Penny Dreadfuls (home page:- Victorian Popular Fiction site, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uclekch/)
Newsvender.- "NOW, MY MAN, WHAT IS IT?"
Boy. "I VONTS A NILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPER WITH
A
NORRID MURDER AND A LIKENESS IN IT"
Punch, Jan.-Jun. 1845
USEFUL SUNDAY LITERATURE FOR THE MASSES;
OR MURDER MADE FAMILIAR.
Father of a Family (reads). "The wretched Murderer is supposed to have cut the throats of his three eldest Children, and then to have killed the Baby by beating it repeatedly with a Poker. * * * * * In person he is of a rather bloated appearance, with a bull neck, small eyes, broad large nose, and coarse vulgar mouth. His dress was a light blue coat, with brass buttons, elegant yellow summer vest, and pepper-and-salt trowsers. When at the Station House he expressed himself as being rather 'peckish,' and said he should like a Black Pudding, which, with a Cup of Coffee, was immediately procured for him."
Punch, Jul.-Dec. 1849
click
here for Henry Mayhew on costermongers and literature in
London Labour and the London Poor
see also Mayhew in Letter to the Chronicle XXIX - click here
Under such circumstances, it is easy enough to understand the
agonized anxiety of low-lived ignorant Master Tomkins in these stirring times of
Black Highwaymen, and Spring Heel Jacks, and Boy Detectives. In the shop window
of the newsvendor round the corner, he sees displayed all in a row, a long line
of “penny numbers,” the mere illustrations pertaining to which makes his
heart palpitate, and his hair stir beneath his ragged cap. There he sees bold
highwaymen busy at every branch of their delightful avocation, stopping a
lonely traveller and pressing a pistol barrel to his affrighted head, and
bidding him deliver his money or his life; or impeding the way of the mail
coach, the captain, hat in hand, courteously robbing the inside passengers
(prominent amongst whom is a magnificent female with a low bodice, who evidently
is not insensible to the captain’s fascinating manner), while members of his
gang are seen in murderous conflict with the coachman and the guard, whose doom
is but too surely foreshadowed. Again, here is a spirited woodcut of a booted
and spurred highwayman in headlong flight from pursuing Bow Street officers who
are close at his heels, and in no way daunted or hurt by the contents of the
brace of pistols the fugitive has manifestly just discharged point blank at
their heads.
But fairly in the way of the bold rider is a toll-gate, and
in a state of wild excitement the toll-gate keeper is seen grasping the long bar
that crosses the road. The tormenting question at once arises in the mind of
Master Tomkins—is he pushing it or pulling it? Is he friendly to the Black
Knight of the Road or is he not? Master T. feels that his hero’s fate is in
that toll-gate man’s hands; he doesn’t know if he should vastly admire him
or regard him with the deadliest enmity. From the bottom of his heart he hopes
that the toll-gate man may be friendly. He would cheerfully give up the only
penny he has in his pocket to know that it were so. He would give a penny for a
simple “yes” or “no,” and all the while there are eight good
letter-press pages along with the picture that would tell him all about it if he
only were able to read! There is a scowl on his young face as he reflects on
this, and bitterly he thinks of his hard-hearted father who sent him out to sell
fusees when he should have been at school learning his A B C. Truly, he went for
a short time to a Ragged School, but there the master kept all the jolly books
to himself—the “Knight of the Road” and that sort of thing, and gave him
to learn out of a lot of sober dry rubbish without the least flavour in it.
Who says that he is a dunce and won’t learn? Try him now. Buy a few numbers of
the “Knight of the Road” and sit down with him, and make him spell out every
word of it. Never was boy so anxious after knowledge. He never picked a pocket
yet, but such is his present desperate spirit, that if he had the chance of
picking the art of reading out of one, just see if he wouldn’t precious soon
make himself a scholar?
Thus it is with the neglected boy, blankly illiterate. It
need not be supposed, however, that a simple and quiet perusal of the astounding
adventures of his gallows heroes from the printed text would completely satisfy
the boy with sufficient knowledge to enable him to spell through a “penny
number.” It whets his appetite merely.
[click here for full text of The Seven Curses of London]
James Greenwood, The Seven Curses of London, 1869
Moreover, the boy who has been taught right from wrong, the
boy who has been sent to school and knows how to read, has this advantage over
his poor brother of the gutter—an advantage that tells with inexpressible
severity against the community at large; he has trainers who, discovering his
weakness, make it their profit and business to take him by the hand and bring
him along in that path of life to which his dishonest inclination has called
him.
I allude to those low-minded, nasty fellows, the proprietors
and promoters of what may be truthfully described as “gallows literature.”
