“…What you Shall Have, is a Happy Blending of the Theatre and the Opera House and the Highly Respectable Tavern-Parlour, a Place the Atmosphere of Which Shall be so Strictly Moral that the Finest-Bred Lady in the Land may Breathe it Without Danger…” Or: Victorian Music Hall Morality:

For a very long time I’ve wanted to write about the Victorian Music Halls. I’ve had the odd stab, writing about Music Hall stars and actors, Dan Leno, Ada Rehan and Marie Lloyd and Ellen Terry.  But that’s about as far as I got.

I have a basic grasp of music halls and what they were, and when they were at their peak, but not in nearly enough detail for a blog post.

The reason for this, I think, is that the story of the music halls is rather vast, and for someone such as myself, who has very little knowledge on the subject, it would take a great deal of time to construct something worthy of your time. It is for this same reason that there is nothing on this blog about any Victorian wars; I’d love to write something about the Crimea, but would have to go away and improve my very basic knowledge on the subject before I even started, but Victorian wars are not something I’ve had much interest in, and I don’t really believe in forcing information into my head, but rather absorbing it like osmosis. I’ve always been interested in the culture of the music hall, though, but have just never known where to start or what to write about; there’s so many aspects to them – they were an ever changing landscape, and, like war, really the kind of thing you need to specialize in to write something worth reading.

So, like Oliver Twist, I got out my bowl and turned to the experts on Twitter for advice, and I’m very glad I did.

Thanks to their fantastic contributions and knowledge the history, culture, people and importance of the Music Halls can be properly explored and committed to this blog over the coming weeks, thus adding an important missing piece of my jigsaw.

For the next month we shall be learning about the roots, the artists, the importance, the songs, the decline and ultimate legacy of the music halls, and be richer for it.

To start with, the man I so frequently turn to for an eloquent social commentary of the times; my favourite Victorian writer James Greenwood, and an article on Music Hall morality from the late 1860’s, in which he charts the birth of the halls, and explains why he believes they were a bad influence on the working classes, and makes his opinion of thee halls quite known:

Music Hall Morality:
Twenty years ago amusement for the people was at a low watermark. Railways were less numerous and extensive, and railway directors had not yet thought of working the profitable field suggested by the little word 'excursion.' 'Eight hours by the seaside,' to be compassed comfortably within a holiday of a single summer's day was a miracle scarcely even dreamt of by the most sanguine progressionist. Thousands and tens of thousands of London-born men and women lived and laboured through a long lifetime, and never saw the sea at all. Sheerness, twenty years ago, was the working man's seaside; and his knowledge of sea sand was confined to as much of it as was unpleasantly discovered lurking within the shells of the plate of winkles served up at his shilling tea at Gravesend. Even the green country 'far removed from noise and smoke,' was, if not a sealed book to him, at least a volume placed on so high a shelf that, after some experience, he was driven to the conclusion that the pains and penalties attending a climb for it were scarcely compensated by success and temporary possession of the prize. The only conveyance at his service - and that only on recognised holiday occasions - was the greengrocer's van, newly painted and decorated for the event, and in which a mixed company of the sexes crowded, and were dragged along the hot and dusty road at the rate of five miles an hour, towards Hampton Court or Epping Forest, there to huddle on the grass, and partake of a collation that, but for its four hours' grilling on the van roof under a blazing sun, would have been cold, with flask-liquor or luke-warm beer out of a stone jar as liquid accompaniments.
Twenty years ago a Crystal Palace had existence nowhere but within the cover of that book of wonders, the 'Arabian Nights' Entertainments,' and the soil out of which the museum of South Kensington has sprung was devoted to the growth of cabbages.

In that dark age, however, it is questionable if the inconveniences enumerated were regarded as such. The people knew no better. The Jack of the past generation was a Jack-of-all-work, according to the strictest interpretation of that term. So seldom did he indulge in a holiday that he went at it as a teetotaller broke loose goes at hard drinking, and it unsettled him for a week afterwards. His play-time imposed on him more real hard labour than his accustomed jog-trot work time, and he was an unhappy, despondent man until his excited nerves grew calm, and the tingling of his blood subsided. Such were the alarming effects on him that it seemed a happy dispensation that Whitsun and Easter came each but once a year. 

All, then, that was left to him was the tavern parlour 'sing-song,' or free-and-easy, usually celebrated on Mondays and Saturdays, these being the times when he was most likely to have a shilling in his pocket. But what amount of satisfaction was to be got out of it? Excepting for the inordinate quantity of malt or spirituous liquors the working man felt bound to imbibe for the good of the house, the 'free-and-easy' was as tame as tame could be. The same individual - the landlord - occupied the chair invariably; the same men sang the same songs (it would have been regarded as a most unwarrantable liberty if Jones had attempted to render a ditty known as Wilkins's); the same jokes were exchanged; the same toasts and sentiments found utterance. It was not enjoyment at all that occupied the company, but a good natured spirit of forbearance and toleration.
Scarcely a man in the room came to hear singing, but to be heard singing. This was the weakness that drew the members of the 'free-and-easy' together, and every man, out of tender consideration for his own affliction, was disposed to treat an exhibition of the prevalent malady on the part of a neighbour with kindly sympathy. But the morning's reflection ensuing on such an evening's amusement never failed to disclose the dismal fact that there was 'nothing in it' - nothing, that is, but headache and remorse for money wasted.

Of late years, however, the state of the British handicraftsman has undergone an extraordinary change. He is not the same fellow he used to be. He has cast aside the ancient mantle of unquestioning drudgery that so long hung about his drooping shoulders. He has straightened his neck to look about him, a process which has elevated his view of matters generally at least three inches (and that is is a good deal in the case of a man whose nose from boyhood has been kept at the grindstone, and whose vision has always been at a bare level with the top of that useful machine).

