An Almond for a Parrot: the gripping and decadent historical page turner. Wray Delaney

       For my mother, Nina Lowry.

       The third female circuit judge to be appointed in England, she sat for twenty years at the Old Bailey. For her service she was given the Freedom of the City of London with the right to drive a flock of sheep across London Bridge. She has yet to do so.

       A remarkable woman, who I’m very proud to call Mum.

       Fleet Marriages

      One of the most disgraceful customs observed in the Fleet Prison in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the performance of the marriage ceremony by disreputable and dissolute clergymen. These functionaries, mostly prisoners for debt, insulted the dignity of their holy profession by marrying in the precincts of the Fleet Prison at a minute’s notice, any persons who might present themselves for that purpose. No questions were asked, no stipulations made, except as to the amount of the fee for the service, or the quantity of liquor to be drunk on the occasion. It not unfrequently happened, indeed, that the clergyman, the clerk, the bridegroom and the bride were drunk at the very time the ceremony was performed.

      Appendix VI, The Newgate Calendar

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