I'll give you a field example of how I do it. Here, this picture of a gorgeous woman who looks British or American, about 1930s...
I googled "Captured British Subjects" and this led me to this report from 1929 about Chinese brigands having captured a small town and taken a handful of British nationals.
... asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can give the names and particulars of British subjects who have been kidnapped by Chinese bandits during the previous three months; and have any of these British subjects been released by their captors?
Early in June the town of Shekichen, in south-west Honan, was captured by brigands, who made prisoners of the local missionaries of the China Inland Mission comprising Mr. and Mrs. E. Weller, Mr. and Mrs. J. Walker (with their baby) and Miss Brook.
The picture will be, say, Miss Victoria Brook and that will leave me to find a second picture for a Mrs. Julia Walker. The baby creates a stituation where the brigands will show extreme cruelty by taking the child away from the mother to bring it to the care of some of their wives (the brigands being peasants who live in some sort of hamlet) and then of course, they rape the mother in front of the husband. But the main character would be Miss Brook, who is the younger, prettier female captives and thus takes the brunt of the assaults. The Leader wants to keep her for himself, but it doesn't work; the brigands kill their leader and celebrate his successor by gang-raping Victoria... along with the young wife of the killed leader. This makes for a pretty barbaric tale. By the time she's released, Victoria has nausea and finds she's most likely pregnant and the taste of their semen will always linger in her mind.