It was no more than natural that 'work' being the theme that had so long occupied his attention, he should, having satisfactorily settled that matter, turn to its direct antithesis, 'play,' and make a few inquiries as to what amendment were possible in that direction. It became evident to him that this portion of the social machine, no less than the other, was out of order. It appeared all right from a superficial view; but when you came closely to examine it there were loose screws in every direction, and many of the main wheels were so clogged with objectionable matter, that no decent man could safely approach it. This was serious. The reformed handicraftsman had leisure now, and considerably more money than in the old time. Offer him a fair evening's amusement, and he would pay his shilling for it cheerfully but, mind you, it must be fit and proper amusement, and such as chimed harmoniously with his newly-developed convictions of his respectability and intellectual importance. But, looking to the right and to the left of him, he failed to discover what he sought; and probably he would to this very day have been vainly inquiring which way he should turn, had it not been for certain enterprising and philanthropic persons, who, ascertaining his need, generously undertook the task of providing for it.

In a Music Hall by Gustave Dore

The arguments used by the disinterested gentlemen in question showed beyond doubt that they thoroughly understood the matter. 'What you want,' said they to the working man, 'is something very different from that which now exists. You like good music, you have an affectionate regard for the drama; but if at the present time you would taste of one or the other you are compelled to do so under restrictions that are irksome. The theatre is open to you, but you cannot do as you like in a theatre. You must conform to certain rules and regulations, and, in a manner of speaking, are made to "toe the mark." If you want a glass of beer - and what is more natural than that you should? - you can't get it. What you can get for your sixpence is half a pint and a gill of flat or sour stuff in a black bottle, and to obtain even this luxury you must creep noiselessly to the shabby little refreshment-room and drink it there and creep back again to your seat in the pit as though you had been guilty of something you should be ashamed of. You would like a pipe or a cigar; you are used to smoking of evenings, and depravation from the harmless indulgence disagrees with you. No matter; you must not smoke within the walls of a theatre; if you attempted it the constable would seize you and never loose his hold on your collar till he had landed you on the outer pavement.

“Now what you require, and what you shall have, is a happy blending of the theatre and the opera house and the highly respectable tavern-parlour, a place the atmosphere of which shall be so strictly moral that the finest-bred lady in the land may breathe it without danger, and at the same time a place where a gentleman accompanying a lady may take his sober and soothing glass of grog or tankard of ale and smoke his cigar as innocently and peacefully as though he sat by his own fireside at home. We will have music both vocal and instrumental, the grand singing of the great Italian masters, ballad-singing, touching and pathetic, and funny singing that shall promote harmless mirth while it not in the least offends the most prudish ear. We will have operas; we will have ballets. Should the public voice sanction it occasionally we will have chaste acrobatic performances and feats of tumbling and jugglery; but in this last-mentioned matter we are quite in the hands of our patrons. Enjoyment pure and simple is our motto, and by it we will stand or fall.”

This, in substance, was the prospectus of the first music hall established in London, and the public expressed its approval. How the fair promises of the original promoters of the scheme were redeemed we will not discuss. Undertakings of such magnitude are sure to work uneasily at the first. It will be fairer to regard the tree of twenty years' growth with its twenty noble branches flourishing in full foliage and melodious with the songs of the many songsters that harbour there. We cannot listen to them all at once, however sweet though the music be. Let us devote an hour to one of the said branches. Which one does not in the least matter, since no one set of songsters are confined to a branch. They fly about from one to another, and may sometimes be heard - especially the funny ones - on as many as four different boughs in the course of a single evening. Simply because it is the nearest let us take the Oxbridge, one of the most famous music halls in London, and nightly crowded.

Either we are in luck or else the talent attached to the Oxbridge is something prodigious. Almost every vocal celebrity whose name has blazoned on the advertising hoardings during the season is here tonight - the Immense Vamp, the Prodigious Podgers, the Stupendous Smuttyman, the Tremendous Titmouse, together with 'Funny' Freddys, and 'Jolly' Joeys, and 'Side-splitting' Sammys by the half dozen. Some of the leviathans of song were authors of what they sang, as, for instance, the Prodigious Podgers, who had recently made such a great sensation with his 'Lively Cats-meat Man.' As I entered the splendid portals of the Oxbridge the natty 'turn-out' of Podgers, consisting of three piebald ponies in silver harness and a phaeton that must have cost a hundred and fifty guineas at least, was there in waiting, ready to whirl the popular Podgers to the Axminster as soon as the Oxbridge could possibly spare him.

The Oxbridge, as usual, was crowded, the body of the hall, the sixpenny part, by working men and their wives, with a sprinkling of 'jolly dogs' and budding beardless puppies of the same breed, whose pride and delight it is to emulate their elders. As regards the audience this is the worst that may be said of the body of the hall. It was plain at a glance to perceive that the bulk of the people there were mostly people not accustomed to music halls, and only induced to pay them a visit on account of the highly-respectable character the music halls are in the habit of giving themselves in their placards and in the newspapers. In the stalls and the more expensive parts of the house, and before the extensive drinking bar, matters were very different. Here were congregated selections from almost every species of vice, both male and female, rampant in London. Here was the Brummagem 'swell' with his Houndsditch jewellery and his Whitechapel gentility, and the well-dressed blackguard with a pound to spend, and the poor, weak-minded wretch of the 'Champagne Charlie' school, and the professional prowler hovering about him with with the full intent of plucking him if he has the chance I am loth to say as much in the face of the Popular Podgers and the immense Vamp, but I should be vastly surprised if the only element of respectability frequenting the Oxbridge was not only disappointed but shocked and disgusted, and that very often. I cannot explain why, after being shocked, they should make a second attempt, except that they are lured to 'try again,' and that folks of not over sensitive mind grow used to shocks.

