I published the following post in August 2020 on a blog I keep for random genealogy/history research (https://randomfh.blogspot.com/2021/07/dorothy-violet-bowers-novelist-1902-1948.html). Given that I now have a 221B blog post for (mainly) Sherlockian activities, I've decided to review and revise that post and share it here. Since this blog post, there has been one or two other articles on Bowers the leveraged a lot of information from my post, including this podcast (https://shedunnitshow.com/themysteriousdorothybowerstranscript). I've continued to look for information on Dorothy, but really not had any luck adding to the original post. Nevertheless I've reviewed the blog post and added one or two pieces here. I have still not found a photograph or grave for Dorothy.
I am enamored with the mystery writing of Dorothy Bowers (1902-1948). Bowers published five ‘golden age’-style mystery novels in a career interrupted by World War 2, and died aged 46 in 1948 from tuberculosis, shortly after being inducted into the famed Detection Club. Several web sites state that Bower died with the "satisfaction of knowing that she had just been inducted into the Detection Club", though the nature of Bower's engagement with members of the Detection Club isn't known.
I have found little biographical information on Dorothy’s life, and as far as I can ascertain, no photo of Dorothy is known to exist. I cannot identify where she is buried (or rather, the fate of her remains). I also desired to know what happened to Dorothy’s estate and any unpublished writings or draft manuscripts from her novels. Did Dorothy publish murder-mystery short stories? If not, why not?
I hope this post can stimulate the creation of a Wikipedia page for Bowers also.
I pieced together this post with the primary sources I could find as a starting point, and hope others that find this can point me to archives or resources. I spent a significant amount of time looking into probate, death certificates, and cemetery records, in the hope I could trace the family, and clues to living family connections.
While this post won’t describe or critique Bowers’ writings, the five novels she published were:
- Postscript To Poison (1938)
- Shadows Before (1939)
- A Deed Without A Name (1940)
- Fear For Miss Betony (1941)
- The Bells at Old Bailey (1947)
The first four novels featured the character Inspector Pardoe of Scotland Yard. When her fifth novel 'The Bells at Old Bailey' was published after a six year pause, and with a new Detective.
The best (only?) biographical sketch of Bowers appears in the 1948 book “More Monmouthshire Writers” by W.J.T. Collins (R.H. Johns Ltd., Newport, Mon, Wales). The book contains biographies of thirty-nine writers from Monmouthshire, some long-since deceased, and others (like Bowers) living at the time. One gets the sense that some biographies have the hand of the subject themself in their biographies, or are at least the product of material provided by the subject. In the Foreword, Collins defends the inclusion of “little-known contemporary writers” in the volume as “I feel they deserve recognition and such remembrance as an anthology gives when the original works are “out of print” or forgotten except by faithful friends or relatives”. The entry on Bowers contains extensive quotes from Bowers’ work, and I have created an abbreviated summary of that chapter here (primarily excluding literary discussion, to focus on biographical details):
Dorothy Bowers
Monmouthshire claims Bowers by reason of lifelong association. Born at nearby Leominster (Herefordshire) on June 11, 1902, a hunger for knowledge and love of the printed word was in her blood, inherited from her paternal grandfather, a shoemaker, whose passion for reading remained always unsatisfied because he could not afford to buy the books he craved. So great was his longing for reading matter that he would retrieve any blown piece of newspaper that came his way and, however torn or soiled it might be, fold and brush it carefully, lovingly, that he might at pleasure feast even on a fragment of the printed word. This passion for reading he transmitted to his son, Albert Edward Bowers, and Miss Bowers' earliest memories go back to the exciting and catholic jumble of books that was her father’s library - a monument to his self-denial of other indulgences as it was to the range and discrimination of his literary explorations. It is interesting to note that this collection included early and much-thumbed editions of Sherlock Holmes stories. With such an ancestry - her mother too comes of a family whose individual members revealed, without the opportunity of developing it, uncommon creative talent in drawing and painting, -and such an environment, it was natural that from early years Dorothy Bowers set herself to become a writer. She was a year old when her father settled in Monmouth, whose woods and meadows, rivers, and birds and old stones, have shaped, she says, so much of her mental and spiritual life. There he was in business till 1936, and in 1943 he died, one of the best-known, best-loved men in the town.