As a curse of London, this one is worthy of a special niche in the temple of
infamy, and to rank first and foremost. The great difficulty would be to find a
sculptor of such surpassing skill as to be able to portray in one carved stone
face all the hideous vices and passions that should properly belong to it. It is
a stale subject, I am aware. in my humble way, I have hammered at it both in
newspapers and magazines, and many better men have done the same. Therefore it
is stale. For no other reason. The iniquity in itself is as vigorous and hearty
as ever, and every week renews its brimstone leaves (meanwhile rooting deeper
and deeper in the soil that nourishes it), but unfortunately it comes under the
category of evils, the exposure of which the public “have had enough of.” It
is very provoking, and not a little disheartening, that it should be so. Perhaps
this complaint may be met by the answer: The public are not tired of this one
amongst the many abuses that afflict its soul’s health, it is only tired of
being reminded of it. Explorers in fields less difficult have better fortune.
As, for instance, the fortunate discoverer of a gold field is. Everybody would
be glad to shake him by the hand—the hand that had felt and lifted the weight
of the nuggets and the yellow chips of dust; nay, not a few would be willing to
trim his finger nails, on the chance of their discovering beneath enough of the
auriferous deposit to pay them for their trouble. But, to be sure, in a city of
splendid commercial enterprise such as is ours, it can scarcely be expected that
that amount of honour would be conferred on the man who would remove a plague
from its midst as on the one whose magnificent genius tended to fatten the
money-bags in the Bank cellars.
At the risk, however, of being stigmatized as a man with a
weakness for butting against stone walls, I cannot let this opportunity slip,
or refrain from firing yet once again my small pop-gun against this fortress of
the devil. The reader may have heard enough of the abomination to suit his
taste, and let him rest assured that the writer has written more than enough to
suit his; but if every man set up his
“taste” as the goal and summit of his striving, any tall fellow a tip-toe
might, after all, see over the heads of most of us. The main difficulty is that
the tens and hundreds of thousands of boys who stint a penny from its more
legitimate use to purchase a dole of the pernicious trash in question, have not “had enough of it.” Nothing can be worse than this, except
it is the purveyors of letter-press offal have not had enough of it either, but,
grown prosperous and muscular on the good feeding their monstrous profits have
ensured them, they are continually opening up fresh ground, each patch fouler
and more pestilent than the last.
At the present writing I have before me half-a-dozen of these
penny weekly numbers of “thrilling romance,” addressed to boys, and
circulated entirely among them—and girls. It was by no means because the
number of these poison pen’orths on sale is small that a greater variety was
not procured. A year or so since, wishing to write a letter on the subject to a
daily newspaper, I fished out of one little newsvendor’s shop, situated in the
nice convenient neighbourhood of Clerkenwell, which, more than any other
quarter of the metropolis, is crowded with working children of both sexes, the
considerable number of twenty-three samples
of this gallows literature. But if I had not before suspected it, my experience
on that occasion convinced me that to buy more than a third of that number would
be a sheer waste of pence. To be sure, to expect honest dealing on the part of
such fellows as can dabble in “property” of the kind in question, is in the
last degree absurd, but one would think that they would, for “business”
reasons, maintain some show of giving a pen’orth for a penny. Such is not the
case, however. In three instances in my twenty-three numbers, I found the
self-same story published twice under
a different title, while for at least half the remainder the variance from their
brethren is so very slight that nobody but a close reader would discover it.
The six-pen’orth before me include, “The Skeleton
Band,” “Tyburn Dick,”, “The Black Knight of the Road,” “Dick
Turpin,” “The Boy Burglar,” and “Starlight Sall.” If I am asked, is
the poison each of these papers contains so cunningly disguised and mixed with
harmless-seeming ingredients, that a boy of shrewd intelligence and decent mind
might be betrayed by its insidious seductiveness? I reply, no. The only subtlety
employed in the precious composition is that which is employed in preserving it
from offending the blunt nostrils of the law to such a degree as shall compel
its interference. If it is again inquired, do I, though unwillingly, acknowledge
that the artful ones, by a wonderful exercise of tact and ingenuity, place the
law in such a fix that it would not be justified in interfering? I most
distinctly reply, that I acknowledge nothing of the kind; but that, on the
contrary, I wonder very much at the clumsiness of a legislative machine that can
let so much scoundrelism slip through its cogs and snares.
The daring lengths these open encouragers of boy highwaymen
and Tyburn Dicks will occasionally go to serve their villanous ends is amazing.
It is not more than two or three years since, that a prosperous member of the
gang, whose business premises were in, or within a few doors of Fleet Street, by
way of giving a fair start to his published account of some thief and murderer,
publicly advertised that the buyers of certain numbers would be entitled to a
chance of a Prize in a grand distribution of daggers.