'Well-Dressed Blackguards" Enjoy the Entertainment on Offer

 If these music hall songs were really written for the respectable portion of the auditory there would not be the least occasion why they should be composed almost entirely of indecency and drivel; but the fact is these are the persons whose tastes are not at all studied in preparing the evening bill of fare. The individuals the song-writer writes up to and the singer sings up to are the heedless, the abandoned, and disreputable ones who have money to squander. The proprietor knows his customers. Where would be the use of setting before a tipsy 'swell' (unless indeed he had arrived at the maudlin, in which condition he is profitable to no one) a wholesome, simple ballad? He would howl it down before the first verse was accomplished. He must have something to chime with the idiotic tone of his mind, no matter how low, how vulgar, or how defiant of propriety, and he can obtain it at the music hall. The Immense Vamp is his obedient servant, as is the Prodigious Podgers and the Tremendous Titmouse - even the 'P---- of W----'s Own Comique.' Any one would think, and not unreasonably, when he sees year in and year out flaming announcements of the engagements here and there of these gentry, that there must be something in them; that, however peculiar their talent, it is such as recommends itself to something more than the passing admiration of those who witness it; but it is nothing of the kind. Take any half-dozen of the most popular of our 'comic singers' and set them singing four of their most favourite songs each, and I will warrant that twenty out of the full number will consist of the utterest trash it is possible to conceive.

It would not so much matter if the trade were harmless - not infrequently it is most pernicious. Take a batch of these precious productions, and you will find the one theme constantly harped on: it is all about a 'young chap' and a 'young gal,' or an 'old chap' and an 'old gal,' and their exploits, more or less indecent. A prolific subject with these 'great' artists is the spooney courtship of a young man who is induced to accompany the object of his affection to her abode, and when there gets robbed and ill-used.
As the Immense Vamp sings –

'I was going to go when in come a feller
And he smashed my hat with his umbrella
And blacked my eye, and didn't I bellow.'

But this peculiar line Vamp makes his own, and it is not to be wondered at that he shines therein before all others. Popular Podgers has a vein of his own, and how profitable the working of it is let the piebald ponies and the silver-mounted phaeton attest. He goes in for vocal exemplifications of low life - the lowest of all. His rendering of a Whitechapel ruffian, half costermonger half thief, filled the Oxbridge nightly for more than a month.
You may see Podgers arrayed in the ruffian's rags portrayed on a music-sheet in the windows of the music-shops, and underneath is inscribed the chorus of this wonderful song:-

'I'm a Chickerleary Bloke with my one, two, three,
Whitechapel is the village I was born in,
To ketch me on the hop, or on my tibby drop,
You must get up very early in the morning.'

But inasmuch as the effusions of Podgers are as a rule unintelligible except to the possessors of a slang dictionary, he is less obnoxious than others of his brethren. What these productions are need be no more than hinted to ears polite. The mischief is that the ten thousand ears unpolite are opened for the reception of the poison night after night in twenty music halls in and about London, and no one says nay.

The male singer of the music hall, however, whether he takes the shape of the impudent clown who pretends to comicality, or of the spoony sentimentalist who tenderly gushes forth such modern enchanting melodies as 'Maggie May' or 'Meet me in the Lane,' is not the most pernicious ingredient that composes in its entirety the music hall hero. Time was, when with a liberal steeping of Vamps, and Podgers, and Smuttymans, the decoction proved strong enough, but, like indulgence in other poisons, what is a sufficient dose this year is useless as water next.

It was found necessary to strengthen the mixture - to make it hotter of that kind of spice most grateful to the palate of the vulgar snob with a pound to spend. To effect this, there was nothing for it but to introduce the comic female element, or, as she more modestly styles herself, the 'serio-comic.' The 'serio,' however, is not obtrusive. You seek for it in vain in the brazen pretty face, in the dress that is exactly as much too high as it is too low, in the singer's gestures, looks, and bold advances. Decent men who, misled by placards and newspaper advertisements, take their wives and daughters to the Oxbridge or the Axminster, may, as they listen, tingle in shame at the blunder they have committed; but the dashing, piquant, saucy delineator of 'What Jolly Gals are we' has the ears and the yelling admiration of the brainless snobs and puppies before alluded to, and the mad noises they make, demanding a repetition of the detestable ditty, quite drown the feeble hisses of remonstrance the decent portion of the auditory may venture to utter.

Some time since, during the theatre and music hall controversy, a worthy London magistrate announced from his judicial bench that on the evening previous he has visited one of the most popular of the halls, and found everything creditable, and discreet, and decorous: a pretty penny it must afterwards have cost somebody for champagne, to pacify the patron snobs and puppies for depriving them of their evening's amusement.

But - and it is alarming to remark it - even the indecent, impudent 'serio-comic' female, who, going the full length of the tether allowed her, might have been supposed equal to all demands, is palling on the palate of the Oxbridge habitué. He must have something even more exhilarating; and, ever ready to oblige, the music hall proprietor rigs up a trapeze, and bribes some brazen, shameless woman to attire in man's clothes, and go through the ordinary performances of a male acrobat. Rivalling the new idea, a South London music hall proprietor is advertising the 'Sensational Can-can, exactly as in France.'

What is the next novelty in preparation?
            - James Greenwood, London Society Magazine, 1868

I think it is fair to say that Greenwood was not a fan of the entertainment on offer in the music halls…Personally I think he's got this one wrong (sorry James!) and will stick up for the working class man and woman who worked hard all week and wanted to let off a little steam at a music hall at the weekend! As for the female comic "going the full length of the tether allowed her" - we shall read more of these women as the month passes, and can make our own judgement on whether she was good or bad for the progression of entertainment.

