The Curiosity Of Lilly Fortune

Storyline

Lilly Fortune is a fearless woman of colour. She was educated on the mean streets of Brooklyn and the hallowed halls of Yale University where she graduated in law. Her ambition was to follow in the family business of newspapers and publishing but not as an attorney, as a crime reporter. Her father Thomas Fortune had been able to buy his own freedom from slavery in Florida and move north to set up a printing business. He eventually established The New York Sentinal newspaper and became a multi-millionaire from that and other publishing businesses. Lilly is working for The Sentinal alongside her Yale college friend Xing Fu, an Anglo-Chinese photographer and illustrator whose parents met in Hong Kong. However, Thomas Fortune and British publisher Lord Northcliffe create a partnership whereby they co-own newspaper titles in across North America, Europe and Great Britain. Lilly and Xing move to London in 1888 to cover crime stories for the Daily Sketch. Here they rub shoulders with murderers, the poor, members of the Royal family and the aristocracy, writers, actors, lawyers and terrorists. Over the first season Lilly will become invaluable to Scotland Yard's Inspector Fred Abberline as together they investigate illegal sex traffickers, the activities of the notorious murderer Charles Peace, the Cleveland street scandal, Jack the Ripper, the Irish bombing campaign in London and the cover up of the attempted assassination of President Chester Arthur at the inauguration of the Brooklyn Bridge.