Daughters of Darkness by Sally Spencer

Author:Sally Spencer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448304370
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2020-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

Wednesday 29th October, 1975

TWENTY-THREE

The London Borough of Southwark is on the south bank of the River Thames, and in the golden age of Queen Elizabeth I, it served as a sort of Tudor Las Vegas for the people who lived on the other, more puritanical, side of the river.

(Perhaps, back in those days, there was a common saying that ran something along the lines of, ‘What happeneth in Southwark, stayeth in Southwark!’ – but I somehow doubt it.)

There were any number of pleasures to be sampled. The borough had a profusion of taverns in which the reckless could lose a fortune at dice or cards. Bear baiting was popular, as were bull baiting and cock fighting. And for the young man who was feeling an unbearable pressure on his codpiece, there were more brothels than you could shake an erect organ at. It was here that the first British theatre, called the Rose, was built, with Bill Shakespeare as one of its resident playwrights. Shakespeare was a provincial – some considered him a mere country bumpkin – and unlike most of the other hacks who churned out plays to order, he did not have the benefits of a university education. He did, however, have a burning ambition, and when the next theatre, the Globe, was constructed, he was one of the main shareholders.

In the nineteenth century and earlier part of the twentieth, it was through Southwark’s docks that Britain conducted much of its trade with its empire (an empire which, at its height, encompassed a quarter of the world), and it was for that reason that it was bombed so heavily during the Blitz.

Southwark thus had had more than its fair share of history, and, as a minor footnote to that history, it is also possible that it was here, three years ago, that Grace Stockton’s fate was sealed.

I emerge from the tube (or to give it its proper name, the Underground Metropolitan Railway) at the Borough High Street station in Southwark, and head straight for the local library. The place is called the John Harvard Library, and is named after a local clergyman who emigrated to Massachusetts sometime in the seventeenth century, and while he was there, founded a university. (The name of the university slips my mind – maybe it was Yale!)

Once down in the library archives, I select a microfilm of the Southwark Gazette for March/April 1972, fit it into the reader, and begin to scroll down.

It does not take me very long at all to find exactly what I am looking for.

Famous anthropologist gives exciting talk at local girls’ school

The pupils of the Lady Margaret School for Girls were today treated to a fascinating lecture by the famous anthropologist Dr Grace Stockton. The subject of the lecture was the life of an anthropologist, and it has led to a number of the girls wanting to follow in Dr Stockton’s footsteps.

Grace Stockton once lived in the Borough, and for a while, near the end of the war, taught English and Geography at Lady Margaret’s.

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