For more of James Greenwood’s work (He isn't usually this acerbic!) or information about him, here is a list of posts on this blog to which he has either attributed, or is the subject of.

The Music Hall theme continues next week with; “Impulsive, Headstrong, Passionate, She Would do the Most Reckless Things. But no one Could Resist Sarah…” Or: The Incredible Sarah Brown

“…It is Not Nor Does it Pretend to be Anything Else than a Vicious Hotch-Potch of the Vilest Slang, a Mockery of all that is Decent and Virtuous…” Or: What Were Penny Dreadfuls?

Everyone who has picked up a newspaper in the last twenty years will be familiar with the hardy perennial opinion that children are turned into thugs and killers by violent films and video games.

Whilst I don’t think that is true as a catch-all term, I can understand why people think that children may attempt to copy what they see on their various screens, but as a rule, my opinion is that watching a violent film does not make a child violent.

This story – which seems to be dusted off and rolled out every time someone under the age of sixteen slaps one of their friends – is not so new as to have only been thought of in the last two decades, though. The Victorians had similar concerns with certain literature having a negative effect on the nation’s youth.

Penny dreadfuls, penny bloods, penny awfuls, or penny numbers, as they were known, were shocking, violent short stories, usually about the antics of criminals such as highwaymen, grave-robbers and murderers, aimed at the barely literate lower classes of society. The publication of penny dreadfuls began in the 1830’s, when the success of Dickens’ ‘The Pickwick Papers’ demonstrated that books sold as serials – that is, sold in monthly installments – were more appealing to the greater populous, since the lower classes had not the time nor attention span to sit and read an entire novel, but could easily digest a whole book in short, ‘bite-size’ and dramatic chunks.

The penny dreadfuls were extremely cheap to produce, and being printed on the cheapest of pulp papers, could be sold at a price that the target audience could afford, and since they were sold as serials, once the reader had purchased the first installment, he would certainly have to purchase the rest to see how the story progressed.

The penny papers proved so addictive, that even those who could not afford it still purchased them by forming groups who would each put money in and buy a single paper to read between them.

Whilst the working classes devoured the ghoulish crime stories with relish, there were, of course, more upstanding members of society who frowned upon and dismissed the penny bloods as vulgar and coarse. One of their most vehement critics was the great James Greenwood, who wrote an article in St. Paul’s Magazine in 1873 condemning them and their affect on society’s youth. The article is below. As you read it, think of similar articles that have appeared in the present-day pres with regards to violent films and video games, and you will see that the problem of modern media corrupting the youth of today is not new at all;

 "It would be an excellent and profitable arrangement if the London School Board were empowered not only to insist that all boys and girls of tender years shall be instructed in the art of reading, but also to root up and for ever banish from the paths of its pupils those dangerous weeds of literature that crop up in such rank luxuriance on every side to tempt them. Until this is done, it must always be heavy and uphill work with those whose laudable aim it is to promote education and popular enlightenment.

To teach a girl or boy how to read is not a very difficult task; the trouble is to guide them to a wholesome and profitable exercise of the acquirement. This, doubtless, would be hard enough, were our population of juveniles left to follow the dictates of their docile or rebellious natures; but this they are not suffered to do. At the very outset, as soon indeed as they have mastered words of two and three syllables, and by skipping the hard words are able somehow to stumble through a page in reading fashion, the enemy is at hand to enlist them in his service. And never was a poor recruit so dazzled and bewildered by the wily sergeant whose business it is to angle for, and hook men to serve as soldiers as is the foolish lad who is beset by the host of candidates of the Penny Awful tribe for his patronage.

There is Dick Turpin bestriding his fleet steed, and with a brace of magnificently mounted pistols stuck in his belt, beckoning him to an expedition of midnight marauding on the Queen’s highway; there is gentlemanly Claude Duval, with his gold-laced coat and elegantly curled periwig, who raises his three-cornered hat politely to the highly-flattered schoolboy and begs the pleasure of his company through six months or so - at the ridiculously small cost of a penny a week, that, he, the gallant captain, may initiate our young friend in the ways of bloodshed and villainy; there is sleek-cropped, bullet-headed Jack Sheppard, who steps boldly forth with his crowbar, offering to instruct the amazed youth in the ways of crime as illustrated by his own brilliant career, and to supply him with a few useful hints as to the best way of escaping from Newgate.

Besides these worthies there are the Robbers of the Heath, and the Knights of the Road, and the Skeleton Crew, and Wildfire Dick and Hell-fire Jack, and Dare-devil Tom, and Blueskin, and Cut-throat Ned, and twenty other choice spirits of an equally respectable type, one and all appealing to him, and wheedling and coaxing him to make himself acquainted with their delectable lives and adventures at the insignificant expense of one penny weekly.

It is not difficult to trace back the evil in question to its origin. At least a quarter of a century ago it occurred to some enterprising individual to reprint and issue in “penny weekly numbers” the matter contained in the “Newgate Calendar,” and the publication was financially a great success. This excited the cupidity of other speculators, in whose eyes money loses none of its value though ever so begrimed with nastiness, and they set their wits to work to produce printed weekly “pen’orths” that should be as savoury to the morbid tastes of the young and the ignorant as was the renowned Old Bailey Chronicle itself.

The task was by no means a difficult one when once was found the spirit to set about it. The Newgate Calendar was after all but a dry and legal record of the trials of rogues and murderers, for this or that particular offence, with at most, in addition, a brief sketch of the convicted one’s previous career, and a few observations on his most remarkable exploits. After all, there was really no romance in the thing; and what persons of limited education and intellect love in a book is romance. Here then was a grand field! What could be easier than to take the common-place Newgate raw material, and re-dip it in the most vivid scarlet, and weave into it the rainbow hues of fiction? What was there that “came out” at the trials of Jack Sheppard and Claude Duval and Mr. Richard Turpin and which the calendar readers so greedily devoured, compared with what might be made to “come out” concerning these same heroes when the professional romance-monger, with the victim’s skull for an inkstand, gore for ink, and the assassin's dagger for a pen, sat down to write their histories?

