Yesterday's Papers Archive

Dream of a Lobster Fiend

2011-12-05T12:35:00.000-08:00

Rio Bravo

2009-08-24T10:19:00.000-07:00

In 1959, right around my birthday, a movie was released called Rio Bravo. John Wayne was at that time one of those generational hangovers between the thirties generation and the boomers. Baby-faced Ricky Nelson (Ozzie and Harriet), who played a stone-cold killer, sang a few songs as a sop to the kiddies and the bubble-gummers who might be bored by all the craggy faces of the “Greatest” generation.

I attended with an older brother and his cynical thirteen year old friends, one of whom threw a wad of gum at Ricky Nelson, onscreen, to a chorus of appreciative teenage boos. As sweet and treacley as Ricky Martin’s personality was he did master the double gun twirl which he pulled off with much aplomb. Elvis had sacrificed his sideburns and ducktail for a respectable army crew-cut the previous year in 1958 and radio (except for a few talented bands like Dion and the Belmonts), was a bland wasteland of pimply teenage idols who sold millions to adoring tweeny fans.

Walter Brennan, star of TV’s Real McCoys, and a best selling recording artist on “Old Rivers,” played Stumpy, John Wayne’s cantankerous sidekick, bringing some much needed comic relief to an otherwise bleak film of alcoholism and violence. Like John Wayne, Republican Walter Brennan would become persona non grata to the hippie left of the oncoming sixties. Dean Martin as well, the drunken bugger insulted rock royalty when he ridiculed the Rolling Stones on his show in 1964.

As sidekicks go, though, Brennan was one of the best of a group of comic men that included Gabby Hayes, Chill Wills, Andy Devine and Slim Pickens. When Slim Pickens was gutshot in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and staggered off to a Bob Dylan dirge, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, was that Peckinpah’s tribute to the passing of the “American Sidekick?” At any rate Brennan’s voice was unforgettable; he was one of the funniest sidekicks in the movie business. John Wayne teased Stumpy unmercifully, and he limped through the movie in a permanent state of grumpy, bruised, hurt feelings.

Dell Comics (“are good comics”) released a comic book adaptation of the movie, illustrated by the prolific Alex Toth, as they did every Hollywood film and television show in that period, from Santiago to Quentin Durward. The artists worked from movie stills provided by the studios and yet I noticed they never seemed to capture likenesses that well.

Dell, in keeping to their “Pledge to Parents,” that their comic magazines contained only “clean and wholesome entertainment,” left the blood out of the following scene. In the film it was the dripping blood that alerts the town drunk, played by Martin, that a cowpoke in the rafters has a bead on him. The blood was crucial to the film but left out of the adaptation.

The adaptation was actually quite well scripted, in 32 pages little of the plot of the film was left out. None of the actors, however, was portrayed in a very recognizable way. The worst were Walter Brennan, who bears no resemblance to the grizzled sidekick, and Angie Dickinson, likewise. Could be they had to make do without a movie still of that actress. Toth may have been a dud as a caricaturist of celebrities but his impressionistic artwork was up to his usual standards.

Cultural Aspects of Serial Cartoons

2009-03-27T12:08:00.000-07:00

“It may almost be set down as a law of cultural history that the vulgar amusements of today are the highbrow art of tomorrow.”

Some Cultural Aspects of Serial Cartoons; or, Get a Load of those Funnies, by Ignatius G. Mattingly, Harper’s Magazine 1954.

Morland the Painter

2009-03-07T18:05:00.001-08:00

James Lindridge

2009-02-17T16:07:00.000-08:00

Investigating the obscure and often mysterious origins of the authors of penny bloods can be very pleasing when you discover some unknown bit of information; on the other hand it can also lead to bewildered frustration. One of the most mysterious and elusive authors of all is James Lindridge, author of “Tyburn Tree,” a rattling penny blood which featured the colorful characters of Blueskin, Jonathan Wild, Captain Jem Macleane, Captain Fury, Dick Flybynight and the Black Gang, Sal the Gonoff, Blackmoor, Captain Grawler, Gipsey Betty, Jenny Diver, Handsome Jack, Lawyer Doom, Beauty Ellis, Tramping Ned, Mother Sin, and the alchemist Dr. Trotter.

I took the following notes from the copy I read;

Tyburn Tree; or, The Mysteries of the Past, by J. Dicks, Esq. Author of “The Old Manor House” &c., &c. Beautifully Illustrated. London : G. Purkess, Compton Street, Soho ; and all booksellers. 44 parts, single column, 358 pages.

The artist was not named but it was definitely W. H. Thwaites, illustrator of Pierce Egan Junior’s Robin Hood and G. W. M. Reynolds’s Mysteries of London published by John Dicks. In the gutters were squibs advertising :

“Now Publishing. The King of the Beggars; or, Bampflyde Moore Carew by G. Purkess.”
“Jack Rann ; Alias Sixteen String Jack, By G. Purkess. No. 2 Given away with No.1.”
“The Corsican Brothers. In penny numbers.”

The author of the British Library copy of Tyburn Tree; or, the Mysteries of the Past is given as Jayhohenn DEEHISEEKAYESS Esq., pig-Latin for John Dicks. The publisher was R. S. Swift: London.1849. UCLA has a copy and this note; “attributed to James Lindridge, cf. Summers, Montague. A gothic bibliography. London [1941]” A contemporary, Thomas Frost, author of the above mentioned Corsican Brothers, was first to attribute Tyburn Tree to Lindridge.

Lately while perusing the periodicals of the past I came across the following paragraph :

Society for the Encouragement of Vice. -

“It is with strong feelings of disgust we notice a Society instituted for such an infamous purpose; but it is a fact that a club, consisting of between 30 and forty fellows, having a Treasurer, President, Stewards, &c. is established to defray in common the charges which any member may incur by bastardy (sic). We shall at present abstain from giving further particulars, but the parties may depend upon it that if the Society be not shortly dissolved, we shall give publicity to their names, and call down on them that indignation and contempt which they so justly deserve, and bring those dressed in “brief authority” to condign punishment.”
From the Brighton Gazette, December 31, 1824, reprinted in the New Times.

This is so strikingly similar to a chapter in another Lindridge work The Merry Wives of London a Romance of Metropolitan Life, by the Author of The “Socialist Girl,” etc., etc., that I have to believe he took his scenes from this 1828 story. Frank Jay calls it a “most extraordinary and extremely reprehensible work,” Montague Summers described it as “pseudo-pornography.” A sample of the purple prose :

“Am I in godly company?” she whispered to him.
“The sons and daughters of Satan do abound here; but presently we will destroy them with the sword of Gideon!” replied Jasper, giving her hand a palpable squeeze.
“Is it sinful to dance ?”
“No; or else it were sinful to lie with a man.”
“Fie ! that is natural.”
“Quite; and proper, too, when the parties are agreeable. The world must be populated, madam.”
“Verily it must; it was the law given to Abraham.”
“The wages of continence are death.”
“I feel it to be so. Would that we could pray !”
“On your back, madam - very proper wish; but not allowed here.”

