For Wicked Cozies, the story of a wicked woman.
I admit it. I have a soft spot for the Elizabethan underworld. Of course, the Elizabethans didn’t call it that, but they certainly had one—vagabonds, beggars, thieves, prostitutes, players and spies. Since what the distaff side was up to has always been my focus when studying history, I tend to pay particular attention to anything written about women who ran afoul of the law. It was far too easy for a woman to end up in gaol. Often this was through no fault of her own, but there are also some spectacular examples of women who turned sin into profit and avoided, for the most part, the perils of arrest and punishment.
One of the most infamous went by the name Black Luce of Clerkenwell. Since she was in her heyday during the period when my Mistress Jaffrey Mysteries take place, I couldn’t resist making her a featured player in the second in the series, Murder in the Merchant’s Hall. I created a character that has some basis in fact, but one that also contains a heaping helping of imagination. You see, the real Black Luce is something of a mystery woman.
By 1576, a woman called Black Luce was running a bawdy house in St. John Street, Clerkenwell. Whether she was actually a black woman, simply dark skinned, or only black-hearted, is unknown, but her nickname led Leslie Hotson, in Mr. W.H.(1964), to suggest she might be the dark lady who inspired Shakespeare to write his sonnets. He also identified her as having once been a gentlewoman (Lucy Morgan) at the court of Queen Elizabeth. For decades, no one did any further investigation. Then Gustav Ungerer, in his “Prostitution in Late Elizabethan England: The Case of Mary Newborough,” and Duncan Salkeld in Shakespeare among the Courtesans discovered that Black Luce was married to a man named Baynham and, while they don’t completely discount her connection to the players, they do disprove Hotson’s claim that she was Lucy Morgan.
There was a real Lucy Morgan, a gentlewoman at the court of Queen Elizabeth from 1579 to 1582. She may have married a man named Parker and been the Lucy Parker who, at Yuletide 1588/9, gave the queen a box of cherries as a New Year’s gift. And this same Lucy Morgan does appear to have fallen on hard times and turned to a life of sin. The records of Bridewell for May 3, 1598, include charges brought against her for living at the house of Edward Tilsley at Pichet Hatch at the upper end of Aldersgate, where she was visited by Tilsley once a fortnight and also visited by friends of his. Tilsley gave her three shillings a week for her maintenance and paid the rent on the house. There is no record that she was imprisoned for immoral behavior, perhaps because the testimony also revealed that Sir Matthew Morgan gave her an allowance of ten pounds when he was in England and had sent her five pounds at Christmas. Sir Matthew was undoubtedly a relative, although the connection is unclear.
Luce Baynham, however, as Black Luce, was far more notorious. She shows up frequently in court records. Shortly before January 2, 1576/7, for example, her house was raided at midnight and the occupants forced to flee to another establishment in Westminster, where a Mrs. Stallis operated as a bawd. Luce occasionally entered into a partnership with Gilbert and Margaret East, who ran a brothel in Turnmill Street. By 1595, Luce was well-established as an underworld figure. In that year, she entertained stud
In the seventeenth century the career of Black Luce was celebrated more than once in print. One satirical epitaph, “On Luce Morgan,” claims that she became a Roman Catholic late in life and that she died diseased.
My Black Luce is young—it is only 1583 when Murder in the Merchant’s Hall takes place. I paint Luce as a sharp businesswoman but as someone who has a sense of humor. Rosamond Jaffrey’s attempts to gain information that will prove a friend innocent of murder amuse her, but she’s also quick to step in when Rosamond herself is faced with arrest. Given the choice of helping another woman or turning her over to a corrupt officer of the law, Luce doesn’t hesitate to come to Rosamond’s aid. She may be a wicked woman, but she’s wicked clever, too.
Readers, are you fans of Wicked Women? Do you love historical mysteries? Writers, do real people inspire your own work?
How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries (The Scottie Barked at Midnight)(Murder in the Merchant’s Hall)Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett is the author of over fifty books written under several 