Her debt to formal education is considerable. First, there was a French convent school, where she acquired method, precision, and an abiding delight in the orderly and formal arrangement of ideas, and even of material objects - a sense of pattern and symmetry. Monmouth School for Girls provided her secondary schooling, and to its teaching of history and literature she says she largely owes a sense of continuity that is at once an excitement and a consolation. She was a day girl there till she went up to Oxford in 1922, and as a member of the Society of Oxford Home Students (now St. Anne’s) read History and took an Honors degree in the School of Modern History in 1926. For a time she taught intermittently in a boarding scholar two, though not as a resident member of the staff for which she remains grateful ; was occasionally a relief teacher at her old school during absences of the regular staff ; was governess to a succession of children, and learned more, she confesses, from spasmodic and unsuccessful efforts at teach than ever she imparted, not least among the lessons that there was no occupation to be found she would not prefer to a teacher’s. She abhors and condemn’s the conventional life, not only in its academic manifestations, but any such life lived on a collective and monosexual basis.
Her short story, “The Spy at Chateau Bas” was published in the now defunct “English Review” ; poems were published, and in 1938 her first novel was published. Early interested in criminology, and compiler of the more abstruse and cryptic type of crossword puzzles (for "John O’London's Weekly” 1936-1943, and for “Country Life” 1940-1946, during the absence in the Navy of their former crossword correspondent), it was not surprising that her creative powers turned to novels of crime and detection.
One of her hobbies is bird-watching, and she selects from the open book of nature and the clasped book of the specialist a fact, a name, a parallel, which supplied on of the minor mysteries of “A Deed Without A Name,” and explains why one of her characters persistently drew and modeled the representation of a little-known bird.
Like many another creative artist, Miss Bowers found that the war cramped her powers, limited her opportunities, and diverted her from the chosen path. There was work to be done, however - in the Inquiries Bureau of the National Book Council (now the National Book League), in the European News Service of the B.B.C., and of course in the maze of crosswords. But when the war was over she started again, and her fifth novel was included in Hodder and Stoughton’s autumn list (1946). Poetry from her pen has appeared in “John o’London's Weekly”, “The Observer”, and the now defunct “Everyman”. Three of her poems have been included in “Saturday to Monday” (published by Newnes).
Miss Bowers is a life member of the Society for Psychical Research ; among her hobbies are insect and plant life (her father was a notable amateur gardener) and the study of Seventeenth Century history and art. Though from the age of thirteen months, till a few years ago, Monmouth was her home continuously, she once confessed that her ambition was to live near Oxford and the Bodleian Library.
The biography above is rich in information, and was published in 1948, the year of Bowers’ death at 46 of tuberculosis. At the time she had been inducted into the Detection Club (not mentioned in the biography), though whether she attended a meeting is to be determined. A Pan Books softcover issue of "Deed Without A Name" was issued in 1948, and the biography on the back cover states Dorothy was elected to the "exclusive" Detection Club.
And so, I’ll start with the end, and attempt here to complement the information on Dorothy’s career arc with primary records I can find on her life and family. Genealogic research reveals is that Dorothy had no children, and her two siblings likewise did not produce issue. So as her family line has ended, where did her photos, letters, papers, drafts, and diaries end up?
Bowers’ parents Albert Edward BOWERS (born Colwall Hereford) and Annie Marie DEAN (born Hereford City) were both English, married in 1896 in the Hereford registration district (that also embraces Monmouth). They evidently settled in Leominster, Hereford, as the 1901 census shows that Albert, a ‘baker and confectioner’ was operating on his ‘own account’, living at Etnam St, Leominster. Today, Etnam St contains a mix of residential and stores that appear largely original. Their first daughter Gwendoline Lilian was born in Leominster in 1897, and was aged 4.
1901 Census for Leominster, Hereford
By 1911, Annie and Albert had two more daughters. Dorothy Violet (second of three) was born in Leominster in 1902, and Evelyn May was born in Monmouth in 1904, by which time the family had moved there (Bowers’ biography claims 13 months of age, which fits). The birth records match with the 1911 census, where the family of five are living in a 6-room dwelling on Agincourt St, Monmouth, a dog-legged narrow lane of stores. Albert's mother Anne was also living with the family.
1911 Census for A E Bowers, Agincourt St, Monmouth
We can find her arriving in Oxford, on "The Term's Freshmen Full List" as D.V. Bowers as part of the Society of Home Students in 1923. Women were first admitted for degrees at Oxford in 1920, and the Society was an association rather than a brick-and-mortar college, that allowed women to live in Oxford (in their own lodgings) and attend lectures. The Society evolved into St Anne's College at Oxford.
Oxford Chronicle and Reading Gazette - Friday 19 October 1923
Following here time at Oxford, the biography above indicates that Dorothy had several postings as a teacher, but ultimately returned to Monmouth with her parents. In 1927, Bowers published the short story "The Spy of Chateau Bas" in the English Review (1927, p619). It seems reasonable to assume that Dorothy's time at a French Convent School informed components this story, which is more espionage thriller than mystery. It also appears to be the only short story published by Bowers previous to her five novels.