Not one fact is known about James Lindridge, not his date of birth, or date of death. One John Dicks was very well known, the publisher John Thomas Dicks, who bears one connection with Lindridge : he was the foremost employer of W. H. Thwaites, the illustrator. If Dicks was an author he kept very quiet about it. Frank Jay says that The Secret History of the Court of England from the accession of George the Third to the death of George the Fourth, by the Right Hon. Lady Anne Hamilton was published by John Dicks, which is unlikely since he was 14 years old at the time.

There were plenty of James Lindridge’s in the UK. In Frindsbury, Kent there was a James born in 1798, another James in 1814, and another in 1815. In 1825 there was another from Ashford, Kent and one from High Halden. There were James Lindridge’s residing in Kent right up to 1940. Unfortunately I can find no information about their occupations. For what it’s worth our Lindridge did publish one title with that geographical location ; De Lisle; or, the Fair Maid of Kent.

Bibliography :

1845 *Tales of Shipwrecks and Adventures at Sea* "containing talented
sketches of the sea and seamen, and truthful narratives of
shipwrecks, fires, mutinies, famines and every danger of this life of
peril, rendering it the handsomest, largest, and best pennyworth ever
offered to the public." Sixpence. 60 Nos. Thirty engravings
Illustrated by Landells and others. William M. Clark, 17, Warwick
Lane.

1845 *The Life and Adventures of Jack Rann, Alias Sixteen-String
Jack the Highwayman* By James Lindridge. London : G. Purkess. (BM -
Block, The English Novel)

1845 *Jack Rann, Alias Sixteen-String Jack.* By James Lindridge,
Author of "De Lisle," "Tyburn Tree" &c. London : G. Purkess, Compton
Street, Soho. Illustrated by Thwaites. 52 Nos. (Ono)

1848*Tyburn Tree; or, The Mysteries of the Past* By J. Dicks, Esq.
Author of "the Old Manor House," &c., &c. (Charlotte Smith)
beautifully illustrated. London: G. Purkess, Compton street, Soho;
and all Booksellers. University of Alberta copy. ND 1848 attribution
U of A catalogue. Illustrations by W. H. Thwaites.

1848*The Adventures of Marmaduke Midge, the Pickwickian legatee* by
the author of "Tyburn Tree" (James Lindridge, sometimes this title is
wrongly attributed to Edward Viles) 86 pgs. London : G. Vickers.
(1848 ? BL)

1849 *Tyburn Tree; or, The Mysteries of the Past* By Jayhohenn
Deehiseekayess, Esq., (pseud. James Lindridge) W. H. Thwaites,
illustrator. G. Purkess, Compton Street, Soho. BL.

1850 *Tyburn Tree; or, The Mysteries of the Past* James Lindridge.
George Vickers, Holywell Street. October 29, 1850, 40 Nos. (Jay)

1850*The Merry Wives of London. A Romance of Metropolitan Life.* By
the Author of The "Socialist Girl," etc., etc. "When a woman is
depraved by man, her own sex, strange to say, are her bitterest
enemies." - Mrs. Hutchinson. London : G. Vickers, 28 and 29, Holywell
Street, Strand. James Lindridge, Illustrated by Thwaites. 26 Nos. 200
pages. (Ono)

1850 *De Lisle ;or, the Shipwrecked Stranger* James Lindridge.
London, 49 parts. Oxford Library.

1850 *De Lisle ;or, the Shipwrecked Stranger* James Lindridge.
London : William Caffyn. The author identifies himself on p. 270 as
author of "The Ruined Cottage" which was "The Ruined Cottage; or, The
Farmer's Maid," by Hannah Maria Jones in 78 Nos. from same publisher.
In section titled "Parting Words" the author refers to himself as "a
very young man." Printer : W. M. Clark. Trinity College, Dublin.

1850 *Jack Rann, Alias Sixteen String Jack* by James Lindridge. March
23, 1850. George Purkess, Compton Street, Soho. (Jay)

1851 *Jenny Diver, The Female Highwayman* James Lindridge.
Illustrated by W. H. Thwaites. S. J. Collins January 25.

1851*Jonathan Wild; or, The Thief taker's Daughter* By Ambrose
Hudson. London : W. Winn, 34, Holywell Street, Strand. Illustrated by
W. H. Thwaites.

1857 *Tyburn Tree; or, The Mysteries of the Past* James Lindridge.
George Purkess, Compton Street, Soho. (Jay)

1860 ?*Tyburn Tree* in four 100-page parts issues. Others were
*Handsome Jack ; or, the Shadow of the Scaffold* *Captain M'Cleane;
or, the Gallop to the Gallows* *Dick Flybynight and the Black Gang*
NY : De Witt. (Bill Blackbeard)

1861*Tyburn Tree; or, the Mysteries of the Past* By James Lindridge.
Thwaites Illustration. 31 nos. London : R. S. Swift, 1861. (Ono)

1865 * Tyburn Tree; or, The Highwaymen of England* London : George
Howe. 30 Nos. 1865. (Ono)

1868 *Sixteen-String Jack, the Noble Hearted Highwayman* 19 nos.
Illustrated Wrapper gives title *The Life and Adventures of Jack Rann
Sixteen-String Jack* London : A. Ritchie, 6, Red Lion-court, Fleet-
street, E.C. Nos. 1 & 2, price one penny. Splendid colour Plate
Gratis. (Ono)

My guess is that these are two similar titles by two different authors :

1846*Tales of Shipwrecks and Adventures at Sea with celebrated
voyages, amusing tales and anecdotes* Edited by James Lindridge. With
illustrations. London : W. M. Clark, 1846. (BM-Block, English Novel.)

Tales of Shipwrecks and Adventures at Sea: ... with celebrated voyages, amusing tales ... and ... anecdotes. Illustrated with ... engravings ... Edited by J. L. No. 1-59. LINDRIDGE. James
London, 1846. 8o.

Tales of shipwrecks and other disasters at sea ... Embellished with engravings from drawings by E. Landells.
BINGLEY. Thomas
London: Charles Tilt, 1839. pp. xvi, 194: plates. 8o.

Tales of Shipwrecks and other Disasters at Sea ... New edition. [With plates.]
BINGLEY. Thomas
pp. vi. 191. T. J. Allman: London, 1864. 16o.

Tales of Shipwrecks and other Disasters at Sea Boston : Tappan & Dennet, 1842. BINGLEY. Thomas

Tales about Travellers: their perils, adventures and discoveries ... With engravings.
BINGLEY. Thomas
pp. viii. 194. Charles Tilt: London, 1840. 16o.

Der Dough vas Haunted

2008-09-08T13:16:00.000-07:00

February 19, 1918. Of course Dirks had nothing to do with Hearst's organization at this date. The Canadian editor's practice was to write the topper information. Thus Walter Allman's 'American Home' became 'Canadian Home.' Must be John Campbell Cory.

Katzies by Opper?

2008-09-04T17:11:00.000-07:00

I have heard that Frederick Burr Opper ghost-penciled (but did not ink) a Katzies page for Dirks. Both the African-American and the Katzies faces in the second panel have that Hooligan look, very much like Opper's work.

Hitt and Runn by "Hitt" 1917

2008-09-04T15:37:00.000-07:00

Hitt and Runn by "Hitt" (Oscar Hitt?)

Hitt drew "Bud Fisher" almost better than Bud Fisher and added a touch of George Herriman and Cliff Sterrett to boot. Dates on top of strips.

