A novel of family dynamics set in MAINE
Talking Location With … author Richard Gadz: Victorian London
5th September 2024
#TalkingLocationWith …. Richard Gadz, author of The Eater of Flies: VICTORIAN LONDON
Sometimes, the direction a novel takes – once you start putting it down on paper – is changed by the places in which it’s set. When I began planning The Eater Of Flies, I knew I wanted to create a gothic, historical vampire chiller set in Victorian London, but I didn’t know quite where it should take place, or when.
Researching the mid-Victorian period for inspiration, I became fascinated by accounts of life in London’s West End, specifically the area between Trafalgar Square and St Paul’s cathedral, and in particular Fleet Street and The Strand. In the 1860s, these streets and those surrounding them were 24-hour, 7-days-a-week places like no other, jam-packed day and night, home to every cultural, social and commercial activity imaginable. Almost literally, all human life was here. The perfect location for the children of the night to stalk their prey, ho ho!
And then, a stone’s throw away, I found an ideal hideout for my vampires: the Adelphi Arches were a series of storage tunnels, originally constructed on the banks of the Thames for use by cargo ships, and only built in the first place to keep the posh houses of Adelphi Terrace up above the noxious pong of the river. By the end of the 1860s, however, they’d fallen into disuse, mostly because of the building of what’s now the Embankment, which had cut them off from the Thames, so they’d become home to many people who were either destitute or members of the criminal underworld. They were an extremely unpleasant and dangerous place to be! Today, almost nothing of them remains at all.
And then, half way along The Strand, I found a great spot for one of the book’s most important scenes: Simpson’s-On-The-Strand was one of the city’s most fashionable (and expensive) restaurants, frequented by the rich, the famous and the powerful. They even – gasp! – allowed women to dine there, albeit only in certain rooms. Simpson’s was at the smartest end of the area’s huge number of eateries, which went all the way down through ‘night houses’ of varying quality and reputation, to tiny coffee shops and street vendors selling slices of bread and butter at breakfast time.
One of the major features of the area were the many music halls and theatres. Some of these theatres are, of course, still very much with us and home to many a modern musical, but the music halls have passed into history. In the 1860s they provided working people with nightly entertainment, and usually food, in sumptuous surroundings at a reasonable price. They could be lively places, with audiences not averse to throwing the odd bit of moldy veg at acts they didn’t like. Singers who performed there had to learn how to project their voices as powerfully as possible, partly to make sure they could be heard at the back of the auditorium, and partly to overcome the noise of the audience, particularly the clatter of knives and forks from the diners, who sat at tables close to the stage. By the end of the 19th century, music halls had become much more respectable, even genteel, but in the era in which The Eater Of Flies is set they had a much dodgier reputation. Seats ‘upstairs’ in the gallery, for instance, apart from being a little more expensive than those on the ground floor, were somewhere no self-respecting lady would set foot, because the galleries were the regular haunt of prostitutes. In fact, prostitution was a problem throughout the West End – they plied their trade in huge numbers around the theatres, Covent Garden, the Haymarket and the Strand.
And then, towards the top of The Strand, I found an excellent motivation for the book’s main villain: an area of slum housing had been cleared to make way for the building of the brand new Royal Courts Of Justice. However, the London authorities couldn’t agree about who should get the building contract, so the cleared area remained empty for years. Why not, I thought, give my villain an underhand way to clinch that particular deal?
All in all, then, almost the entire plot of The Eater Of Flies was spun out of the various real-life places I’d discovered on my armchair travels.
The Eater of Flies by Richard Gadz (Deixis Press, £17.99) is available from all good bookstores
Richard Gadz is the author of horror novel The Burn Street Haunting and gothic thriller The Workshop of Filthy Creation, which won the Best Horror Award in the 2022 New Generation Indie Book Awards and was shortlisted for the Rubery Prize for Fiction. Richard Gadz is also the pen name of Simon Cheshire, the author of the highly acclaimed horror novel Flesh & Blood. He lives in Keynsham, Bristol. Catch the author on Twitter X: @Frankenwriter
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