Specimens of the deadly weapons (made, it may be assumed, after the same
fashion as that one with which “flash Jack,” in the romance, pinned the
police officer in the small of his back) were exhibited in the publisher’s
shop window, and in due course found their way into the hands of silly boys,
with minds well primed for “daring exploits,” by reading “numbers 2 and 3
given away with number 1.”
It is altogether a mistake, however, to suppose that the
poison publisher’s main element of success consists in his glorification of
robbers and cut-throats. To be sure he can by no means afford to dispense with
the ingredients mentioned in the concoction of his vile brew, but his first and
foremost reliance is on lewdness. Everything is subservient to this. He will
picture to his youthful readers a hero of the highway, so ferocious in his
nature, and so reckless of bloodshed, that he has earned among his comrades the
flattering nick-name of “the Panther.” He will reveal the bold panther in
all his glory, cleaving the skull of the obstinate old gentleman in his
travelling carriage, who will not give up his money, or setting an old woman on
the kitchen fire, as a just punishment for hiding her guineas in the oven, in
fishing them out of which the panther burns his fingers; he will exhibit the
crafty “panther” wriggling his way through the floor boards of his cell,
into a sewer beneath, and through which he is to make his escape to the river,
and then by a flourish of his magic pen, he will convey the “panther” to the
“boudoir” of Starlight Sall, and show you how weak a quality valour is in
the presence of “those twin queens of the earth,” youth and beauty! The
brave panther, when he has once crossed the threshold of that splendid damsel
(who, by the way, is a thief, and addicted to drinking brandy by the
“bumper”) is, vulgarly speaking, “nowhere.” The haughty curl of his lip,
the glance of his eagle eye, “the graceful contour of his manly form,” a
mere gesture of which is sufficient to quell rising mutiny amongst his savage
crew, all fall flat and impotent before the queenly majesty of Sall. But there
is no fear that the reader will lose his faith in Panther Bill, because of this
weakness confessed. As drawn by the Author (does the pestiferous rascal so style
himself, I wonder?) Starlight Sall is a creature of such exquisite loveliness,
that Jupiter himself might have knelt before her. She is such a matchless combination
of perfection, that it is found necessary to describe her charms separately, and
at such length that the catalogue of the whole extends through at least six
pages.
It is in this branch of his devilish business that the author
of “Starlight Sall” excels. It is evident that the man’s mind is in his
work, and he lingers over it with a loving hand. Never was there such a tender
anatomist. He begins Sall’s head, and revels in her auburn tresses, that “in
silken, snaky locks wanton o’er her shoulders, white as eastern ivory.” He
is not profound in fore-heads, and hers he passes over as “chaste as snow, or
in noses, Sall’s being described briefly as “finely chiselled;” but he is
well up in the language of eyes—the bad language. He skirmishes playfully
about those of Sall, and discourses of her eyebrows as “ebon brow,” from
which she launches her excruciating shafts of love. He takes her by the
eye-lashes, and describes them as the “golden fringe that screens the gates of
paradise,” and finally he dips into Sall’s eyes, swimming with luscious
languor, and pregnant with tender inviting to Panther Bill, who was consuming in
ardent affection, as “the rippling waves of the bright blue sea to the sturdy
swimmer.” It is impossible here to repeat what else is said of the eyes of
Starlight Sall, or her teeth, “like rich pearls,” or of her “pouting coral
lips, in which a thousand tiny imps of love are lurking.” Bear it in mind that
this work of ours is designed for the perusal of thinking men and women; that it
is not intended as an amusing work, hut as an endeavour to portray to Londoners
the curses of London in a plain and unvarnished way, in hope that they may be
stirred to some sort of absolution from them. As need not be remarked, it would
be altogether impossible to the essayer of such a task, if he were either
squeamish or fastidious in the handling of the material at his disposal; but I dare not follow our author any further in his description of the
personal beauties of Starlight Sall. Were I to do so, it would be the fate of
this book to be flung into the fire, and every decent man who met me would
regard himself justified in kicking or cursing me; and yet, good fathers and
mothers of England—and yet, elder brothers and grown sisters, tons of this
bird-lime of the pit is vended in London every day of the Christian year.