Shenanigan Kids

2008-09-04T14:47:00.001-07:00

The Katzies daily turned into the Shenanigan Kids about October 23, 1918 and was still running January 3, 1919.

The Katzies are Coming !

2008-09-04T12:39:00.001-07:00

May 28, 1917-June 1, 1917 Winnipeg Evening Tribune.

Calvert H Smith

2008-08-24T15:35:00.000-07:00

Calvert H. Smith photo-realist cartoons appeared in The Editor's Drawer section of Harper's Magazine during 1913-1914.

Massachusetts Ploughman Comics

2008-08-23T09:05:00.000-07:00

Bottom strip by C. E. Toles from the Winnipeg Free Press March 2, 1901

Visit Andy Konkykru's Early Comics for a historical treat.

C. E. Toles and Toronto Saturday Night

2008-08-22T06:57:00.000-07:00

Toronto Saturday Night was first published in the year 1887, in Toronto, Ontario, and is still publishing to this day as a magazine. The blurb on their website claims “a unique and intriguing perspective on our national life in politics and power, sex and crime, entertainment and culture, arts and literature, style and design.”

The first issue, which resembled a newspaper more than a journal, was dated December 3,1887, and featured serials, theatre, music, book reviews, society columns, jokes and gossip, but there was something new and important in it’s pages as well, single and multi-paneled caption cartoons.

The cartoons were drawn from sources all over the world. Americans with luminous names like Opper, Kemble and A. B. Frost were most prominent, with material bought or borrowed from Puck, Judge, Life and Harpers’ Weekly. Cartoons from British newspapers and journals and the German Fliegende Blatter were published more infrequently.

The June, 29, 1895 issue of TSN printed a four-panel caption strip, ‘The Dog’s Revenge’ in which a dog makes good use of firecrackers tied to his tail to light up a box full of fireworks and send them to explode on top of two urchin tormentors. Like the early American strips by Opper, the strip was printed vertically. The three characters moved thru the panels against a blank background and still the panels had depth and perspective. It was signed by C. E. Toles. Two Toles caption comics appeared in that issue and Toles kept the funny coming all through 1895.

Toles was an American cartoonist and his cartoons originated in the New York Herald. His subjects were the topics of the day ; bicycles, bloomers, cops and bums. The strips, varying from 2, 3, 4, 5 and six panels, contained a population of Irish cops, Irish tramps, Irish cooks, comic ‘darkies’, newspaper vendors, telegraph urchins, cannibals and shoeshine boys.

An officious cop berates passersby in ‘The Bicycle Policeman,’ a single-panel shows 4 tramps and a dog sitting on a wall under the caption ‘Real Roadside Flowers,’ the Climber Brothers from a circus rescue Nellie Golder from a third floor hotel fire by forming a human ladder in ‘A Thrilling Escape.’ Toles must have been enjoying himself hugely, each issue was filled with his cartoons.

December 21, 1895 ‘Christmas Greetings’, a one-panel, pictured the bespectacled artist , one hand on his waist the other on his chin, bent forward, surrounded by a circle of his character types in bubbles, cops, bums, blacks and messenger boys.

Single-panel cartoons by Toles and others also filled the paper’s empty spaces. Wherever there was a blank spot there was a Toles cartoon. He drew animals, pet parrots, alley dogs and hungry cats. Occasionally he drew comics with a jungle background. ’A Suggestion For the Next Bicycle Show’ (TSN) has an Englishman on a bicycle chased by cannibals, (one wearing a flour sack) while the one-panel ‘Football in Darkest Africa’ (TES) had an ostrich who plays football with a lion, tiger, kangaroo, camel, elephant, parrot, rhino, boa constrictor and monkey.

Toles began a series of illustrations that were printed on the front cover. To that point photographs or paintings of well-known personages had the front page. Toles cartoons also appeared in the Toronto Evening Star which would later be responsible for the Canadian Star Weekly, a weekly magazine containing a comic supplement of American comic strips. To this date they had only printed one or two odd crude single-panels.

Toles drew the first caption strip to appear in the paper. His first vertical caption strip was ‘Peeler Ike’s Reward’, January 9, 1896, in which a millionaire is robbed twice in 4 panels. Soon he was joined by Americans Archer, Lucas, W. M. Goodes, and C. A. David. David and Archer had been fellow caption-strippers for Toronto Saturday Night.

His characters remained the same and again a bucketful of humour appeared until, fittingly, he drew the last cartoon in the Star, a one-panel cartoon featuring coloured people. No more would appear until 1905, when pages of Chips, Funny Wonder, Puck and Life cartoons appeared on humour pages, eventually giving way to the chromo platinum comic strips of Outcault, Dirks and Opper.

Talented Toles produced a large amount of work in a very short period of time. During the 18 months from June, 29, 1895 to December 24, 1896 (the day of his last Toronto Evening Star cartoon) in at least two Toronto papers, a largely unknown and forgotten cartoonist filled every available space he came across with laughter and slapstick.

Tom Browne (1897-1910)

2008-06-15T11:36:00.000-07:00

Tom Browne Artist and Man by R. S. Warren Bell, Strand Magazine 1910

Boy Life in London

2008-05-12T16:30:00.000-07:00

In 1885 Floodgate Street, with its narrow alleys, was plundered by a gang of boys straight from the penny dreadfuls. An ‘aggressive’ street-thief named Trunkey (for his prominent nose) was the captain of these self-styled “Boy Pirates” of Floodgate Street.

His Slawkenbergian proboscis was pretty well matched by a portentously large mouth, which his friends were wont to speak of as his “gap.” In addition to this, he was deeply and abundantly be-freckled, and had a shock of hair so fiery-red that even the toning-down effects of dirt could scarcely dim its lurid brightness.

Though his boots were too large for his calloused feet, and his dirty pants were held up by a home-made belt made up of rope and broken braces, he walked with a confident swagger. He carried a ‘neddy’ about with him and his pockets were stuffed with ‘arf-bricks’ for throwing at unoffending strangers passing by. His pirates were boys between ten and fifteen years of age, surrounded by poverty and drunkeness, neglected by their parents, (if they had any,) starving, beaten, hungry, and dirty.

They were the terror of their neighbourhood. They stole pennies from children, old women, and shop-keepers alike. They stripped empty houses to their boards, nicked fruit and vegetables from the street stands, robbed boats on the wharves, and assaulted drunks for their property, a species of crime known as “bug hunting.”

With the spoils they would buy ale, perform popular songs picked up in frequenting music-halls, with such titles as Up To Dick, That’s Where You Make a Mistake, The Strict Q T, Can You Lend My Mother a Saucepan, and Mickey’s on the Booze, and attend three-penny gaffs, to cheer the hero and boo the villain. They also read penny dreadfuls; the Wild Boys of London, Charlie Peace; or The Burglar and the Beauty, and The Boy Bushrangers.

The author of “A Pirate Crew,” from All the Year Round, No. 845, Feb. 7, 1885, was probably drawing on his own boyhood memories of the penny dreadfuls since all these titles came out in the sixties and seventies. It is extremely doubtful that publishers would take the chance on reprinting “The Wild Boys of London” in 1885 when the book had been stopped mid-serial by the police in 1877. Newsagents suffered the most from the suppression and would have been loathe to handle a publication that would bring the law down on their heads.

