Pearl of Pit Lane is my third gritty novel set in 1919 in the northeast coalmining village of Ryhope, where I was born and bred. It's available now in paperback, audiobook, ebook and hardback from all good bookshops and online and has received some cracking reviews!
The story centres around a young girl called Pearl who looks set to follow her aunt Annie into a life working the streets selling her body. But Pearl has other plans. The question is, can Pearl survive a life on her own terms when she runs away from Annie? You'll have to read the book to find out, I'm not giving away any spoilers here, oh no!
But what I can tell you is about the research I did for the book. Pearl of Pit Lane features prostitution and proggy mats. Now, I'll assume you know what the former is but for those who don't know what a proggy mat is, also called a rug rat or clippy mat, then read on.
It's a mat made from scraps of clothes which women - and it was usually women - made to keep their homes warm and to decorate their homes too. Proggy mats were sometimes made as bed covers before being relegated to the floor when they were old and worn. We had a proggy mat in our house when I was growing up as my grandma used to make them. This is my grandma's progger which she used to make her mats.
A progger is a wood and metal tool which fits snugly into the hand and you poke the scraps of cloth through the hessian to form a mat. It's harder than it looks. I knew when I was researching Pearl of Pit Lane that I wanted proggy mat-making central to the story - but I won't tell you why. No spoilers, remember! I knew that I could use YouTube to watch proggy mats being made, or read books and see pictures online. But I decided there was no experience like the real thing and decided to make my own proggy mat. I booked onto a day long craft course at Beamish Museum and made my own proggy mat using my grandma's progger. You can read all about it here and see pictures of my finished mat.
As for researching the history of prostitution in Sunderland, I contacted Sunderland Antiquarian Society, of which I'm a member. They are hugely helpful and always keen to help. Two of their members, Norman Kirtlan and Sharon Vincent have written a book called The Dressmakers of Fighting Cock Lane and it's a book I read from cover to cover when planning Pearl of Pit Lane. Be warned, this is a book that'll make your hair curl. It's as scandalous now as it was when the the feral women in the book walked the streets in gangs. You'll not be able to put it down once you start reading!
The Dressmakers of Fighting Cock Lane weren't dressmakers at all. They were women, with no education and absolutely no other means of earning an income, who earned their living selling their bodies. But when they were required to write their occupation on official documentation, they could hardly say they lived off illegal earnings and so recorded their occupations as dressmakers instead. The East End of Sunderland had a lot of dressmakers on the census in Victorian England!
I learned many things from The Dressmakers of Fighting Cock Lane book, not least that the uniform of the "Sunderland tart" - for that is how she was named - to let customers know she was available for work, was by wearing a red feather in a black hat. How could I not include this wonderful snippet in my book? I went out and bought a red feather and it hung from my writing board all the way through writing the book as a reminder of how hard life was for women at that time.
So there we have it, prostitutes and proggy mats in Pearl of Pit Lane.
Additional research I carried out for the book centred around life in a small grocery shop circa 1919 and you can read more and see pictures of my research on the shop here.
I hope you really enjoy reading the book, it's a cracker.
Pearl of Pit Lane available now in paperback, hardback, ebook and audiobook from all good bookshops and online.
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Glenda Young
Author of historical novels with Headline
Twitter: @Flaming_Nora
Facebook: GlendaYoungAuthor
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