The great thing was to show what the Newgate Calendar had failed to show. It was all very well to demonstrate that at times there existed honour among thieves; the thing to do was to make it clear that stealing was an honourable business, and that all thieves were persons to be respected on account at least of the risks they ran and the perils they so daringly faced in the pursuit of their ordinary calling. Again, in recording the achievements of robbers of a superior grade, the Calendar gave but the merest glimpse of the glories of a highway villain’s existence, whereas, as was well known to the romancist of the Penny Awful school, the life of a person like Mr. Turpin or any other Knight of the Road is just one endless round of daring, dashing adventure, and of rollicking and roystering, or tender, blissful enjoyments of the fruits thereof. Likewise, according to the same authority, it was a well-known fact, and one that could not be too generally known, that rogues and robbers are the only “brave” that deserve the “fair,” and that no sweethearts are so true to each other, and enjoy such unalloyed felicity, as gentlemen of the stamp of Captain Firebrand (who wears lace truffles and affects a horror for the low operation of cutting a throat, but regards it as quite the gentlemanly and “professional” thing to send a bullet whizzing into a human skull ) and buxom, fascinating Molly Cutpurse.

But after all, if the unscrupulous hatchers of Penny Awfuls (this term is no invention of mine, but one conferred on the class of literature in question by the owners thereof ) had been content to stick to Newgate heroes and Knights of the Road, perhaps no very great harm would have been done. At all events, the nuisance must soon have died out. Popular interest in the British Highwayman has for many years been on the wane. There are no longer any mail coaches to rob, and the descendants of the rare old heroes of Bagshot and Hounslow have brought the profession into disgust and contempt by taking to the cowardly game of garroting. Every boy may read of the pitiful behaviour of these modern Knights of the Road when they are triced up, bare-backed, in the press-room at Newgate, and a stout prison warden makes a cat-o’-nine-tails whistle across their shoulders. How they squeal and wriggle and supplicate!

  “Oh! Sir, kind sir! O-o-o-oh-h, pray spare me; I’ll never do it again!”

There is not the least spark of dash or bravado about this kind of thing, and the cleverest penman of the Penny Awful tribe would fail to excite feelings of emulation in the minds of his most devoted readers.

The Penny Awful trade, however, has not been brought to a standstill on this account. Cleverer men than those who paraded Dick Turpin and Claude Duval as model heroes have of late years come into the garbage market. Quick-witted, neat-handed fellows, who have studied the matter and made themselves acquainted with it at all points. It has been discovered by these sharp ones that the business has been unnecessarily restricted; that even supposing that there are still a goodly number of simpletons who take delight in the romance that hangs on those magic words, “Your money or your life,” there are still a much larger number who take no interest at all in gallows heroes, but who might easily be tempted to take to another kind of bait, provided it were judiciously adjusted on the hook.

As for instance, there were doubtless to be found in London and the large manufacturing towns of England, hundreds of boys out of whom constant drudgery and bad living had ground all that spirit of dare-devilism so essential to the enjoyment of the exploits of the heroes of the Turpin type, but who still possessed an appetite for vices of a sort that were milder and more easy of digestion. It was a task of no great difficulty when once the happy idea was conceived. All that was necessary was to show that the faculty for successfully defying law and order and the ordinations of virtue might be cultivated by boys as well as men, and that as rogues and rascals the same brilliant rewards attended the former as the latter. The result may be seen in the shop window of every cheap newsvendor in London - The Boy Thieves of London, The Life of a Fast Boy, The Boy Bandits, The Wild Boys of London, The Boy Detective, Charley Wag, The Lively Adventures of a Young Rascal, and I can’t say how many more.

This much is true of each and everyone, however - that it is not nor does it pretend to be anything else than a vicious hotch-potch of the vilest slang, a mockery of all that is decent and virtuous, an incentive to all that is mean, base, and immoral, and a certain guide to a prison or a reformatory if sedulously followed. If these precious weekly pen’orths do not openly advocate crime and robbery, they at least go so far as to make it appear that, although to obtain the means requisite to set up as a Fast Boy, or a Young Rascal, it is found necessary to make free with a master’s goods, or to force his till or run off with his cash-box, still the immense amount of frolic and awful jollity to be obtained at music halls, at dancing rooms, - where “young rascals” of the opposite sex may be met, - at theatres, and low gambling and drinking dens, if one has “only got the money,” fully compensates for any penalty a boy of the “fast” school may be called on to pay in the event of his petty larcenies being discovered.

  “What’s the good o’ being honest?” is the moral sentiment that the Penny Awful author puts into the mouth of his hero, Joe the Ferret, in his delectable story “The Boy Thieves of the Slums.”

  “What’s the good of being honest?” says Joe, who is presiding at a banquet consisting of the “richest meats,” and hot brandy and water;

  “Where’s the pull? It is all canting and humbug. The honest cove is the one who slaves from morning till night for half a bellyfull of grub, and a ragged jacket and a pair of trotter cases (shoes), that don’t keep his toes out of the mud, and all that he may be called a good boy and have a “clear conscience” ’ (loud laughter and cries of “Hear, hear,” by the Weasel’s “pals”).

  “I ain’t got no conscience, and I don’t want one. If I felt one a-growing in me I’d pisen the blessed thing” (more laughter).