The odd title here is “The Boy Bushrangers,” a title that is on no list that I know of. There was, however, a serial in Sons of Brittania begun on April 25, 1874 titled “The Young Bushranger, a Story of the Australian Wilds,” by our old friend Vane St. John which was possibly printed in penny numbers by Hogarth House under the title “The Boy Bushranger.” For all his faults as a stylist St. John told a thrilling tale ideally suited for the penny dreadfuls. Some of his scenes are quite haunting like this excerpt;

“…suddenly as they looked they saw a strange and terrible sight.

The heavy, white mist which had so suddenly made its appearance did not extend down to the surface of the water, but left a space of a few feet clear.

And along this space, gliding noiselessly over the bottom of the lake, was a canoe, a large canoe, the rowers of which were skeletons, and the oars of which made no sound.

Weird, and wonderful, and horrible it looked as it passed onwards, without so much as a ripple of the water, save where the prow met the waves, its ghastly crew bending to and fro, and keeping time as if to some unheard chorus.”

Penny Dreadfuls and the bloodthirsty melodramas of the penny gaffs were blamed for having a pernicious effect on the children of London. Of course ! Penny numbers were shrewdly published on Saturday to act as catchpennies to the crowd of impoverished and working-class youth, most of them only having Sundays to spare for leisure activities.

“The school teachers read the novels of Mrs. Henry Wood and Edna Lyall. In the window of the local paper-shop the Police News and the Penny Illustrated were displayed on Saturday nights, and boys bought the lives of Jack Sheppard, Charles Peace, and other notorious burglars in endless penny numbers.” ‘The Lives of the People’ from Fifty Years, Memories and Contrasts. Thomas Jones, C. H. 1935.

Not every reader was susceptible but enough evidence survives to show that some youths were greatly influenced by the ‘penny poison’ that they read, or had read to them. For a homeless street arab life was a constant struggle to feed himself, theft was a natural response to poverty and hopelessness. To such as these Jack Sheppard and the other boy burglars must have seemed princes worthy of emulation.

“The mischievous lad who some time since presented a pistol at Her Majesty’s head, and got well whipped for his pains, was found in possession of a collection of lives of celebrated highwaymen, and the various gangs of youthful burglars and would-be highwaymen who have lately appeared in the dock have one and all modelled their career upon the heroes of criminal novels. Only the other day a terrible illustration occurred of the actual effect of this gallows literature upon weak minds. A young man, nineteen years of age, named Westby, shot his father dead at Nottingham, having first murdered a little office boy at the office of the solicitor where he was employed, “merely to strengthen his nerve,” and then took refuge in a fowl-house, where he was captured with a revolver in his possession, with which, as he frankly owned, he intended, when the police came, to shoot as many as possible. The key to this otherwise inexplicable outburst of homicidal fury was afforded by the poor mother’s words :- “My son was very fond of reading, and would sit for hours at his favourite amusement, studying periodicals and sensational literature.” By this “sensational literature” his habits appear to have been formed, and they were eccentric enough. He would not, we are told, “allow anyone to visit his bedroom, which was entered by an opening in the floor. To this opening, he had attached a trapdoor, with bolts, and at night he always fastened himself in. He had also pulled down the bedstead, and had been in the habit of sleeping in a hammock slung up from the roof, while around the walls of the room were a number of pictures of the ‘Life of Dick Turpin,’ &c. A singular collection of cuttings from newspapers was also found in his desk at Mr. Fraser’s office, including recipes for the manufacture of guncotton and other explosives, together with accounts of marvellous adventures. Here is a direct instance of the effects which the modern substitutes for the Newgate Calendar have upon weak intellects and crazy brains.” - Penny Dreadfuls. November 26, 1881.The Saturday Review.

As early as 1841 the Sixth Report of the Inspector of Prisons in England found that a “vast number of boy malefactors, when examined, were found to have been misled by witnessing the performance of such plays as Jack Sheppard.” Chamber’s Edinburgh Journal No. 515, Dec. 11, 1841, covered the report under the title “Felon Literature” and quotes numerous boys testimony to their influence.

An eighteen year old said “I have seen Jack Sheppard performed; I thought he was a capital example for those who followed the trade.” A fourteen year old thought Jack Sheppard was “very nice, and if I was only as clever I would be thought the very best of thieves.” Another; “I had his life, some boy took it from me; most boys have his life.” A twenty-one year old said “..I noticed them picking one another’s pockets on the stage; it gave everyone a great insight how to do it. If I did not know how to do such tricks when I went into the theatre, I am sure I could when I came out.”

One eighteen year old identified as J. H. had just entered into the fifth year of his apprenticeship when he came across a “Life” of Jack Sheppard. He then saw the play, probably in a penny gaff, it “excited in my mind an inclination to imitate him; the part was well acted at the play. I read how he got into places; and I had a wish to try if I could do the same. The play made the greatest impression on my mind. A few weeks after I saw the play, I committed the first robbery. When the scene is hoisted, he is carving his name upon a beam which goes across the shop. I wrote ‘Jack Sheppard’ on the shop-beam, just as it was in the play. It occurred to my mind that this trade was like my own- a carpenter. I often thought about it when I was at work. J. and me were always talking about it at the shop. Sheppard used to follow carding, and that set us ‘agaite.’ (After reciting various robberies committed by himself and his companions, this lad says) :- We continued to talk about Jack Sheppard, and we were getting like Jack and his companions. I am quite convinced that if I had never seen the play, I should never have got into this trouble. The play did me far more harm than the book. We did these things for the name of the thing; we were not short of money.”

James Greenwood, “The Amateur Casual,” in The Seven Curses of London, cautions against taking such tales at face value. “A talent for gammoning “Lady Green,” as the prison chaplain is irreverently styled, is highly appreciated among the thieving fraternity.” Greenwood toured the boys wing of the gaol with a governor known by the boys to blame penny dreadfuls for their pernicious influence. All boys when asked would say “It was them there penny numbers what I used to take in, sir,” and receive a pat on the head and an homily for his troubles.

Considering the terrible lives they led boys really had no need to blame the penny dreadfuls. The Bee-Hive, a working man’s newspaper reported the following sad story in 1870;

BOW-STREET. James Anderson, a ragged little urchin, of about eight years of age, was charged with stealing money from a till. A corn chandler disposed that he saw the prisoner crawl into his shop and creep behind the counter. He put his hand into the till and went out of the shop. Prosecutor followed, and ultimately captured the prisoner, who by this time had thrown the money away. Prosecutor lost altogether about four shillings. Some of the money was picked up by the boys in the street. - The father of the prisoner here stepped forward, and said that his boy had become corrupted by bad companions amongst whom he had fallen, and who frequently enticed him into a “Penny Gaff” in the Euston-Road. The money was doubtless stolen on purpose to visit that place. He (the father) had often beaten his boy with a strap for going to the place, which was the resort of thieves and bad girls. - Mr. Vaughan said, that a similar case to the one now before him, the “Penny Gaff” in the Euston-Road, had been alluded to. He should request Mr. Balding (the inspector on duty at the court), to report the frequent complaints that had been made concerning the latter place to the Chief Commissioner of Police immediately. - Mr. Vaughan (to the prisoner) : Who told you to go to that place ? - The prisoner : No one, Sir, I went with another boy, a cripple. I have been there about six times. - Mr. Vaughan : Were there many people there when you went ? - The prisoner : Yes, Sir, it was always crowded. - Mr. Vaughan : And what do you see there, little boy ? - The prisoner : “Oh, they give us about three songs; then there’s some actin’, then they puts down the blind, and that’s all you see.” (Laughter.)- Mr. Vaughan : What kind of acting was it ? - The prisoner : Eh ? Mr. Vaughan : What kind of acting was it ? - The prisoner : Oh ; murdering and that. - Mr. Vaughan at this stage remanded the prisoner for a week.