Which of us can say that his
children are safe from the contamination? Boys well-bred, as well as
ill-bred, are mightily inquisitive about such matters, and the chances are
very clear, sir, that if the said bird-lime were of a sort not more pernicious
than that which sticks to the fingers, we might at this very moment find the
hands of my little Tom and your little Jack besmeared with it. Granted, that it
is unlikely, that it is in the last degree improbable, even; still, the remotest
of probabilities have before now shown themselves grim actualities, and just
consider for a moment the twinge of horror that would seize on either of us were
it to so happen! Let us for a moment picture to ourselves our fright and
bewilderment, if we discovered that our little boys were feasting off this
deadly fruit in the secrecy of their chambers! Would it then appear to us that
it was a subject the discussion of which we had “had enough of”? Should we
be content, then, to shrug our
shoulders after the old style, and exclaim impatiently against the barbarous
taste of writers who were so tiresomely meddlesome? Not likely. The pretty
consternation that would ensue on the appalling discovery!—the ransacking of
boxes and cupboards, to make quite sure that no dreg of the poison, in the shape
of an odd page or so, were hidden away! ~the painful examination of the culprit,
who never till now dreamt of the enormity of the thing he had been doing!—the
reviling and threatening that would be directed against the unscrupulous
news-agent who had supplied the pernicious pen’orth! Good heavens! the
tremendous rumpus there would be! But, thank God, there is no fear of that happening.
Is there not? What are the assured grounds of safety? Is it
because it stands to reason that all such coarse and vulgar trash finds its
level amongst the coarse and vulgar, and could gain no footing above its own
elevation? It may so stand in reason, but Unfortunately it is the unreasonable
fact that this same pen poison finds customers at heights above its natural low
and foul waterline almost inconceivable. How otherwise is it accountable that
at least a quarter of a million of these
penny numbers are sold weekly? How is it that in quiet suburban neighbourhoods,
far removed from the stews of London, and the pernicious atmosphere they
engender; in serene and peaceful semi-country towns where genteel boarding
schools flourish, there may almost invariably be found some small shopkeeper who
accommodatingly receives consignments of “Blue-skin,” and the “Mysteries
of London,” and unobtrusively supplies his well-dressed little customer with
these full-flavoured articles? Granted, my dear sir, that your young Jack, or my
twelve years old Robert, have minds too pure either to seek out or crave after
literature of the sort in question, but not Un-frequently it is found without
seeking. It is a contagious disease, just as cholera and typhus and the plague
are contagious, and, as everybody is aware, it needs not personal contact with a
body stricken to convey either of these frightful maladies to the hale and
hearty. A tainted scrap of rag has been known to spread plague and death through
an entire village, just as a stray leaf of “Panther Bill,” or “Tyburn
Tree” may sow the seeds of immorality amongst as many boys as a town can
produce.
[click here for full text of The Seven Curses of London]
James Greenwood, The Seven Curses of London, 1869
see also Thomas Archer on bad influence of penny dreadfuls - click here
see alsoJames Greenwood in The Wilds of London - click here
A VERITABLE PANDEMONIUM
was the Strand at Night, described by the gentleman who wrote to
the Daily Telegraph of Aug.26, over the signature of
"ASHAMED":-
"I found it, what you may see for yourself any night, a
veritable pandemonium. . . . It was very much lighter than the Strand use
to be formerly. The noise was deafening. The crowd seemed scudding to and fro,
as if bent on some expedition of intense haste. Hansoms were rushing by, one
moment, as if driven by excited fiends; next moment there was a block of carts
and carriages, almost locked close together, from kerb to kerb. I would not have
dared to cross the road for fear of a horrible death. Still the shouting
continued, and the lights blazed, and the people hurried by - no rest, no pause,
no peace, not for a moment! I stood by the street corner and held on to the iron
post, and tried to realise the facts of the procession; and, as I looked, and
listened to the hideous cries, I said to myself, 'Surely, I cannot let my wife
into the secret of all that is going on here.' Presently, the confusion, so to
speak, disentangled itself and became plain - too vilely plain. Men were calling
out the news of the day at the top of their voices, but louder still boys and
girls - young things of girls not thirteen years old, some of them - were
vending vociferously prints which I do not think ought to be sold even in
secret. I had heard of these distressing publications, and I knew they were to
be obtained in London; but I had not idea that the police would allow them to be
sold, and by young girls - shoeless, impudent little waifs - in the Strand at
night. I suppose girls and boys no bigger than themselves purchase this
pestilent trash and consume their prurient horrors out of sight of parents and
guardians. It is an awful shame, Sir, when you come to think of it, this fouling
the minds of the young to turn a dirty penny. I don't care what the motives of
the people may be who sow such printed poison broadcast. No good, no possible
good, can come of it being hawked about by young folk in the open Strand of a
night. While I was standing by the post, a girl of about seventeen, most ragged
and dirty, pushed a picture-paper into my face. It was a paper about the devil,
I think, illustrated with a woodcut frontispiece of burlesque hussies, such as
one sees in comic operas. I am sure by the girl's leer it was something vile. At
her heels came a little street urchin, not higher than my elbow, bawling out
another precious fly-leaf concerning Satan in his character of professed
Lothario."
[A night or two later the Police took courage and stopped
this traffic in filthy garbage. Colonel Henderson should have ordered this to be
done before. Ed. - P.I.P.]
The Penny Illustrated Paper, 5 September, 1885