Breaking Seas, Broken Ships
A True Story Of Sex, Crime And The Meaning Of Justice
The true story of Lydia Harvey is certainly worth telling. Julia Laite plunges the reader into a sordid world of sexual exploitation as she meticulously follows the path of one young woman from New Zealand who was forced to pick men up on the streets, have sex with them, then hand over her earnings to pimps. Such tales of procurement and the trafficking of young women and girls, in what was to become know as the white slave trade, made headline news all over the world in the 1910s.
Lydia was just one of thousands of young women who were lured into prostitution. Her procurers, Aldo Cellis and his wife Marie Vernon, tempted her with the possibility of a gayer life and offered to pay her passage to South America if she would agree to “see gentlemen”. Lydia went willingly enough, hardly aware of the trap set for her. When Aldo Cellis (his real name now exposed as Antonio Carvelli) and his co- conspirator Alessandro di Nicotera were brought to trial at the Old Bailey on 10 July 1910, Lydia was a key witness.
With so little hard evidence of Lydia, Laite does an admirable job of building the story and tracing the movements of the victim and her procurers through Wellington, Buenos Ares, Paris, London and Sydney. She teases out the story from all the angles: through the eyes of the police with their
difficulty in tracking down pimps, the newspaperman who cracked the story, the police matron who ‘rescued’ prostitutes, and the procuring activities of the pimp and his wife themselves.
This is a fascinating story, hardwon through Laite’s impressive research. A must read.
Julia Laite teases out the story from all the angles
People, Shipwrecks & Britain 1854–2007
Ian Friel
Pen & Sword, 182 pages, £25
This is the story of Britain and its ships, told via detailed accounts of eight shipwrecks. These exemplar tragedies illustrate the range of vessels that could be involved and show that whatever the scale of the disaster, there is always a human story to tell. The large passenger liner SS City of Glasgow simply disappeared along with 430 people in 1854 and has never been found, whereas the was a small wooden sailing collier which was lost with fewer than 10 crew aboard in 1872. The author uses 19th-century disasters such as the sinking of HMS Victoria, and casualties from both world wars and beyond, to look at the causes of shipwrecks and the effects that they had upon individuals and their families.
The loss of ships is also a vehicle for expanding upon wider themes such as the emigration of British people to North America, the impact of shipwrecks on the environment, and the conditions of service of British seafarers.
This book is not a guide for researching shipwrecked ancestors, but the author diligently identifies his sources throughout thereby demonstrating how multiple records are required to piece together the tragic tales of our forebears who were lost at sea. It’s a very readable account.