Thomas Beggs blamed poverty and drunkeness for juvenile depravity but also took note of the young thieves cultural amusements :

“The amusements of these youths are the low theatres, the dancing saloons, and entertainments of a like description. Many of the penny theatres are frequented only by boys and girls who are already thieves and prostitutes. “Jack Sheppard,” “Dick Turpin,” Claude Duval,” and other exhibitions of dexterous and daring crime attract the attention and ambition of these boys, and each one endeavours to emulate the conduct of his favourite hero. In fact, what the stage representations of a former period have done to excite the imagination of the vulgar for military and naval glory, these wretched places effect for the unhappy youths brought within the sphere of their influence. In a continual whirl of excitement and intoxication, the boy learns the lessons which finish the candidates for the Penal settlements, if disease or death does not arrest his career. Few who traverse the gay streets of the Metropolis, have any conception of the number of pitfalls, showily and artfully covered over, but full of misery and wickedness, “of rottenness and dead men’s bones.” -An Inquiry into the Extent and causes of Juvenile Depravity, By Thomas Beggs, 1849.

To be fair, my favourite Victorian essayist, Charles Manby Smith (1804-1880), an author who came up from the working-class, had a differing opinion of demoralizing effects of the penny gaffs;

“Please to observe- here is no drunkenness, no riot, no fighting, squabbling, not even discourtesy; while there are evident watchfulness and precaution to prevent anything of the kind. Note also, that in the representations given there is nothing more morally objectionable than meets you on the boards of the licensed theatre; and that, with the exception of the swell-mobsman’s song, parallels to which are heard every night at the regular theatres, the performances here are purity itself compared with such dramas as Jack Sheppard and Robert Macaire. Would you root out the Penny Gaff, and compel the penny-paying public, who ‘must be amused,’ remember, to find amusement elsewhere ?”

Charles Manby Smith described the typical industrious “Newsboy’s Day” in Chambers’s Journal No. 489, May 14, 1853. Charley is poor but honest and we can be sure that, while he may enjoy Jack Sheppard and similar romances, the effect on him will be negligible.

“Saturday night is the bright spot in Charley’s week. Then he gets his wages, which go to his mother; and then he can sit up as late as he likes, because he can get up as late as he likes on the morrow; and because he can do both, he will go to the play if he can manage to raise the necessary sixpence. He looks upon the drama, which he calls the ‘drawmer,’ as the grandest of all our institutions, and he has very original ideas on the subject of plays and acting. He knows, as he says, lots of tragic speeches, and spouts them to Billy as they lay in bed, sometimes dropping off to sleep in the middle of a soliloquy. He has doubts whether the pantomime is quite legitimate, but wonders, with Billy, why it isn’t played all the year round- is sure it would draw. He knows of course, that Hamlet is ‘first-rate,’ and Macbeth the same; but his sympathies go with that little pig-tailed tar in the shiny hat at the Victoria, who, hitching up his canvas trousers with one hand, and shaking a short dumpy cutlass in the other, hacks and hews his way through a whole regiment of red-coats, who surprise him in the smugglers cave, and gets clear off, leaving half his adversaries dead on the stage. The valiant smuggler is Charley’s hero, and he admires him amazingly, never giving a thought to the why and the wherefore, or suspecting for a moment that it is far more honourable to work hard, as he does, in helping to provide an honest crust for those who are dear to him, than to be the boldest smuggler that ever had a valid claim to the gallows.”

Penny dreadfuls were also responsible for many boys running away from home in search of adventure.*** Two boys, fifteen and sixteen set out to walk from Manchester to Liverpool but feeling homesick turned back toward home. They were detained by a police-officer in Warrington who confiscated “a couple of loaded and capped pistols and ammunition, and a list of books, including Jack Sheppard, Paul Girard the Cabin-boy, Hard Times, and Life in the Wilds. Two more boys, heavily armed were stopped in Liverpool trying to stowaway on a ship, and another couple robbed their employers cash-boxes and spent the money on “those dangerously fascinating toys, revolvers and cartridges, the usual ‘penny dreadful’ serials, watches and jewellery,” and still had thirteen pounds cash when arrested.

In America these romantically inclined runaways were known as “dime novel brigands,” and their destination was usually the Wild West. Three boys were brought before a police magistrate and shown to have formed themselves into a gang and established themselves in the hills where they hoped to “carry off and hold to ransom beautiful maidens and wealthy tourists.” They ran out of money and stole some food, then were captured and sent home.

Travelling Wild West shows such as Buffalo Bill and Texas Joe brought to London and Liverpool proved very effective at firing the brains of juvenile miscreants.

“To be a cowboy became the rage, and every lad who could get hold of his mother’s clothesline for a lariat or his father’s wide-awake for a sombrero practise throwing the lasso, till not a dog could prowl the streets without a good chance of being suddenly ‘yanked’ off its legs by a flying rope. The shrill yells of these lads and the loud cracks of their toy-pistols, making day and night hideous, acted as a continual advertisement for the wild west show.”

Many boys wrote letters to Buffalo Bill begging to be employed and listing their qualifications. Failing that they would head for Liverpool with high hopes of making it to Texas. Again they carried knives, revolvers and plenty of ammunition.

“But it is the sea-adventures that are naturally more attractive to the youths of this country than the exploits of hunters, scouts, or cowboys. Few young would-be Crusoes show such determination in running away to sea as the Birkenhead boy, who, when only five years old, hid himself away on a Dublin steamer, and since then had stowed away to Ireland five times. He had also been caught on board the Isle of man steamers. He then disappeared, and it was found that he had stowed away upon the City of Chester, and had gone to new York. There he was captured and sent home. Although only eight years old, his mother is in constant fear he will run away again.”

On a foggy night four boys in a small boat were pulled over by the Thames police. They were well-equipped with a pistol, bullets, powder, percussion caps, biscuits, stationary, candles, matches, a tea-pot, a tea-kettle, a lock with fittings, a bullet-mould, a compass, a song-book, and (you knew it) several copies of boys serials. They faced a long trip; a letter was found ready for posting to one child’s parents, telling them the plan was to sail to Australia, on the other side of the world.

“The penny-dreadful’ portion of the boat’s equipment probably accounted for this attempted voyage; but one would think that boy’s of their ages, however ignorant, could scarcely imagine that Australia was to be reached in a small open row-boat.” - Quotes from ‘Boyish Freaks,’ Chambers’s Journal. April 21, 1888.

