The Wicked Boy (38 page)

The adventure yarns. . .
Quotes from John Tosh,
A Man
'
s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class
Home in Victorian England
(1999).

New York dime novels. . .
On 16 November 1895 the
Marlborough Express
in New Zealand compared ‘these vile, flaringly coloured, cheap novels' to undesirable immigrants and suggested that they should be destroyed by the Customs authorities.

‘
The Secret of Castle Coucy
'
. . .
A story by the British New Yorker Frederick Whittaker, published by Beadle's Dime Library in 1881 as
The Severed Head; or, The Secret of Castle Coucy, A Legend of
the Great Crusade
and reprinted by the Aldine O'er Land and Sea Library in about 1894.

The novelist James Joyce. . .
‘An Encounter' is the second story in
Dubliners
, a collection completed in 1905 though not published until 1914.

In an article of 1888. . .
‘About Penny Dreadfuls',
Pall Mall Gazette
, 29 June 1888.

Every month, it seemed. . .
The reports cited here are from the
Gloucester Citizen
, 29 March 1889;
Dundee Courier
, 29 November 1892;
Manchester Evening News
, 31 October 1893; Y
orkshire
Evening Post
, 17 November 1892;
Coventry Evening Telegraph
, 8 January 1894.

In 1888 two eighteen-year-olds. . .
See
London Daily News
, 15, 18, 26, 27 October and 15 December 1888.

the publishing magnate Alfred Harmsworth. . .
In an article in the
Sunday Times
in 1948, A. A. Milne remarked that Harmsworth eventually ‘killed the “penny dreadful” by the simple process of producing the ha'penny dreadfuller'. Harmsworth also owned the bestselling
Evening News
, in which Robert had planned to place an advertisement, and in 1896 founded the
Daily Mail
.

‘
Union Jack
'
. . .
Justice Kennedy referred to issues of this magazine being found in Cave Road (see
News of the World
, 22 September).

the press had often pointed out. . .
For instance, Edward G. Salmon in
Juvenile Literature as It Is
(1888) argued that the dreadfuls were dangerous because they ‘are patronised chiefly by the sons of working-men, who are the future masters of the political situation'. For the national anxiety about penny dreadfuls, see especially Springhall,
Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics
, which includes a discussion of the Coombes case.

‘
Pall Mall Gazette
'
. . .
4 November 1886.

‘
agents for the overthrow of society
'
. . .
Francis Hitchman in the article ‘Penny Fiction': ‘We have cast out the unclean spirit of ignorance from the working-class mind, and left it empty, swept, and neatly garnished with “the three Rs”. Let us beware lest the unclean spirit returns with seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and turn the class we have made our masters into the agents for the overthrow of society.' Quoted in Boone,
Youth of Darkest England
.

CHAPTER 8: HERE GOES NOTHING

It was common for a parent. . .
See Rose,
The Erosion of Childhood
.

She switched between surrendering her authority. . .
In
Studies of Childhood
(1895) the psychologist James Sully warned against ‘alternations of gushing fondness with almost savage severity, or fits of government and restraint interpolated between long periods of neglect and
laisser faire
'.

‘
The Rock Rider
'
. . .
A story by Frederick Whittaker, author of
The Secret of Castle Coucy,
first published in 1880 by Beadle's Dime Library in New York and reprinted by the Aldine O'er Land and Sea Library in London in 1894.

Robert and Nattie
'
s father spent a week in New York. . .
Details of employment of cattlemen and of the ship's schedule in NMM:
RSS/CL/1895/60015
SS France
. For life on a cattleship, see Plimsoll,
Cattle Ships
; W. H. Davies,
The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp
(1908); I. M. Greg and S. H. Towers,
Cattle Ships and our Meat Supply
(1894); Chadwick et al.,
Ocean Steamships
; and
Report of the Departmental Committee of the Board of Trade
and the Board of Agriculture on the Transatlantic Cattle Trade
, C6350 (PP, 1890–91, vol. LXXVIII).

From the mouth of the Thames, wrote Joseph Conrad. . .
In Conrad's
Heart of Darkness
(1899). H. G. Wells describes the ‘monstrous variety of shipping' on this stretch of the river: ‘great steamers, great sailing-ships, trailing the flags of all the world. . . witches' conferences of brown-sailed barges, wallowing tugs, a tumultuous crowding and jostling of cranes and spars, and wharves and stores' (
Tono-Bungay
, 1909).

‘
The river runs. . .
' In Hueffer's
The Soul of London
. Joseph Conrad writes that the Thames near the city ‘flows oppressed by bricks and mortar and stone, by blackened timber and grimed glass and rusty iron, covered with black barges, whipped up by paddles and screws, overburdened with craft, overhung with chains, overshadowed by walls making a steep gorge for its bed, filled with a haze of smoke and dust' (
The Mirror of the Sea,
1906).

On Sunday the
‘
France
'
docked. . .
See NMM: RSS/CL/1895/60015
SS France
. In
The Atlantic Transport Line 1881–1931: a History with Details on All Ships
(2012), Jonathan Kinghorn notes that in the 1890s cattle could be landed only at the Deptford wharf; the meat was sold at Smithfield Market. By 1896, more than 200,000 head of cattle a year were being landed in London (see Paula Young Lee,
Meat, Modernity and the Rise of the Slaughterhouse
, 2008). In ‘The Feeding of London', published in
The Leisure Hour
in 1889, W. J. Gordon describes the process of transporting and slaughtering cattle (online at
victorianlondon.org
).

Canon Basil Wilberforce delivered a sermon. . .
See
East Ham Echo
, 16 August 1895.

Lawrence explained in his letter. . .
In
West Ham Herald
, 27 July 1895.

