Hastings writer can sell her new local history book from her mobility scooter after gaining Pedlar’s Licence

Helena has written a number of successful books exploring the past of the town and her latest, Strange Exits from Hastings, is attracting a lot of attention and positive reviews. It takes a fascinating and in-depth look at more than 30 unusual and unexplained deaths that occurred in Hastings and St Leonards between 1800 and 1950. It is brought to life with old photographs, newspaper cuttings and maps. Helena, 62, said: “From my teens I was a train guard, until an accident on duty forced early retirement at age 40. I had just finished studying for my bachelor’s degree, which left me with a passion for academic research. From 2002 I wrote published several books including Women of Victorian Hastings, Notable Hastings Women and the award-winning Railwaywomen - the first ever written history of women working on Britain’s railways. “I’ve always been interested in criminology so, after discovering that a triple-poisoner and Jack the Ripper suspect once lived and worked in Hastings, I wrote a book about his life and crimes, titled Jack the Ripper At Last? “While writing a complete history of the part women of Hastings played in the women’s rights movement, I found myself repeatedly distracted and sidetracked by reports of strange deaths, for example freak accidents, inexplicable suicides or unsolved murders. I began to clip them and save them in a file, though I had no plans to do anything with them. “When I came to write up the details of the unsolved murders, I found myself irresistibly drawn into trying to solve them. I became enmeshed in the stories for many months, writing, editing, then designing the cover and typesetting the inside pages. I was finally ready to go to press in February. “Shortly after I published we went into lockdown All my potential retailers were forcibly closed. I realised I was going to have to go out and actively market the book myself. “I began with Facebook and got a few orders, but I really needed a retailer. The first I approached, Sweet Selections, accepted my proposal and quickly sold twenty copies. One reader who bought a copy wrote to me after finding two of the stories involved her ancestors. She owned a butcher shop in Pett Village and offered to sell the book for me. I sent her six copies and the next day she had only one left. “I asked on Facebook if any shop in the Old Town would like to sell them and the owner of Penbuckle’s deli immediately responded, and I also placed the books in the deli under Marine Court. The books have sold exceptionally well in all these places. “Then I had a brilliant idea. I was making sure that under lockdown I was getting a my daily dose of fresh sea air and sunshine by riding along the seafront on my mobility scooter. Why not offer books for sale whilst doing it? When William the Cone-queror first had the idea of selling ice cream from a tricycle he was lodging in my house and I helped him to research how to do it. So I knew that if I wanted to sell books in the street I needed to obtain an ancient and obscure permit known as a Pedlar’s Licence, created in 1871 to allow police to control and monitor people selling door-to-door. Applicants must be of good repute with the police and must produce two referees to vouch that they are fine, upstanding citizens. As a historian I am rather thrilled to be the holder of this little known licence and carry it with me, ready to produce it if challenged. I can’t wait to be asked my occupation on a form so I can write ‘pedlar’.” To purchase the book visit www.hastingspress.co.uk.