It does seem that penny dreadfuls and penny dramas did have a bad influence on the poor and the children of the honest working class. Not everyone was affected but enough evidence remains to suggest that while they were not a direct cause they did provide would-be boy-burglars, boy-pirates, and boy highwaymen with the appropriate chap-book heroes to emulate. Poverty, drink and fractured family life were more direct causes of juvenile crime. A report in the Times of December 30, 1847 is a startling example of the fatalistic attitudes carried about London by neglected children :

Mansion House.- A boy of about twelve years of age named William Lipley, was brought before the Lord mayor on the charge of stealing a piece of beef. From the statement of the officer it appeared that the prisoner belonged to a most dangerous gang of little boys, who were very much practised in robbing women in Bishopsgate-street and Leadenhall-market, and whose diminutive size gave them facilities unknown to children of larger growth. The charge was proved.
The Lord Mayor.- Do you say that this boy is an old hand at thieving ?
The Officer.- Certainly, my lord. He has been often in custody. When I caught him, I asked him where he supposed he should at last get to ?
“Go to,” said he, “why to the gallows, to be sure.”
The Lord Mayor.- Did you say so, prisoner ?
The Boy.- Yes; the man’s right enough. I did say so.
The prisoner was then committed to trial.

The same attitude can be found in young Captain Trunkey. Caught red-handed on a Saturday night with his hands in a till he was arrested and kept until Monday morning when he was conveyed in a Black Maria to the court.

“The usual crowd that witnesses the departure of the van was duly assembled, and the captain, knowing that numbers of those composing it were his friends and admirers, rose to the occasion. As he had to move at a jog-trot to keep up with the stalwart constable who held him by the arm, he emerged from the station-gate in a rather Jack-in-the-box fashion. When fully in sight, however, he steadied himself, put his free arm “akimbo,” set back his head, and assuming- as well as he could- the manner of a “Lion Comique,” trolled out, as he was scuffled along :

O ain’t I having a day,
Enjoying myself this way !
O it’s proper, you know,
And I do like it so,
O ain’t I having a day.

Still singing, he was literally “chucked” into the van, its door closed upon him, and he had looked his last on liberty for some years to come. Within the hour, the order for his detention, till the age of sixteen, upon an industrial-school training-ship was made.”

Charles Stevens

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“Ildica’s lacerated shoulder bled so freely that both her own and Flavia's fairer skin were sprinkled with crimson rain….”

In the seventies Charles Stevens was in great demand as a publisher, editor and writer. He turned to historical fiction with tales of Dark Age Britain; of Cromwell’s time; of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew and the war of the Spanish Armada. He began manufacturing brutal penny dreadful historical serials for the Gentleman’s Journal, Boys of England, Boys Herald, the Sons of Brittania, the Young Briton &c., &c., &c.

He was particularly enamoured of the period of the Roman Invasion of Britain. He wrote Caractus, The Champion of the Arena, Caradoc the Briton, Spartacus; or, The Revolt of the Gladiators, The Master of the Lion, Nicias the Spartan, The Roman Standard Bearer, and The Sentinel of Pompeii.

Old Boy's Book Collector Henry Steele once said ; “It was these tales that stimulated my love of history and certainly impressed many dates of important events on my mind, which the ordinary school tuition would have failed to do.”

The Roman Standard Bearer, sub-titled A Tale of Britain’s First Invasion, begins in Rome where two of the gladiators, a Briton, Glaucus, and a Roman, Claudius, form a warm friendship in the arena. The story then follows their adventures in Britain where Caesar’s legions are startled by the sight of naked Britons with “stalwart bodies and sturdy limbs, which were tattooed with quaint devices of birds, beasts, reptiles, trees and flowers, from chest to ankle.”

Stevens heroes were no longer boys, they were bloodthirsty men with facial hair, and though the women were sold as slaves and sacrificed to the bloody gods they were the hard-boiled equal of the men in the arena ;

“Then the beautiful blonde suddenly shot out a lightning blow straight from her round dimpled shoulder, which the brunette avoided by quickly sinking on her knee and letting it pass over her head; but in an instant she was back on her feet again, and ere her antagonist could recover her guard, her steel-plated cestus came crashing down on her exposed chest.

The dull thud of the iron on the soft flesh could be heard in every part of the vast theatre.The stricken girl gave a short quick gasp, and the blood momentarily left her cheeks, as she reeled backwards a yard or more, but still maintained her footing.

Then she rallied and sprang forward to renew the contest, avoiding two blows by rapid movements of her agile body; she caught another on her round right arm, and disregarding the pain, she passed her opponent’s guard and rained a fierce stroke on her beautiful shoulder that cut through to the bone.

Then, with their naked, glowing busts pressed tightly against each other, and their white rounded arms encircling each other’s bodies in no gentle or loving grip, they wrestled for the mastery. To and fro they reeled panting with excitement and anger but in every twist and turn showing some new line of beauty in their undulating swaying forms, so exquisitely modeled and of such rare symmetry.

Sometimes Ildica would, with a hand pressed against each of her adversary’s white shoulders, thrust her body back until ‘twas hard to imagine that it could bend further without snapping the spine asunder, and then her strength would give way, and their chests would come together with a dull thud, and Flavia would quickly throw a milk-white exquisitely modelled leg, bare to the hip, around the darker-skinned, but equally well-proportioned limb of the Lady Ildica, and tighten the coil till every little blue vein would show through the creamy skin, in a vain attempt to hurl her on the sand.

Ildica’s lacerated shoulder bled so freely that both her own and Flavia's fairer skin were sprinkled with crimson rain, and the blonde’s lovely chest already showed ten leaden-coloured bruises made by Ildica’s cestus, but yet neither thought of confessing herself vanquished and they continued to clutch each other’s yielding frames tighter and tighter until each seemed to feel two hearts beating in her body, and their rounded bosoms seemed bursting with the compression.”

When virginal Stella is about to be sacrificed by the Arch-druid in a huge wicker-man, and awaits her fate as a prisoner in a cage in the Den of Maniacs, Stevens paints the scene in purple-bruised prose :

“Naked beauty shrinking from a blow or from contact with anything that is vile or unclean, is sure to be graceful in the extreme, for an elegant pose is somehow, by mere accident, certain to be obtained in such a case, and so it was with Stella.

Her beauteous form, so perfect in its natural outlines, gleamed like a marble statue in the red murky light, and her rounded limbs, creamy skin, snowy neck, and heaving bosoms made her resemble a veritable goddess.

A woman’s beauty will seldom excite pity, however, in another female breast, and so the three harpies before named sprang at the fair Amazon simultaneously and endeavoured to clutch some portion of her delicate frame.Two of them were promptly felled to the floor by Cassibelan, who was happily chained sufficiently close to his sister to be able to render her some assistance, but the third, advancing from quite an opposite direction extended to the full length of her chain and fastened her teeth in Stella’s dimpled back.

The poor girl uttered a cry of pain and sprang in an opposite direction, but only to bring herself within reach of another crouching female form, who seized a white leg and bit deep into her quivering thigh, causing the red blood to spout forth.In vain Stella strove to tear herself away while the length of Cassibelan’s chain would not permit of his rendering any aid in this case.

Her assailant rendered mad by thirst and hunger, clung to her beautiful limb until her hooked nails were buried deep in the broad hip, and sucked a way at her rich young blood as though it had been the most delicious nectar of Olympus.