John William Fox was born. . .
He was born on 19 April 1850 to Hannah Fox, who signed his birth certificate with a cross, in 4 Bell Yard, off Gracechurch Street. She was resident in the Flower Pot pub in Bishopsgate when he was sent to the Hanwell School, and she had married a shoemaker in Shoreditch, East London, by the time he was apprenticed to Lawrence
–
see LMA: CBG/359/006 and LMA: CBG/361/003.

industrial school in West London. . .
See Central London District Poor Law School admission and discharge register, 14 Apr 1857–20 Jul 1863: LMA: CLSD/165 7.

apprenticeship . . .
See City Board of Guardians Register of Apprenticeship and Service Papers 1866–97, LMA: CBG/36, apprentice bundles LMA: CBG/359/006 and LMA: CBG/361/003, and City of London Union Minute Books, March to Dec 1866 (2 volumes, LMA: CBG/47 and LMA: CBG/48). See also
London City Press
, 28 April and 20 October 1866.

a fire broke out. . .
Account of fire on
Egypt
from
Manchester Courier and Lancashire General
Advertiser
, 26 July 1890.

on which Fox had also once served. . .
Fox joined the
Erin
at Gravesend in August 1885 as a captain's servant on a voyage to New York (NMM: RSS/CL/1885/50274
SS Erin
).

‘
Evening News
'
. . .
Interview conducted on 3 August and published 13 August 1895.

The new home secretary. . .
See
Manchester Courier
, 17 August 1895.

‘
Leeds Times
'
. . .
3 August 1895.

‘
Lancet
'
. . .
17 August 1895.

‘
Penny Dreadfuls Again
'
. . .
See
Evening News
, 27 August 1895. The same headline was given in the
Nottingham Evening Post
on 10 September to an article about a fifteen-year-old from Shepherd's Bush, West London, who had poisoned himself with carbolic acid. His father had given him a ‘good hiding', the paper reported, because he had been out of work for a month. The boy left a note reading ‘I wish you to know the reason I did it is because I could not work', but the judge none the less ascribed his death to his consumption of ‘literary offal'.

Hugh Chisholm. . .
In ‘How to Counter-act the Penny Dreadful',
Fortnightly Review
, November 1895.

Wilde
'
s decadent productions. . .
See also Merrick Burrow, ‘Oscar Wilde and the Plaistow Matricide: Competing Critiques of Influence in the Formation of Late-Victorian Masculinities',
Culture,
Society and Masculinities,
1 October 2012.

twenty boys at a north-west London board school. . .
See
Hampshire Advertiser
, 21 August 1895.

‘
epidemic of suicide
'
. . .
See
Evening News,
25 July, and
The People,
28 July 1895.

childhood had been prized. . .
See Sally Shuttleworth,
The Mind of the Child: Child Development in
Literature, Science, and Medicine, 1840–1900
(2010), Henry Maudsley,
The Pathology of Mind
(edition of 1895), James Crichton-Browne, ‘Education and the Nervous System' in Malcolm A. Morris (ed.),
The Book of Health
(1883), and Sully,
Studies of Childhood
.

interview to the
‘
Evening News
'
. . .
Published on 16 September 1895.

Sir Forrest Fulton. . .
Fulton had been elected Conservative MP for West Ham North in 1886. When unseated by a Liberal in 1892, he was
appointed Common Serjeant of London, deputy to the most senior permanent judge at the Old Bailey.

Kennedy proceeded to hear. . .
See OBSP.

a fifth of Londoners. . .
According to White's
London in the Nineteenth Century
, one in five Londoners was a regular churchgoer in the 1890s. The proportion in the east of the city was even lower: Besant reported in
East London
that in a census on church attendance in 1886 just 7 to 8 per cent of East Londoners said that they took part in a form of worship on a Sunday.

Francis Longsdon Shaw. . .
See
Clergy List
of 1896,
Crockford
'
s Clerical Directory
of 1898, and Nigel Scotland,
Squires in the Slums: Settlements and Missions in Late Victorian Britain
(2007). Shaw's conversion was reported in the
North Wales Chronicle
of 30 August 1890 and his ordination in the
Chelmsford Chronicle
of 25 May 1894. For a photograph of the vicar and curates of St Andrews, including Shaw, see TNA: 1/436/885.

Allen Hay. . .
See
Crockford
'
s Clerical Directory
of 1898.

a mandolinist called Miss Halfpenny. . .
From
West Ham Herald
, 16 June 1894.

PART III: THESE TENDER TIMES

CHAPTER 9: COVER HER FACE

taken from their cells. . .
For the trip to Newgate and Old Bailey, see Departmental Committee on Prisons,
Report
and
Minutes of Evidence
, PP, C7702 (1895).

Paul Koczula. . .
See
Haydn
'
s Dictionary of Dates and Universal Information
(1895) and
Morning
Post
, 15 August 1894.

the Old Bailey courthouse. . .
For Old Bailey building and procedures, see Sims,
Living London, Vol. I
; R. Thurston Hopkins,
Life and Death at the Old Bailey
(1935); Anon,
London Characters and the Humorous Side of London Life
(1870); Anon,
The Queen
'
s London: A Pictorial and Descriptive Record of the Streets, Buildings, Parks, and Scenery of the Great Metropolis in the Fifty-Ninth Year of the Reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria
(1896): Montagu Williams,
Round London: Down East and Up West
(1894); and the page on the Old Bailey on Lee Jackson's website
www.victorianlondon.org
.

‘
Star
'
. . .
16 September 1895.

‘
pea-soupers
'
. . .
See Inwood,
City of Cities
.

Justice William Rann Kennedy. . .
See obituary in
The Times,
18 January 1915, entry in
Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography
and report in
Liverpool Echo
, 28 October 1892. The National Portrait Gallery in London has a photograph of him in the early 1900s: NPG x35957.