  “Ours is the game, my lads. Light come, light go. Plenty of tin, plenty of pleasure, plenty of sweethearts and that kind of fun, and all got by making a dip in a pocket, or sneaking a till. I’ll tell you what it is, my hearties,” continued the Weasel, raising his glass in his hand (on a finger of which there sparkled a valuable ring, part of the produce of the night’s work),

  “I’ll tell you what it is, it’s quite as well that them curs and milksops, the ‘honest boys’ of London, do not know what a jolly, easy, devil-may-care life we lead compared with theirs, or we should have so many of ‘em takin’ to our line that it would be bad for the trade.”

It is not invariably, however, that the Penny Awful author indulges in such a barefaced enunciation of his principles. The old-fashioned method was to clap the representatives of all manner of vices before the reader, and boldly swear by them as jolly roystering blades whose manner of enjoying life was after all the best, despite the grim end. The modern way is to paint the picture not coarsely, but with skill and anatomical minuteness; to continue it page after page, and point out and linger over the most flagrant indecencies and immoral teachings of the pretty story, and then, in the brief interval of putting that picture aside and producing another, to “patter” (if I may be excused using an expression so shockingly vulgar) a few sentences concerning the unprofitableness of vice, and of honesty being the best policy. And having cut this irksome, though for obvious reasons necessary, part of the business as short as possible, the “author” again plunges the pen of nastiness into his inkpot, and proceeds with renewed vigour to execute the real work in hand.

Writing on this subject it is impossible for me to forget a vivid instance of the pernicious influence of literature of the Penny Awful kind as revealed by the victim himself. It was at a meeting of a society, the laudable aim of which is the rescue of juvenile criminals from the paths of vice, and there were present a considerable number of the lads themselves. In the course of the evening, as a test, I suppose of the amount of confidence reposed by the lads in their well-wishers and teachers, it was suggested that any one among them who had courage enough might rise in his place and give a brief account of his first theft, and what tempted him to it. It was some time before their was any response, although from the many wistful faces changing rapidly from red to white, and the general uneasiness manifested by the youths appealed to, and who were seated on forms in the middle of the hall, it was evident that many were of a great good mind to accept the invitation.

At last a lad of thirteen or so, whose good-conduct stripes told of how bravely he was raising himself out of the slough in which the Society had discovered him, rose, and burning red to his very ears, and speaking rapidly and with much stumbling and stammering - evidences one and all, in my opinion, of his speaking the truth - delivered himself as follows:-

“It’s a goodish many years ago now, more’n six I dessay, and I used to go to the ragged-school down by Hatton-garden. It was Tyburn Dick that did it, leastways the story what they call Tyburn Dick.

Well, my brother Bill was a bit older than me, and he used to have to stay at home and mind my young brother and sister, while father was out jobbing about at the docks and them places. We didn’t have no mother. Well, father he used to leave us as much grub as he could, and Bill used to have the sharin’ of it out. Bill couldn’t read a bit, but he knowed boys that could, and he used to hear ‘em reading about Knights of the Road, and Claude Duval, and Skeleton Crews, till I suppose his head got regler stuffed with it. He never had no money to buy a pen’orth when it came out, so he used to lay wait for me, carrying my young sister over his shoulder, when I came out of school at dinner time, and gammon me over to come along with him to a shop at the corner of Rosamond Street in Clerkenwell, where there used to be a whole lot of the penny numbers in the window.

They was all of a row, Wildfire Jack, the Boy Highwayman, Dick Turpin, and ever so many others - just the first page, don’t you know, and the picture. Well, I liked it too, and I used to go along o’ Bill and read to him all the reading on the front pages, and look at the pictures until - ‘specially on Mondays when there was altogether a new lot - Bill would get so worked up with the aggravatin’ little bits, which always left off where you wanted to turn over and see what was on the next leaf, that he was very nigh off his head about it.

He used to bribe me with his grub to go with him to Rosamond Street. He used to go there regler every mornin’ carryin’ my young sister, and if he found only one that was fresh, he’d be at the school coaxin’ and wigglin’ (inveigling or wheedling), and sometimes bringin’ me half his bread and butter, or the lump of cold pudden what was his share of the dinner. He got the little bits of the tales and the pictures so jumbled up together that it used to prey on him awful.

I was bad enough but Bill was forty times worse. He used to lay awake of nights talkin’ and wonderin’ and wonderin’ what was over leaf, and then he’d drop off and talk about it in his sleep. Well, one day he come to the school, and says he,

  “Charley, there’s somethin’ real stunnin’ at the corner shop this mornin’. It’s Tyburn Dick, and they’ve got him in a cart under the gallows, and there’s Jack Ketch smoking his pipe, and a whole lot of the mob a rushing to rescue him wot’s going to be hung, and the soldiers are there beatin’ of ‘em back, and I’m blowed,” says Bill, “if I can tell how it will end. I should like to know,” says he. “Perhaps it tells you in the little bit of print at bottom; come along, Charley.”

Well, I wanted to know too, so we went, and there was the picture just as Bill said, but the print underneath didn’t throw no light on it - it was only just on the point of throwin’ a light on it, and of course we couldn’t turn over. I never saw Bill in such a way. He wasn’t a swearin’ boy, take him altogether, but this time he did let out, he was so savage at not being able to turn over. He was like a mad cove, and without any reason punched me about till I run away from him and went to school again. Well, although I didn’t expect it when I come out at half-past four, there was Bill again. His face looked so queer that I thought I was going to get some more punching, but it wasn’t that. He come up speakin’ quite kind, though there seemed something the matter with his voice, it was so shaky.

  “Come on, Charley,” he said, “come on home quick. I’ve got it,” and opening his jacket, he showed it me - the penny number where the picture of the gallows was, tucked in atwixt the buttonings of his shirt.

  “But how did you come by the penny?” I asked him.

