thriving on the back of the Industrial Revolution. Some of the most famous names in Britain’s industrial and engineering success of the nineteenth century were from the north east, including the father of the railways George Stephenson, and the great civil engineer and industrialist Lord William Armstrong, who developed the use of hydraulics in industry. The legacy of these men and others like them made Newcastle and its surrounds an industrial success story. Add to that the rich natural resource of coal, and the region, with its largest city Newcastle-upon-Tyne, entered the twentieth century on a high.

Then came the First World War and Newcastle’s industries went into overdrive. Coal was mined and shipped to all corners of the globe to fuel the great war machine; the shipyards along the Tyne were at full capacity, and the armaments factory in Elswick (owned by none other than Armstrong himself, and where my dad served his apprenticeship as a fitter in the 1950s) was churning out tanks, aircraft, locomotives, and heavy weaponry.

The war came to an end, and in 1923 coal mining reached its zenith in the region. Then worldwide demand for the fuel started winding down, as did demand for products of Newcastle’s other heavy industries. By 1926 male unemployment in the north east was as high as 45% in some places, leading to crushing poverty and industrial action, which culminated in the General Strike.

However, in 1924, the year my murder mystery is set, Newcastle was still enjoying the last rays of economic prosperity from the profits of the Great War. The side of Newcastle shown in The Art Fiasco is that of the art, cinema, and theatre-loving middle class, centred on the gorgeous Georgian heart of the city known as Grainger Town. Elsewhere, out in the suburbs, are Aunt Dot’s row of splendid townhouses overlooking Armstrong Park in Heaton, with its bowling greens and tennis courts that survived the fire-bombing of its pavilion by Suffragettes in 1913.

Heaton Pavilion and bowling green, circa 1915. The Pavilion was destroyed when it was firebombed by suffragettes in 1913

Although The Art Fiasco doesn’t shy away from the poverty – one of the main characters is the daughter of a miner, and one of the witnesses to the murder is a stable boy who lives in the slums that housed workers of Armstrong’s factories – the world of Poppy Denby is one of relative comfort.

One of the contradictions of the 1920s was that while there was economic depression for much of the population, daily living standards for the upper working and middle classes were rising. Steam power was gradually replaced by electricity, and transport became petrol-engine powered. At home, some families were acquiring basic wireless radio sets while, in 1924, John Logie Baird created Britain’s first television transmitter. The BBC started broadcasting radio programmes to Newcastle in 1922, and well-to-do folk who could afford to do so, could tune in between 3pm and 10.30pm. While Poppy was there in September / October 1924, she could have listened to chamber music, a children’s story, the weather forecast, a news bulletin, a radio drama and the relay of a broadcast from the Copec Conference (The Conference on Christian Politics, Economics and Citizenship).

Poppy’s Aunt Dot was a former stage actress, disabled in a protest for women’s suffrage in 1913. In the early 1920s she re-launches her career as a radio actress, so is first in line to buy a wireless set which she plays at soirées in both her Newcastle and London town houses.

The Scala Cinema on Chillingham Road in the 1920s

Poppy and her flapper friend Delilah, temporarily up from London and staying with Aunt Dot, are disappointed that there aren’t any jazz clubs in Newcastle, but are delighted to discover literally dozens of picture houses. They visit the Scala Cinema on Chillingham Road where they watch The Humming Bird with Gloria Swanson. There were also tea dances at the Oxford Galleries on New Bridge Street and the Guild Hall on Sandhill. There were a number of theatres too, including the gracious Theatre Royal, hosting touring companies from London (of which Delilah is a part). The Tyne Theatre and Opera House, which hosted more popular music hall performances was converted into a cinema in 1919. Both theatres are still in operation today, with the latter hosting one of the last working Victorian stage machinery in the country. (We wish them both well, and hope they survive the Covid-19 shutdown).

As cinema became more popular, many of the old theatres initially doubled as cinemas in the 1920s. Some of them were to make the transition into becoming full cinemas by the 1930s, including, in 1937, the still operational Tyneside Cinema. If you ever visit Newcastle, do pop into the Tyneside as it houses a collection of cinema memorabilia and artefacts from the Golden Age, as well as a gorgeously refurbished 1930s auditorium.

During the daylight hours, Poppy and her friends have high tea at the Fenwick Tea Room on Northumberland Street. JJ Fenwick, Mantle Maker & Furrier, first opened its doors in a former doctor’s house in 1882, specialising in mantles, silk goods, dresses, fabrics, and trimmings, much to the delight of the well-to-do ladies of the northern city. JJ’s son, Fred, travelled to Paris and did his apprenticeship with Le Bon Marché, returning home in 1890 to introduce the concept of the ‘department store’. He and his father bought the buildings to the left and right of the original store and opened the very first department store in the north of England, pre-dating Selfridges in London by nineteen years.

The foyer of Fenwick’s in the 1920s where Poppy and Delilah shop.

In 1924 Poppy and Delilah shop here in the sports and leisure department to buy new tennis frocks for a casual match they are going to play with two eligible bachelor gentlemen. Delilah chooses a Suzanne Lenglen-inspired creation in the whispiest of silks, showing a scandalous amount of thigh. Poppy plums for something slightly more modest: ‘a simple but flattering drop-waisted white linen dress with a blue and white pleated skirt and a blue necktie. She replaced her usual cloche hat with a bandana to keep her curls at bay.’

After their shopping expedition they have tea and crumpets in Fenwick’s Tea Room. This is something four generations of my family have done. I have memories of having tea with my grandma there in the 1970s. My grandma Betty (born 1905) told me that she and her sister Emma would have tea there in the 1920s and listen to a live string quartet. The tea room is still there today (they do a fabulous Victoria sponge), and the walls are filled with original photographs dating back to the 1890s.

My grandma and her sister also used to visit the Laing Art Gallery in the 1920s and she and my grandfather Fred, a talented amateur artist, would attend exhibitions together in the late 1930s and early 40s. Today, my teenage daughter (who is another talented artist) and I visit there as much as we can – and are currently looking forward to an exhibition on Art Deco by the Sea (featuring art from the 1920s and 30s). The gallery was opened in 1904, and by 1924 was a fixture of the Newcastle cultural scene. However, any suggestion of dodgy art dealings or visiting artists being thrown to their death off the tower, are purely a figment of my imagination. Or are they?

The Marble Hall in the Laing Art Gallery, circa 1920

Fiona Veitch Smith is the author of the Poppy Denby Investigates novels, Golden Age-style murder mysteries set in the 1920s (Lion Fiction). The first book, The Jazz Files, was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger, while subsequent books have been shortlisted for the Foreword Review Mystery Novel of the Year and the People’s Book Prize. The fifth book, The Art Fiasco, is out now. Connect with the author on Twitter and via her website

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