The Clippie (Bookhounds of London)

A short while ago I answered a question about Dulce et Decorum, and it reminded me of Kate Adie's excellent book Fighting on the Home Front. This week's post is based on something borrowed from that book.

At the outbreak of the war as men marched off to fight, the unexpected resource drain pushed women to unexpected workplace gains. Particularly in the early years when entire unions, streets and schools volunteered in a body, industries and schools discovered they had neither workers nor students. Though initially resistant many professions recruited women to replace the absent men, in all sorts of roles - including tram drivers.

You wouldn't know it by looking today, but in 1914 electric trams were the preeminent form of public transport in London. In fact, London led Europe in tram use and the system was ever-expanding, but the War delayed things substantially and it would soon be obvious trams were on the way out. The car and truck would eventually take over where trams left off, but that wouldn't happen until the 1930s when cars were more affordable, and available. In 1914 the tram was still vital, and the tram lines desperately needed conductors and drivers.

Trams were more glamorous than omnibuses, writes Adie, cleaner and quieter, and they soon were used in numerous cities as part of the recruitment campaign. Rochdale trams bore posters asking 'Are you fighting for Rule Britannia - or only singing?' Southampton and Leeds went one better and dressed their vehicles overall with coloured lightbulbs. They looked magnificent, clanging over the rails with 'God Save the King' illuminated in huge letters ... 

The women driving and collecting tickets on these trams garnered many nicknames. To some they were conductorettes, to others clippies or lady conductors. They did the same jobs as men and took the same risks; in 1916, during a zeppelin raid, conductor Sally Holmes was blasted clear out of her tram and was lucky to escape with a badly injured leg.

All of which brings me to:

The Clippie

If she has a name, your Bookhounds don't know it. She only answers to Clippie. She walks with a noticeable limp, but that doesn't stop her covering her beat; she's a well-known book scout whose specialty is Oxford, particularly the colleges. Nobody knows why, but if you want to know which don's library is about to be sold or what some academic literary lion is looking for this month, ask Clippie. She knows.

Bookhounds who do a little digging (Oral History, possibly Library Use) discover that before the War she worked as a tweeny at one of the Oxford colleges, following in the footsteps of her older sisters. She started when she was 12 and stayed till she was 16.  That's why she knows Oxford so well; she was born there, and several of her relatives still live and work there.

Shortly after the War started she moved to London and worked for a time for the London, Deptford and Greenwich Tramways Company as a conductress. She loved the job and the life, and was a fixture of her route. Everybody knew the Clippie. She worked the trams until 1917, when her career was abruptly cut short.

On the evening of 12 September Clippie's tram was on it way back to the depot when a Gotha raid bombed London, killing 30 and injuring 64. Clippie was blown clear out of her tram, the only survivor; everyone else on board were killed. From that day to this she refuses to get on board a tram, or go anywhere near electrical devices. She was temporarily homeless until taking up life as a book scout; these days she lives by candlelight aboard a barge in Greenwich.

Funny thing about that barge; it's covered in electrical diagrams and books of all kinds about electrical machinery. Clippie spends every waking hour studying them, when she's not earning a crust. She never says why.

Possibilities:

• Clippie's a megapolisomancer who just wants to get control of her life again. She knows there's something out there stalking the tramlines, something fierce, vital and lethal. She's looking for a way to bring this paramental entity under control, but she hasn't given any thought to what will happen when she does it. Once she has a killing creature as her personal emissary, what will Clippie do? Or is Clippie's obsession the reason this thing exists at all? 
• Clippie shares her head with four ghosts: the conductor and passengers of Tram #38, who have an elastic approach to time. Sometimes they recognize the passing of the years, and sometimes it's still 12 September, 1917. Clippie's secret is not well-kept, and several occult groups and societies have tried to use her as a window to the afterlife, a medium with a hole in her mind, capable of being filled by almost anything. She always refuses to perform in any room fitted with electric light or electric devices of any kind. One would-be student of the occult (a Bookhound, perhaps?) decides to challenge the norm and tricks Clippie into performing in a room with electric fittings, which proves a real problem when the final, unexpected ghost appears - Tram #38 itself, an entity with (among other things) Scuffling 16 and +1 Damage (electric shock). 
• Clippie's a go-between for Yithian outposts in London and Oxford. There was a time when Clippie herself was a Yithian agent, but the 12 September bombing put paid to that. However she remains loyal to the cause and now knows as much as anyone about Yithian activity in London and Oxford. Her obsession with electrical equipment has to do with her deep desire to recreate the devices she half-remembers from her time as a Yithian. She thinks she might just be able to translocate herself from the London she hates to the far-off Other she loves. When not running errands for her masters and buying books to keep a roof over her head she experiments with strange devices, out on the river where there are few witnesses.

Enjoy!