Welcome to my second post on Substack!
This time I’m introducing you to a new toy. Anyone who’s interested in the Regency world of London will love this.
Some background:
My husband Stephen’s first career was as an archaeologist (which he’s getting involved in again now he’s a full time writer). As such, he’s a hot-shot historical researcher. But his second career was in IT, where he ended up creating and managing enormous databases.
More than a decade ago, he began to research for a historical fantasy called The Unfortunate Deaths of Jonathan Wilde, which is set in 1725. (Jonathan Wilde was the Thief-Taker General of London, but also a criminal mastermind.)
He put his researcher hat on, and acquired an ENORMOUS amount of information from original sources (like the Old Bailey records, or the early dictionaries of thieves’ cant ). Which, being a database person, he decided to make searchable.