The Amazon writhed, and trembled, and shrieked ; her flesh actually quivered with the agony she was enduring, but with her little fists she rained blow after blow upon the head of her cannibal assailant, and at length thereby forced her to desist.

The woman with a gasp of satisfaction and relief, relaxed her terrible clutch with teeth and nails, and sank back dreamily back as though in a happy sleep, while Stella, painfully dragging away her injured limb, sunk fainting upon the foul and blood-stained floor of the den.”

It was thrilling serials such as this that caused Henry Steele in 1934 to burst out in praise and poetry about the Sentinel of Pompeii and it’s author, Charley Stevens;

This yarn though it was meant for lads,
Still holds them now that they are dads,
This tale of old boy’s journal fame,
Was given alack ! No author’s name,
I think, however, the story throughout,
Was by Charles Stevens without doubt,
Years ago, a novel written,
Was by that classic writer, Lytton,
Stevens doubtless was inspired,
By this and his ambition fired,
So he wrote “The Sentinel” there and then,
A noble story from an able pen.

The Golden Amazon

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Celebrities Very Much at Home

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George Augustus Sala, Victorian journalist, December 16, 1891. Judy. Celebrities very much at home. Caricature of Buffalo Bill Cody below.

Jean Valjean

2008-04-15T06:52:00.001-07:00

Grimm's Fairy Tales

2008-04-15T06:46:00.000-07:00

Hy. Mayer

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The Many Inventions of Hy. Mayer by V. Robard, Godey's Magazine Vol. CXXXV No.807 Sept. 1897.

American Judy

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Judy, New York, N.Y. : Burgess & Stringer, Vol. 1, no. 1 (Nov. 28, 1846)-v. 1, no. 13 (Feb. 20, 1847). Judy was a weekly edited by Henry Grattan Plunkett. Michael Woolf's father contributed writing and caricatures.

Morgyn the Mighty 1951

2008-04-02T06:23:00.000-07:00

A Literary Tavern

2008-04-01T08:22:00.001-07:00

From > Lions: Living and Dead; or, Personal recollections of the great and gifted, by John Ross Dix (1800?-1865,) London, Partridge and Oakey, 1852. Cruikshank strip above from > The Comic Almanack For 1849. George Cruikshank. Second Series, 1844-1853. Folding plate. From a reprint by Chatto & Windus, 1912.

Smokey Stover

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Smokey Stover by Bill Holman, May 8, 1955

Wild Boys of London

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“Please ReturnEaling 1148.
Sidmouth Lodge,South Ealing,
W.April 13, 1915.

The first edition of “The Wild Boys of London” was completed in 1866 and bears that date on the title. Book I contains 44 Nos. of 8 pp. each and book II contained 59 Nos., making 103 in all. If your imperfect copy is numbered 1 to 74 consecutively, it is certain that it is the second issue, and the story was that it came to an end suddenly, copies being seized by the police. The second issue was somewhere about 1872. The authorship of the work is unknown. There were no gifts with the first issue.There is no certainty as to the authorship of any of the things which you mention, but G. A. Sala was not the writer of “Charley Wag.” Probably it may have been by C. H. Ross. It was published by H. Lea.
Yours Faithfully A. E. Waite.
For Frank Jay.”

Occultist Arthur Edward Waite was born in Brooklyn, New York, on 2 October 1857 to an American sailor and an English woman. He moved to London when he was two and soon picked up the penny dreadful habit. Jay said Arthur Waite “possesses the finest collection of this class of literature (penny dreadfuls) in the United Kingdom." Waite’s complete collection was sold circa 1919 to Mr. John Jeffery, a bookseller and his first edition of The Wild Boys of London (NPC as opposed to Farrah’s truncated version) is probably in a private collection.

The Wild Boys of London; or, the Children of the Night, published by the Newsagents Publishing Company is probably the most famous of all penny dreadfuls even though few people have actually read the work. William Burroughs admitted that they were the genesis of his own Wild Boys characters in books with titles like “Naked Lunch,” “The Nova Express,” and “The Ticket That Exploded.” Burroughs works were an extension of the long tradition of criminal literature that began in the early 19th Century, and he was keenly aware that there was a tradition, that it was still extant in the 20th Century, and that Beat literature (Junkie) was a part of that tradition.

The Ono copy of Wild Boys lacks a title-page but is definitely the edition stopped by the police on issuance of the 74th number, as reported in the Times on December 13, 1877 (p.11). I have a copy of this police-report and it is amusing to read that one news-dealer, (the case was against the retailers not the publishers, a summons was still pending against the proprietor and publisher) a Mr. Wells, 76 years old "indignantly refused to have the books destroyed on the grounds that he was not going to be treated as a child; that worse books were sold every day; and that he was a respectable man, which Mr. Flowers said he could not be if he sold indecent books."

Why the serial was considered indecent is a puzzle. There is some nudity and a scene of flagellation, but such things were common to almost all penny dreadfuls. True the boys are petty criminals, they live off their wits after all, but they are also decent, engaging high-spirited lads with a moral code of their own. They are always ready to help a waif escape from child-stealers or rescue a woman from drowning in the Thames. The real villain here is Mat the Mongrel, who leads Dick Lane's mechanic father astray, first by getting him to join a union, and then when the decent employer is struck, the Mongrel daily leads Dicks father to a life of drunkenness and wife-beating that leads young Dick to wander the streets where he meets the Wild Boys and joins their underground sewer world. The sewers are surprisingly clean in this work compared to the sewers in the books of Edward Ellis (Charles Henry Ross.)

The first boy Dick meets, while passing the doorway of the Victoria Theatre is the Dolphin, a happy dodger with a fondness for penny dreadfuls and melodrama with whom he is already acquainted :

"Hallo, Dick," he said, dancing toward our hero, "What's up ? Goingto see the play ?"

Dick shook his head.

"I am," said the Dolphin, with a laugh, "It's fine. there's Hicks doing the surgeon of Paris; he's got spurs, and such a sword. Pitt's being carried about in a coffin; and Charley Rice was sitting on a post, watching a monkey coming out of chapel."

Hicks was Newton Tree Hicks, an actor in bloody highwayman melodramas at the Victoria Theatre. Charles Rice played in farce and melodrama (including a stint as Blueskin) in the same theatre during 1854-55. In 1863 he was a comedian at the Drury Lane Theatre. Curiously there was a London Romance Company/NPC title of 1864 titled Rose Mortimer; or, The Ballet-Girl's Revenge Being the Romance and Reality of a Pretty Actress's Life Behind the Scenes and Before the Curtain By a Comedian of the T. R. Drury Lane.

One peculiarity of the Wild Boys author is his clumsy use of backward sentences such as ;

“Dismal and dreary enough it was to chill the heart of the poor despairing…”

Unfinished sentences like;

“The boys, with their wild faces and tattered garments, their bare feet and soiled hands; and, above all, that characteristic keenness of eye, which is peculiar to the London street boy alone.”

Run-a-long sentences;

“They being, just then, in the act of moving forward, were, as a matter of course, tripped up and went full length on their faces.”

