Here's me (some time ago!) with the portrait of PC Thomas Bottomley. Painted by John Sowden in 1889, it is held in the archives at Bradford's Cartwright Hall art gallery.
About me
Thank you for taking the time to learn a little more about me. I’ll try and be brief.
For many years I worked in the food industry, travelling across the UK, trying to hit improbable sales targets and contending with irascible buyers.
Of course there were several benefits – not least the ‘all you can eat’ product-tasting sessions – but eventually even my enthusiasm for scoffing cakes and pastries began to wane.
So I took some time out, worked in the local pub for a while, tried my hand at charity fundraising and took an online writing course for fun.
And it was fun. After a day at work I couldn’t wait to get home to tackle the next writing assignment.
Combining writing with another great passion – genealogy – where I’d already revealed some amazing stories in my family’s social history, allowed me to tell their tales through articles in various publications, locally, nationally and internationally.
My first book, Victorian Policing w as published by Pen & Sword on 15 November 2017 – and you can read some of the reviews here . My second book, Struggle and Suffrage in Wakefield was published in April 2019, and I am currently researching and writing my third book (watch this space!).
Of course, as most writers are aware, becoming a published author is rarely the road to untold wealth, so I combined my passion for the written word and my eye for detail, underwent training and bravely launched myself as a freelance copyeditor, proofreader and copywriter. And the rest, as they say, is history!
Much has been written about the men of Wakefield, but apart from a couple of well-documented individuals, the women of Wakefield have remained largely ignored.
Yet many women in this prosperous West Riding town worked hard to improve their lives and those of other women.
Whether this was healthcare, housing, working conditions or providing refuge and training so that girls with no means of support could be made fit for employment, Wakefield’s women worked separately and together to achieve their mutual goals.
Some were active campaigners and lobbyists, others chose vocations that quietly improved the lives of the women around them.
Struggle and Suffrage in Wakefield uses historical newspaper articles, minutes of meetings, annual reports, first-hand stories and research into census returns to illustrate how women’s lives changed over a 100-year period and reveal some of those Wakefield women whose influence made things happen.
Victorian Policing