The Daily News (London) for Wednesday 6th February 1935 ran a letter from Dorothy commenting on a quote by Gracie Fields, one of the highest-paid actors of the 1930s:
FEW people, one Imagines, will be impressed by Miss Gracie Fields's avowed preference for a cottage and 10s. a week to a salary approximately 3,000 times greater. The acquisition of so meagre a blessing ' as she desires should be within easy reach. The envied possessors of such would in most cases place no obstacle in the way of exchange. In the case of a film actress a distasteful £1,500 a week can be foregone by a moment's decision a bare subsistence wage. on the other hand. may not show one penny's increase by a lifetime's struggle. Since Miss Fields has made the "contract one must presume it is acceptable to her. Honest pleasure in it on her part would therefore be both more appropriate and more appealing. DOROTHY BOWERS. Westbury House, Monmouth.
Bowers was also publishing poetry, such as this piece in Devon's Western Morning News - Thursday 08 August 1935:
The next time-point identified for Dorothy was the death of her sister Gwendoline Lilian on 22 Feb 1936. Gwendoline died aged about 39 at the family home Westbury, Dixton Rd, Monmouth. As Gwendoline died intestate, it is possible she died with little warning, and administration of her estate was awarded to her father Albert.
Westbury House was a substantial residence, and remains in Monmouth, appearing to operate in 2021 as a child-care center.
With the initiation of World War 2, a civilian register was compiled in England & Wales, and Dorothy was entered living with her parents at Westbury. In 1939, Dorothy was single with the occupation "Author (Novelist)", which was indeed the case by that time, with Postscript To Poison published in 1938, and Shadows Before in 1939. Albert was now 70 and retired, and Annie was 69.
1939 Register
Precisely where Dorothy lived during World War 2 is not clear, or perhaps it's more appropriate to say that Dorothy may have lived in multiple places.
Entries in Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research for 1940-1946 list Bowers living at 7 Chester Avenue, Tupsley (where she died in 1948). I contacted the Society for Psychical Research (it still exists!) and their secretary confirmed that "Our records show that she joined as a new member in November 1945, as a Full Member. This would be either she was selected by our Council as being of special interest to the Society or because she joined as a Life Member. There is... no record of her in any papers published by the Society, either about her or by her."
A compilation of memoirs of children evacuated during World War 2 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/98/a4198098.shtml ) place Dorothy in Monmouth. Rita Doughty nee Kohler described that in June 1940 she was billeted to Monmouth:
"I just remember us going to bed, and the lady asking us what we wanted to call her. We decided we would call her Auntie Dorothy. The next morning, I opened the front door and the sun was shining, and the view was of The Kymin, and it was a fantastic sight. Dorothy Bowers was an author who wrote detective stories, including A Deed without a Name, Fear for Miss Betony. I was there for thirteen months, then I had to go to another billet as her father was ill."
Dorothy's father was indeed ill, and he died on the 4th of November 1943 at Westbury House, with a not immodest probate awarded to Dorothy. Dorothy's third residence for WW2 appears in Albert's probate package, where Dorothy is listed as "of 84 Nightingale Lane, Balham, London SW12". Albert left a legacy of 200 pounds to his wife, and the residual (majority) of the estate to be divided between his two living daughters (Dorothy and Evelyn). I looked for Albert's burial (hoping that Dorothy may too be there), and Rhian Jackson from Monmouth Archives was kind enough to let me know that Albert Edward Bowers "aged 73 buried 8.11.1943" shows a burial register entry number of 1576/43 - but the burial register is held at Gwent Archives and I'm hoping to learn more from them.
While there was a gap in published books from 1941 to 1947, there is a curious advertisement from Hodder & Stoughton in Bookseller (Thursday 24 February 1944) for Bowers book that was never published. Was this ever submitted to H&S and is it perhaps unpublished in their archives? Or was it decided it wasn't fit for publication?
In 1947, after a six year break from publishing, Dorothy published "The Bells of Old Bailey", her last novel. That same year, Dorothy's mother died. Annie's death was registered in Hereford, and it is possible she died in Tupsley (Herefordshire, about 20 miles from Monmouth) where Dorothy lived. Annie had no probate registered (that can be found), no newspaper notice of her decease has been found, and I have not yet identified where she is buried.