Amongst the illustrations for Wild Boys of London is an oddity, a serious portrait of ... someone. Artist Harry Maguire drew in two styles, serious and humorous, often in the same serial. This portrait is interesting though, could it be F. Farrah, the publisher, (mentioned in the gutter text) NPC manager Edwin Brett or perhaps even the author ? Portraits of characters were not unknown in dreads but this one bears no caption and as illustrated numbers were posted in shop-windows to entice customers it’s difficult to find a selling point to this piece.

Waite was correct about Charles Henry Ross authorship of Charley Wag but hazards no guess as to who wrote The Wild Boys of London. The Bookseller (1868) noted the following names in connection with the NPC, Vane St. John, Bracebridge Hemyng, J. Redding Ware, Charles Stevens, W. Thompson Townsend, and John Cecil Stagg, all of who went directly to work on the fledgling Boys of England story paper when the NPC ceased publishing circa 1866-67.

With a list of suspects and plenty of text to compare it was surprisingly easy to identify the author of Wild Boys. I have compared texts from Who shall be Leader? by Vane St. John, Chevy Chase; or, the Battle on the Border, by John Cecil Stagg, and Giles Evergreen; or, Fresh from the Country, by W. T. Townsend, as well as works by Hemyng and Stevens. I checked serials in Reynolds’s Miscellany and Sons of Brittania. My conclusion is that the author of The Wild Boys of London; or, the Children of the Night, was Vane Ireton Shaftsbury St. John, born in Edmonton, London, August 19, 1838.

Vane Ireton Shaftesbury St. John (1838-1911) was the youngest of eleven children of James Augustus St. John (born plain James John in Wales) (1795-1875) writer and editor, and Eliza Agar. The elder St. John got his journalistic start writing and editing radical newspapers for Richard Carlile and others. His older brothers, all involved in journalism, were Percy Bolingbroke St. John (“The Blue Dwarf,”) Bayle St. John (“Purple Tints of Paris,”) Sir Spenser Buckingham St. John (“Life in the Forests of the Far East,”) and Horace Stebbing Roscoe St. John (“History of the Indian Archipelago.”)

Vane Ireton St. John worked as an Inland Revenue clerk from 1858 until at least 1867 while moonlighting as an author. Percy B. and Vane Ireton joined hands to produce a weekly story paper, The Parlour Journal, which began with a Christmas number illustrated by “Phiz” (1859) and ended on 30 Aug 1862. The Parlour Jornal was published at 184 Fleet Street by Edward Harrison and others. Vane Ireton was insolvent in 1861, living at Charles Street, Hampstead Road. In January 1866 St. John, described as an author and bookseller, declared bankruptcy. His address was Arnold Villas, Ode-sa Road, Forest Gate, formerly, Lamb’s Conduit Street.

This prolific and alcoholic author had 27 children between 1858 and the 1890’s. Vane St. John was author of three 3 volume sensation novels: St. Eustace; or, the hundred-and-one; a novel, 1857, Undercurrents; a novel of our day, 1860, and The Chain of Destiny; a novel, 1862. St. Eustace was published by T. Cautley Newby. His serials appeared in the Parlour Journal, Reynolds’s Miscellany, the London Reader, The Young Englishman, Sons of Brittania, Boys of England, Boys World and Twice a Week. Vane Ireton St. John died at Peckham Rye “in poor circumstances,” on 20 Dec 1911. He was married twice and had seventeen children. (DNB)

Compare this style of writing , from The Young Bushranger, in Sons of Brittania Vol.IX, no. 216, by Vane St. John, to the quotes from Wild Boys above;

Backward sentences;

“Revolvers they all had, but no powder….”

Run-on sentences;

“He made a peculiar sign to the blacks, and then, raising his knife, he brought it down with one sharp, sure, swift blow, that buried it up to the hilt in the victim’s breast, while with his disengaged hand he seized the throat of the unfortunate man to prevent his crying out, and giving the alarm.”

From Who Shall be Leader ? The Story of Two Boys’ Lives, “Boys of England” Office, by Vane St. John ;

“Heavily down upon the thatch of a little cottage, on the margin of Royston Heath, came the flakes of the falling snow.”

Next, and last (I could go on forever) ;

“He handed him, as he spoke, a huge jug of beer, of which, the wayfarer, with a glad heart, partook, holding still, as he drank, the bundle beneath his cloak, but so that the warmth of the fire could reach it.”

Comparing text from titles by Stagg, Stevens, Hemyng, and Townsend (Ware was the only author I have no works to compare with NPC titles) I find none of those “A-hah!’ moments of recognition that I find over and over again in comparing Wild Boys of London to known works of Vane St. John. Further comparison leads to some more attributions of classic penny dreadful titles to V. St. John, to wit; The Boy Detective; or, the Crimes of London ; The Wild Boys of Paris; or, the Mysteries of the Vault of Death, and The Dance of Death; or, the Hangman’s Plot.

Vane Ireton St. John was probably the principal writer on The Boy Detective but halfway through the book there is a change of writers. At this period (1866) St. John (if it really was him) was churning out 8 pages weekly on The Wild Boys of London in addition to Boy Detective. This was not unusual because prolific authors such as C. H. Ross and James Malcolm Rymer often worked on up to 10 different weekly serials at a time.

1864 *The Wild Boys of London; or, the Children of the Night* London: Newsagents’ Publishing Company, 147 Fleet Street. Advertisement in Reynolds Newspaper July 17, 1864. 103 Nos.

1876 *The Wild Boys of London; or, the Children of the Night* London: F. Farrah, 282, Strand. (Farrah’s name and address appears in the gutters but see above: “Mr. J. Simpson and Mr. F. J. Kelley, printers and publishers, of Shoe-lane, attended before Sir Andrew Lusk, M.P., to an adjourned summons, charging them with printing and publishing an obscene work.” 74 Nos. Suppressed.

The last page had the following Special Notice:
A New Tale, of startling and thrilling interest, called,
IVAN THE TERRIBLE;
OR,
DARK DEEDS OF NIGHT!
Will be published on Tuesday December 5.
With No. 3 of this work will be published and given away (Gratis) an Illustrated Story entitled,
THE GHOST’S HOUSE IN THE LONELY ROAD!

1866*Ivan the Terrible; or, Dark Deeds of Night* London: Office, 147 Fleet Street. 34 Nos.

*For the history of the Vice prosecution of Wild Boys see HERE. See also Thieves’ Literature

Political Caricatures and Caricaturists

2008-03-25T09:57:00.000-07:00

Self-portrait of Franklin Morris Howarth.

2008-03-24T08:57:00.000-07:00

Self-portrait of F. Morris Howarth from "American Caricature and Comic Art" by La Touche Hancock in The Bookman Vol. XVI, Sept. 1902-1903.

"The method I use in doing my work," he confesses, "is absolutely mechanical. I go about it in just the same manner as any mechanic does in working out a piece of work in his own trade. Inspirations of any kind seldom, if ever, come to me, therefore I have schooled myself to sit down and grind out my jokes and ideas in much the same way as a miller does his flour. If I wish a joke on any subject I dig at it until I find it. Incidents in real life seldom appeal to me in a
humorous manner. I have written thousands of jokes and concocted thousands of humorous situations, but few have ever emanated from events coming under my direct observation."

Howarth trails an 1852 Almanak in his hind-pocket.