  “Come on home and read about Jack Ketch and that, and then I’ll tell you all about it.” Bill replied. So we went home; and I read out the penny number to him all through, and then he up and told me that he had nicked (stolen) a hammer off a second-hand tool stall in Leather Lane, and sold it for a penny at a rag-shop. That’s how the ice was broke. It seemed a mere nothing to nail a paltry pen’orth or so after reading of the wholesale robbery of jewels, and diamond necklaces, and that, that Tyburn Dick did every night of his life a’most. It was getting that whole pen’orth about him that showed us what a tremenjus chap he was. Next week it was my turn to get a penny to buy the number - we felt that we couldn’t do without it nohow; and finding the chance, I stole one of the metal inkstands at the school. That was the commencement of it; and so it went on and growed bigger; but it’s out and true, that for a good many weeks we only stole to buy the number just out of Tyburn Dick.”

A question likely to occur to the reader of these pages is - what sort of persons are these who are so ignoble and utterly lost to all feelings of shame that they can consent to make money by a means that is more detestable than that resorted to by the common gutter-raker or the common pickpocket ? How do such individuals comport themselves in society? Are they men well dressed and decently behaved, and have they any pretensions to respectability? The bookselling and publishing trade is a worthy trade: do the members of it generally recognise these base corruptors of the morals of little boys and girls? Or do they shun them and give them a wide berth when they are compelled to tread the same pavement with them?

My dear reader, I assure you that whether they are shunned or recognised by those who know them is not of the least moment to the blackguardly crew who pull the strings that keep the delusive puppets going. Well dressed they are - they can well afford to be so, for they make a deal of money, and in many cases keep fine houses and servants and send their children to boarding-school. They dine well in the city, and bluster, and swagger, and swear, and wear diamonds on their unsullied hands, and chains of gold adorn their manly bosoms. As for any idea of moral responsibility as regards those whose young souls and bodies they grind to make their bread, they have no more than had Simon Legree on his Red River slave plantation. They are labouring under no delusion as to the quality of the stuff they circulate. In their own choice language, it is “rot,” “rubbish,” “hog-wash,” but “what odds so long as it sells?”

They would laugh in your face were you so rash as to attempt to argue the matter with them. They would tell you that they “go in” for this kind of thing, not out of any respect or even liking they have for it, but simply because it is a good “dodge” for making money, and their only regret is that the law forbids them “spicing” their poison pages and serving them as hot and strong as they would like to. I speak from my own knowledge of these men, and am glad to make their real character known, in order to show how little injustice would be done if their nefarious trade were put a stop to with the utmost rigour of any law that might be brought to bear against them.

Again, it may be asked, who are the “authors,” the talented gentlemen who find it a labour of love to discourse week after week to a juvenile audience of the doings of lewd women and “fast” men, and of the delights of debauchery, and the exercise of low cunning, and the victimising of the innocent and unsuspecting? Ay, who are they? Few things would afford me greater satisfaction than to gather together a hundred thousand or so of those who waste their time and money in the purchase and perusal of Penny Awfuls, and exhibit to them the sort of man it is to whose hands is entrusted the preparation of the precious hashes. Before such an exhibition could take place however, for decency’s sake, I should be compelled to induce him to wash his face and shave his neglected muzzle; likewise I should probably have to find him a coat to wear, and very possibly a pair of shoes. His master, the Penny Awful proprietor, does not treat him at all liberally. To be sure he is not worthy of a great amount of consideration, being, as a rule, a dissipated, gin-soddened, poor wretch, who has been brought to his present degraded state by his own misdoings.

As for talent, he has none at all; never had; nothing more than a mere accidental literary twist in his wrist - just as one frequently sees a dog that is nothing but a cur, except for some unaccountable gift it has for catching rats, or doing tricks of conjuring. He works to order, does this obliging writer. Either he has lodgings in some dirty court close at hand, or he is stowed away in a dim, upstairs back room of the Penny Awful office, and there the proprietor visits him, and they have a pot of ale and pipes together - the one in his splendid attire, and the other in his tattered old coat and dirty shirt - and talk over the “next” number of Selina the Seduced; and very often there is heard violent language in that dim little den, the proprietor insisting on their being “more flavour” in the next batch of copy than the last, and the meek author beseeching a little respect for Lord Campbell and his Act.

But the noble owner of Selina generally has his way.

  “Do as you like about it,” says he; “only bear this in mind. I know what goes down best with ‘em and what’s most relished, and if I don’t find that you warm up a bit in the next number, I’ll knock off half-a-crown, and make the tip for the week seventeen-and-six instead of a pound.”

-          James Greenwood, St Paul’s Magazine, 1873.

In the kind of circles of society Greenwood would have moved in, the condemnation of penny papers was widespread, but not all literary figures were critics; in 1901 the great essayist G.K Chesterton wrote ‘A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls’

‘Varney the Vampire’, ‘The String of Pearls’ (AKA Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street ((No, he was never a real person))) and Reynolds’ ‘Mysteries of London’ were a few of the most popular penny titles.

Alfred Harmsworth, a well-meaning publisher, decided to go to war with the penny papers by releasing half-penny papers filled with moral tales. He thought that the cheaper price would encourage readers of the penny dreadfuls to abandon the corrupting tales of murder and crime and read his uplifting tales instead, but such was the influence and popularity of the stories of horror that after a short time, the half-penny-papers began to run similar garish stories in order to compete with the penny bloods.

I suspect that if we could glimpse a hundred years into the future we would discover that our descendants have some form of corrupting media they are vociferously claiming is damaging the youth of the day, but surely, indulging in the reading, watching, doing or playing of something frowned upon by moralists and / or adults is a mainstay of our culture, and every generation frowns upon something its offspring gets up to?

