The women no record mentions

I work in admin at a textile manufacturer in Beşiktaş, which is more interesting than it sounds if you know anything about Istanbul's industrial history. The building was a factory in the 1950s. There is still a panel of original tiles in the corridor near the warehouse door that nobody has got around to removing. I have been writing historical fiction about Ottoman women for six years, which started when I found a court document from 1876 in which a woman is mentioned by name exactly once and then referred to for the rest of the record as 'the aforementioned'. I spent a weekend trying to find out who she was. There was nothing. So I started writing her instead. The novel is set between 1908 and 1920, which is a period when the empire collapsed and the republic began and everything was in motion, including what women were allowed to do and say and own. I write about the ones who were not wives of officials. The servants, the workers, the women who ran small trades from their homes. The history of this period has been written largely from above. I'm writing from where the tiles are.