Researching Amsterdam in the Dutch Golden Age

During the early 1600s, Amsterdam provided an unprecedented level of religious tolerance compared to the rest of Europe. It is estimated that immigrants comprised around 40% of the population. Future Mayflower Pilgrims and English Baptists lived alongside Huguenots, Anabaptists, Sephardic Jews, and Turks escaping forced conversion in Spain, who influenced their beliefs. Although largely restricted to poorly paid work, immigrants were allowed to worship according to their own customs, provided they were discreet. Apart from the Jewish community, whose story is told in the modern city’s Jewish Museum, these groups are often overlooked. I valued support from the late Jeremy Dupertus Bangs, the former principal of the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum, an expert on the lives of the Mayflower Pilgrims during their exile in the Dutch Republic. Bangs’ book Strangers and Pilgrims, Travellers and Sojourners provided detail not found elsewhere. He answered questions and encouraged me, his love for the subject clearly showing through. Like many, I was sad when Bangs passed away. My title Naming the Dead was inspired by a section at the end of his book. After a long list of the English exiles, which he extracted from civil marriage and other official records, Bangs quotes William Bradford, the future governor of Plymouth Plantation.

Many worthy and able men there were … who lived and died in obscurity in respect of the world … yet were precious in the eyes of the Lord, and also in the eyes of such who knew them

When starting to write, it seemed appropriate to set my opening murder beneath Amsterdam’s Blue Bridge, which connected the prosperous city to the islands where the immigrants lived. Both sides contributed to Amsterdam’s rise, as the Dutch Republic grew to eclipse its rivals in engineering, trade, wealth and art. I needed protagonist Baxby to wade into the River Amstel to retrieve the body, but had no idea how he could achieve this without being swept away. I found an image of a urinal on the web-site of Amsterdam’s Grachtenmuseum (Museum of the Canals). It showed stalls between two piers of a bridge, with text explaining that the city authorities built such stilletjes in an attempt to keep the city clean. This seemed too good to be true! A stilletjes would provide an excellent fictional murder site. Baxby could edge along its walkway to pull the body out. However, I could not find another reference and did not wish to trust a single source. Staff at the museum came to my rescue. They put me in touch with the article’s author, who confirmed stilletjes were a notorious feature of Amsterdam life. In addition to their intended purpose, stalls were used for homosexual liaisons, again showing Dutch citizens in an unexpected light.

Certainly, seventeenth century Amsterdam provided a colourful setting for my murder mystery. Despite all that has happened since, it still known as a tolerant city. Similar traits have been seen in its most famous colony New Amsterdam, later renamed New York. The English Separatists were influenced by their time in the city’s ‘melting pot’. Baptist leader Thomas Helwys made the first English plea for religious liberty, for people of all faiths and none, and returned to England to petition King James with his book A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity. Similarly in my next novel, fictional physician Baxby will return to London, in very different circumstances from those in which he left.

Naming the Dead (Baxby Mystery #2) is free via Kindle Unlimited and to buy here