The following year, Dorothy was apparently inducted into the Murder Club, and died on the 29th August, 1948 at her home 7 Chester Avenue. She was aged 46 years and is listed in her death certificate as "Spinster. Authoress. Daughter of Albert Edward Bowers, a confectioner Retired Deceased)". The cause of death was two-fold: acute miliary tuberculosis, and tuberculosis of caecum. TB is a bacterial infection primarily of the lungs, and miliary infection is usually diagnosed based on x-ray appearance of nodules and causes a general slow decline with symptoms such as occasional fever, weight less, & weakness. Tuberculosis of caecum was a description for TB infection of the gut, and diagnosed based on symptoms such as lower abdominal pain. Bowers had probably suffered from TB infection for a significant period. Treatment options were largely restricted to rest and recuperation, and monitoring disease by x-rays (of lungs). A contemporary diary of a female patient in a British sanatorium gives a sense of the patient experience (Tuberculosis sanatorium regimen in the 1940s: a patient's personal diary, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1079536/ ), though there is no evidence that Dorothy stayed at such a facility.
Of note, the informant on Dorothy's death certificate was her only remaining close relative, her sister Evelyn May Bowers, 'present at the death'. There was not any significant notice of the demise of Dorothy Bowers in the press. A family death notice was posted in the Gloucestershire Echo that provides a family connection (a maternal aunt or uncle, mother's maiden name was DEAN), and some insight into the suffering Dorothy endured, and the probate notice.
Gloucestershire Echo - Tuesday 31 August 1948
BOWERS - On August 29th, at Chester Avenue, Tupsley, Hereford, Dorothy, late of Monmouth, dearly loved niece of L. Dean, Montpellier-terrace, Cheltenham, after much suffering bravely borne.
Gloucester Citizen Saturday 23 April 1949
£3,850 WILL
Miss Dorothy Violet Bowers, of 7, Chester-avenue, Tupsley, Hereford, the detective novelist, who died on August 29 last, left 3,830 9s. 2d. gross, 3.131 Is. net value. Probate has been granted to her sister, Miss Evelyn M. Bowers, of 93 Epsom-rd, Sutton, Surrey, and John Pigott of Chester-avenue, Tupsley.
So far, the searches of burials in Monmouth, and at Tupsley parish, have failed to yield a burial. I have not found a burial for her mother Annie either, and have seen it written that they are buried together - and records in Monmouth indicate they are not buried with their father.
Dorothy's will was administered by Dorothy's sister Evelyn ("spinster") and John Pigott, an omnibus conductor who lived at the same address as Dorothy. The will
- instructs Evelyn to distribute her 'personal chattels' (did this include her manuscripts???) "in accordance with my wishes that I have made known to her"
- bequeathed to 'my friend Gwendoline Davies of Number 2 Moorfields street Hereford' a legacy of 100 pounds
- left her home, 7 Chester Avenue, Tupsley, to John Pigott
- The residue of her estate was left to her sister Evelyn
And so, with Dorothy's will, her belongings were distributed, but it seems reasonable to assume her sister Evelyn may have inherited or taken responsibility for her manuscripts {a side-note: Evelyn published at least one short story herself, in the Burton Observer, June 26, 1930, "David Goes To School"}. Evelyn herself ultimately returned to Monmouth to live, residing at 'Greystones', The Parade, Monmouth, and passing away in 1978 aged 72. Evelyn's was buried in Monmouth, her ashes were interred in the grave of Emma Jane C English on 9th March 1978 (Grave plot number LoF OZC0014 - but apparently no headstone). Emma Jane English died in late 1977 (Pontypool, 28, 1013, born in 1889) and the connection to Evelyn - if any - is not known.
Evelyn's will suggests that she had no strong family connections, and the Bowers family threads seem to end with her. Evelyn's estate was distributed to a friend ('Miss Mary Mervyn of Greystones'), to the Priest of St. Mary of the Assumption St Mary's St Monmouth (a Catholic parish, curiously), four different charities for animals, to the Leonard Cheshire Foundation (supporting disabled people to live independently), and her personal effects to Emma English (who predeceased her) and thence Mary Mervyn. Her home, Greystones, was to be sold, and along with all residue of the estate, divided between Mary Mervyn, and three charities. What became of Mary and Greystones? The house still stands it appears, but I have not traced Mary.
And John Pigott? Well it is not clear exactly what his fate was: 'a bus driver in the employ of a Birmingham company'. Certainly he appears to have rejected life lived on a monosexual basis, as he appeared in Gloucester Divorce Court as a co-respondent in 1949 (The Citizen, July 15, 1949), ordered to pay damages to the husband of Eleanor O'Neill. I can find no further trace of him, and Chester-avenue Tupsley appears to not exist (renamed perhaps?).
Dorothy Bowers' five novels offer a great deal of insight into her life, and I look forward to using this biographical information to make connections to the inspiration for characters and circumstances in her novels.
Perhaps this blog post will help unearth a family connection of Dorothy, with manuscripts, or just as exciting - a photograph of Dorothy Bowers.
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