The Herbalist's dark art

Having blogged about meeting The Herbalist when I bought the book, I found a rendering of the real life man who inspired the character in The Irish Independent  and his blood-spilling secrets. 

Niamh Boyce, author of The Herbalist, the new novel that paints a shocking picture of abortion in rural Ireland in the 1930s and 1940s, has revealed that the book is based on real events.

The novel, which is now moving up the bestseller chart, tells the fictional story of an exotic foreigner who arrives in a midlands town and starts selling his potions and lotions in the local market.

The women of the town all seem mesmerised by this visitor who appears to have a cure for all their ills. In fact he does so well that he decides to settle in the town.

But the herbalist has a dark secret – as well as herbal cures, he is providing abortions.

The novel deals with this shadowy side of Irish life at a time before abortion was legal in the UK and has a special resonance now because of the current abortion debate here.

Although the midlands town is not named in the book, the story is based on real events that took place in Athy, Co Kildare, in the 1930s.

Boyce, who was the Hennessy Writer of the Year last year, says she discovered the story when she was doing archiving work during computerisation at the Leinster Leader newspaper.

She was looking at papers from the 1930s when a short report caught her eye.

"It detailed a charge against a 'coloured man' for an offence against a girl. His name was Dr Don Rodrique de Vere," Boyce says.

"I found further articles, which were just as vague but added that the man was a herbalist, and the offences were 'immoral'. The charge changed from 'girl' to 'girls'. I kept an eye out for these short reports on the case and read finally that he was found guilty on six counts.

"He was sentenced to 18 months' hard labour in respect of each of these charges, to run concurrently.

"Years later I found out more. It was through a column by historian Francis Taaffe called Eye On Athy that ran in the Kildare Nationalist. It turned out that De Vere came to Athy in 1935, set up his herbal stall in the market and his home in a disused shed. As he became more popular, he moved into a terraced house and bought a motorbike.

"He sported a Panama hat, a gold tooth and was an 'impressive dresser'. It seems he was shunned by the locals when he returned from prison."

Boyce also found De Vere's original notebook in which he documented his treatments. The notebook is now retained in the National Archive and, disturbingly, it still has bloody fingerprints on it.

John Spain, books editor

Irish Independent

Have you met The Herbalist?

Here I am, in Easons Dublin, meeting The Herbalist

Irish author Niamh Boyce has just published a spellbinding novel. When turning the pages, you will turn back time and enter an older Ireland. You will find yourself in a 1930s small town in the midlands. Here is the place where without warning, a mysterious and exotic foreigner walks into the lives of the provincial town folk...

"He just appeared one morning and set up shop in the market square. It was drizzling. Everything was either a shade of brown or a shade of grey. He was the lightest thing there, the one they called the black doctor. He wore a pale suit and a straw hat and waved his arms like a conductor. The men spat about dark crafts and foreign notions but the women loved him. Oh, the rubs, potions, tinctures and lotions he had, unguents even. I went to the market the first chance I got, to see past the headscarves, but all I got was a glimpse of a bottle held high, and the gold ringed fingers that gripped it. The women crowded around his stall."

Sinéad Gleeson of The Irish Times wrote about the real life events that inspired the novel. When she was 19, Niamh discovered a tiny newspaper report from 1942 of a court case concerning a “coloured man arrested for serious offences against girls". This planted a seed in Niamh's imagination, which over 20 years grew into a whole character.

Niamh did an interview with Theresa Milstein on how she evolved from writing short stories to discovering that she had enough material for a whole novel, "there were several false starts at novels that petered out at 10,000 words. I harvested stories from some of them. It didn’t bother me too much, these poor fledgling novels that went nowhere.  I went back to writing stories, and when the character of the herbalist appeared in one of them I thought nothing of it. When he appeared in another, and then another, I realized if I were to write a novel, it would have to be about him."

The Herbalist was published by Penguin Ireland and agented by Ger Nichol.

Short story competition hosted by Penguin Ireland and RTÉ Guide

Hat-tip to Louise Phillips for promoting this short story competition. The closing date is 5th of July.
The deadline is 6pm on a Friday in July so that you can finish writing the story, send it off, and then enjoy a long summer's evening in the company of your friends, sipping a well-earned cocktail.

Before you raise a glass to celebrate that you have entered the competition, you might bear in mind... 

Thems The Rulez

1. All entries in the 2013  RTÉ Guide/Penguin Ireland Short Story Competition must be original, unpublished and previously not have been broadcast.

2. Written in English and of 2,000 words or less.

3.  The short stories must be typed, not handwritten and will not be returned.

4. Enclose your name and contact details (address, phone and/or e-mail) on a separate page.

5. Anyone from any place on mother earth can apply.

6. You may send your entries to RTÉ Guide/Penguin Short Story Competition, PO Box 1480, RTÉ, Donnybrook, Dublin 4. Or, you may e-mail rteguide@rte.ie