Because I felt other time periods were overused. There’s a lot of Victorian era content – largely due to Sherlock Holmes – and plenty from the twenties, which are apparently seen as glamorous, but there was nothing in between. I searched online to see what else was available – and there was nothing at all. Absolutely nothing. So, I could have 1910 all to myself. (This is changing).
There’s also a secondary reason. I decided from the start that I didn’t want to deal with war, as there’s already plenty of literature on that; even Winnie the Pooh has origins in war. By 1910, it had been many years since Denmark had been involved in any war, so it was possible to avoid that topic.
1910 is also a period that closely resembles our own time. There were cars, telephones, trams, telegraphs, etc. – and complaints about endless roadworks, stress, and the like, including sharp comments about people not being able to have lunch without immediately calling someone to tell them what they had. Quite a lot that we can easily recognise, and where the story isn’t drowned in a mass of historical details that are essentially just in the way. We’ve gained more technology, but it was also a period of rapid development. I didn’t want the stories to drown in gaslight and bustles but be contemporary enough to feel familiar.
There was a strong international outlook – the newspaper Berlingske was also published in German and French a couple of times a week, and people kept up with what was happening around the world through all the newspapers. Danish newspapers of the time resembled ours today in their use of photos, drama, and big headlines.
Very modern policing
In relation to crime, 1910 is also very interesting because police work was extremely modern and very successful. The Copenhagen police had moved forward to be to an extension of the law and had accumulated a lot of knowledge about investigative work that was cutting-edge. They were moving away from Bertillon measurements for criminal registration, using photos and fingerprints instead. Lacassange was also at work – the one who came up with testing projectiles to see which weapon they were fired from, etc.
Europe had a handbook on investigation: Dr Gross’s fantastic ‘Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter’, which was translated and published in Danish in 1899. I suspect that if Conan Doyle could read German he might have used it as a basis for Sherlock Holmes, because all his ‘tricks’ are in that book. And more.
Europe had excellent police cooperation, and people looked to Copenhagen and our Central Institute of Identification, which handled all evidence. So much so that in 1912, a European institute was established based on the Danish model – in Copenhagen. Unfortunately, the First World War got in the way, and cooperation was interrupted as was apparently a lot of police routines throughout Europe.
Amazing characters
In Copenhagen, Police Assistant Hakon Jørgensen was the head of the Nørrebro police, and he was writing a Danish handbook on investigation, which was published in 1912. It’s tiny compared to Gross’s, but that might make it easier to remember the content. It contains all the latest advancements, and even today, using those two books would keep one quite up-to-date in terms of investigative methods. Naturally, there have been new additions like DNA, but the methodical approach hasn’t changed much.
Jørgensen also ‘invented’ a detective’s kit, which I have, of course, given to my main character, as Jørgensen taught courses in the Police Association, so he could easily have heard about it in 1910.
Jørgensen was also the first to use police dogs in Denmark – including in one of the cases I have chosen to include in a book, and he wrote a handbook on the use of police dogs and trained the first handlers. So, we were also ahead in that area. We had a 100% clearance rate for murders in Copenhagen around 1910, which isn’t too bad at all.
Sources
Additionally, there’s the undeniable benefit that I can use sources freely, as 1910 is just on the right side of copyright (but for some 3-4 drawing with 1-3 years to go, so not here). Newspapers from that time are digitised and accessible, so I can read what was written and read at the time, and I can go to the National Archives and find the original case files and read what the police themselves wrote and used as the basis for their investigations.
It’s the real thing, the genuine papers, the true stories, and the time between then and now disappears when you quite litterally hold history in your hands. Reports, photographs, notes, pieces of evidence…
Real life really can beat fiction
This means, among other things, that I have been able to indulge in stories that I wouldn’t have dared to invent myself. There were some rather peculiar criminals and private detectives at the time, which have been a real treasure trove. It naturally takes an absurd amount of time to read through years of newspapers and stacks of case files – I’ve come home with 1,200 scanned pages from the National Archives in just one visit – but it’s worth it. I’ve certainly had a great time writing the stories.
History
I believe we should use history and not just learn from it. There’s so much to gain and so much fun to be had, as long as you’re clear that this is what you’re doing.
My main characters and their families are fictional, as they need to do what I want them to. I include many real people – necessarily so, as most cases are based on real crimes – but I prefer to let them be who they are without attributing them characteristics or actions that I either can’t substantiate or feel are outside what I know about them.
At the end of the books, you can read what is fact and fiction, and there are descriptions of the characters. The fact bit of course also allows me to comment on what happened later in a few cases.