Sesily Pleasant’s mother was inspired by yet another intrepid Black woman of the era, Miss Mary Ellen Pleasant, a self-made female millionaire (nearly a billionaire by today’s equivalent) as well as a fierce abolitionist. In 1852, she settled as a widow in San Francisco, where she worked as a maid and a cook for a few rich investors. Though she wasn’t formally educated, she listened to tips, invested in real estate as well as gold and silver, and bought a chain of local businesses, including laundries and boardinghouses, in the 1860s. To thwart discrimination, Pleasant put many of her investments in the name of a white male business partner and friend. Their combined fortune was worth about $30 million then, which is worth just shy of $900 million in today’s currency. She used her wealth to aid slaves in escaping to the Northern states and Canada via the Underground Railroad, gave them jobs, homes, and financial help. She became known as the “mother of civil rights” in California when she sued two streetcar companies for racial bias.

The Bell in Hand Tavern, where my heroine meets her spy contact, was an actual tavern opened in 1860 in Philadelphia by Irish immigrants Catherine and William McGillin. They raised thirteen children in the rooms above the tavern. I read that President Lincoln might have visited this historic location when he went to Philadelphia, but I couldn’t find actual evidence that he did.

Although Viscount Palmerston, then prime minister of England, kept Britain’s position neutral toward the American Civil War (1861–1865), British shipyards were still allowed to supply ships and munitions to the Southern states. He was a shrewd politician and one of the most important figures in Victorian England. He was also a womanizer whose nickname was Lord Cupid, even into his seventies. There was speculation that the cause of his death was a heart attack while in the middle of congress with a parlor maid.

On the subject of the self-defense scene in the Bois de Boulogne, I belong to a women’s weapons and self-defense group, and we meet monthly to learn about protection for women facing assault, home invasion, and general personal safety. While some of the strategies I wrote about are practical, they are also dangerous and I’m by no means a professional, certified training instructor. I would encourage anyone looking for classes about self-defense to research local groups in their communities.