When Catherine Johnson first turned her hand to writing historical fiction it was more to do with her interest in fashion than her fascination with the past.
‘The first book I ever wrote, I wanted to have empire line dresses,’ she explains. ‘I wanted to have a particular style of frock. That was key to my setting. When I was a kid I used to love the Sunday morning costume dramas on television. Then you’d go to school and you’d act them out. But there was never any character like me.’
‘When I read this book by Peter Fryer called Staying Power, which is a history of black and Asian people in Britain, I thought, actually, yes, there were people like me here.
"London’s always been full of people from all over the world. It is the only place I really truly feel like I belong"
'London’s always been full of people from all over the world. It is the only place I really truly feel like I belong. Because I’m mixed race, that does inform my writing. I am a Londoner and I want to say in my writing that I really do belong here.’
Johnson’s latest book, A Nest of Vipers, is a crime caper set in Georgian London. Mother Hopkins and her “family”, a racially mixed group of young people, are adept at picking pockets and concocting schemes to part gullible victims from their money. With Mother Hopkins feeling the need to slow down, they plan their biggest scam ever. But just as they are about to pull it off, Cato, the youngest, is caught.
In his prison cell the night before he is due to be hanged, Cato recounts the story of the elaborate con, which had been designed to bring about the downfall of a cruel slave owner while providing them with enough money to give up their life of crime.
The genesis of the novel was a story Johnson wrote for Malorie Blackman’s collection about the slave trade, Unheard Voices.
‘I thought, “Okay, I know it’s going to be British, London. I knew I was going to do the 18th century because I’d just been doing the dramatic inserts for Simon Schama’s Rough Crossing. I thought, “What’s interesting at that time? Theatre.” I started doing research.
'Then I went into Ottakar’s and saw The Diamond of Drury Lane. I read the back. I was like: “I’ve been working on this for weeks! What am I gonna do?” So I thought I’d steer away from that.
'I had this boy, he was in prison, I didn’t know what for. I wrote the short story and I loved it, and I thought I could do a novel about confidence tricks. It gives you the opportunity to have a really good story. The characters can be bad, but they can only be bad to nasty people. It’s great.’
Johnson creates a vivid sense of place and time. The clothing, naturally, plays a part, and she used a Georgian A-Z to authenticate her locations.
The characters have unmistakable London accents, but the period voice itself is applied lightly, mainly through the judicious use of argot. ‘ I read The London Hanged by Peter Linebaugh, which is a social history about money and economy.
'A lot of the words I use for money were from him: goree, rhino. I’ve got no idea how people spoke then. You read Daniel Defoe, which is a bit earlier - I can’t write like that. I write for kids, so you write it how you’d like to read it. You metaphorically put the clothes on and metaphorically go around pretending and the voice just comes out.’
She acknowledges that some adults might be uncomfortable with a children’s book featuring a gang of criminals as the protagonists, but she is quick to point out the difficult circumstances that would have drawn people to a life of crime, such as living on the streets or escaping from slavery.
‘I think they’re good people,’ she says. ‘Imagine the opportunities open to Mother Hopkins as a young woman at the end of the 17th century. How do you make a living? For people who have no choice, it’s being a bit dim saying that you should do the right thing.
'As a woman, to be a widow was the only way you could have any power. If you were a widow you could be an independent woman. Because of the property and the marriage and the other laws, if you were a married woman you had no power whatsoever.’
There is moral ambiguity within the text, too: Cato, the expert lockpicker, feels pity for some of their victims, and at times, guilt.
The character of Cato is based loosely on Jack Shepherd, a real-life 18th century robber who became a folk hero, his exploits memorialised for two centuries in popular fiction and the theatre.
‘The reason why it’s set early is that I had to set it before Jack Shepherd. Possibly it is a bit early for the amount of black people I’ve got in it, a tiny bit. Nobody would have noticed if I’d have set it later, but you know when you’re writing it.
'Jack Shepherd escaped from Newgate three times. He got out of his chains and he ran across the roof. He escaped dressed as a woman. One of Cato’s escapes is across the roof.
'Up until World War I if you were called Jack, people would call you Jack Shepherd. He was big. He didn’t do violent crime. His hanging was like a Spice Girls concert. The whole route was lined, people tried to save his body. It was a really big thing.’
"At that time the kids would come up west and when they’d see a lady looking in the shop window they’d nail her frock to the front window"
The fear of crime, and the public’s fascination with it, hasn’t changed over the centuries, says Johnson. ‘We go out with these expensive trinkets all over us. At that time the kids would come up west and when they’d see a lady looking in the shop window they’d nail her frock to the front window and then when she’d walk away it would rip off and they’d just laugh!
'That’s what kids did for fun. Could you imagine if they did that now! They were called nailers. Originally it was an adult thing and it was a protest against foreign silk. It’s like the wild west, isn’t it?’
‘There wasn’t a police force then. Someone who read the book said, “What about Scotland Yard?” I said, “No Scotland Yard for 150 years, mate.” If you put distance between you and you greased some palms, you could get away with a whole lot.
'It is fascinating, because there were so many different people in London. It was the first world city. You could get anything. Even at that time there were people who were going regularly between Europe and London, America and Africa - not just slavery.
'I’m interested in the immigrant communities of London. There are so many stories.’