Those who today frown upon violent video games must have watched the occasional video nasty in the eighties, and their parents may have been involved somehow in the punk scene of the seventies, who would have been jeered at by their parents who lived through the swinging sixties, who would have been parented by people there for the birth of rock and roll, and the children of today will, no doubt, in fifteen years or so be raising a finger of complaint to some other movement or cult, thus proving that little has, and will, change in our society since the days of the Victorian moralists and their objections to penny dreadfuls.

The Child Doomed to a Doll-Less Existence Has an Injustice Inflicted on Her for Which no Other Education can Effectually Compensate: Or: The Importance of Giving Children Toys:

In the evenings it is often my wont to pick up a periodical or a bit of Victorian journalism for a little light reading. An article can be read in around fifteen minutes and doesn’t require the same kind of commitment as a book, and so the other night I turned to my old friend James Greenwood for a little entertainment.

Whilst thumbing through ‘Mysteries of Modern London’ (1883) I came across an article I had not read before, and to my delight I found it pertinent to the last few months for a number of reasons;

Firstly, and most obviously, it speaks of Christmas, and toys, and we are in December, and, having done a bit of Christmas shopping myself recently, have seen the furore surrounding the seasons’ ‘must have toys and gadgets’. But also, and in ways I’m not sure how to describe, the article (for me, anyway) seemed to have some significance when read in context of both the summer riots that occurred in Britain, and also Britain’s place in Europe. Perhaps I saw things in the article that weren’t there, though, and I’d appreciate feedback and comments from anyone who sees what I saw.

On top of that, though, this is a fascinating article, which speaks to the importance of children having good toys to play with, that they may grow into rounded adults. (Perhaps this is the point that led me to think of the riots, and that perhaps the participants missed something whilst growing up.)

The article:

Poor Folly’s Playthings:

IT may at first thought appear an absurdity, but it is, nevertheless, profoundly true, that not least among the many good reasons why England should beware of being beguiled into a war with the rest of Europe is that one of the almost immediate results would be a toy famine in our land. Why it should be would not be easy to tell, but it is a fact that we are no more independent in the matter of toys than as regards our breadstuffs and our bacon, and the hundred other commodities that go towards the sum total of what are called the necessaries of existence. There are some - and they would most likely be the old bachelor portion of the community - who will say that it is ridiculous to speak of mere toys as bearing any relation even to our daily needs; but the only reply that can be made to all such observations is that it is a great pity that those who utter them do not know better.

A very little reflection should convince us that toys are almost as essential to our children's wholesome growth and well-being as the food they eat and the clothes they wear. The melancholy effects of a toy dearth would make themselves apparent in a very short time - ere our present race of small girls and boys became women and men. It is not a mere question of amusing the infant mind. Deprived of their doll and their doll's house, our little maidens would be shut out from influences that are who shall say how valuable in developing characteristics that in after life go so far towards making them inestimable wives and mothers? The waxen image with its pink shoes and flaxen curls is not a mere object to idolise. Were it so, it might be well spared. Children, girls especially, are shrewd observers, and the faculty of imitation is seldom wanting in them. Their treatment is always a more or less exaggerated repetition of their nursery personal experiences, and one, as a rule, finds the parent's or the nurse's method of child management reflected in Miss six years playing at being mother with a sawdust-stuffed baby. She takes an earnest and methodical delight in dressing and undressing it, and in making its bed in the tiny cot. With an expression of countenance indicative of her sense of the responsibility that rests with her, she attends to dolly's wardrobe, and so discovers in a practical manner the use of needles and cottons; in its behalf, she sets the Lilliputian house in order, and makes everything within it neat and tidy, so that even mamma, should she peep into it, could find no faults.

Many an adult might learn a useful lesson were he at times privileged to peep into dolldom when the presiding genius was at home with her waxen and wooden family gathered about her. It is good to be a furtive looker-on when the young dolls' housekeeper, overhauling the contents of the nursery litter cupboard, comes on an old favourite long discarded on account of its infirmities. Accident has deprived it perhaps of its nose, it has become prematurely bald, or a murderous assault by the terrier has incurably crippled both its legs; anyway it has been relegated to obscurity as being no longer presentable in respectable company. But now, as its mistress contemplates it so forlorn and neglected, so dusty and shabby, her old love returns for it in full force, and she bedews its battered visage with remorseful tears and makes humble confession of her penitence to it. Yes, that day at least she will have nothing to say to her new doll, who as yet is spick-and-span and innocent of flaw or defect; she gives herself entirely to the comfort and caressing of the legless one, dressing it in the richest array at her disposal and placing it in the position of honour. Nor does it invariably happen that the newly-fanned flame dies out as quickly as its warmth was rekindled. Often enough it proves that the old affection revived is constant ever after – during doll-hood that is to say – and that, however splendid may be the doll who appears as the reigning favourite, the invalided one is snugly bestowed in the toy box, the doll of dolls, after all is said and done.

The child doomed to a doll-less existence has an injustice inflicted on her for which no other education can effectually compensate, and the result of the unnatural deprivation would of course manifest itself more markedly if she were at the same time deprived of every other kind of plaything as well. Nor does a toyless boy afford a spectacle less to be pitied. Cut him off from bat and ball, from battledore and shuttlecock, from kite and rocking-horse, and from mimic fife and drum and peg-top and whipping-top, and what would life be worth to him? It would be of little use endeavouring to make it up to him by supplying him with an abundance of what are called educational toys - with boxes of wooden "bricks" that he may study the art of bridge-building and the principle of the key-stone, or with magnetic fish and hydrostatic and pneumatic implements and kaleidoscopes, or any other gilded pill of the make-believe plaything sort, by means of which a boy may be beguiled into acquiring a knowledge of scientific laws when he imagines he is simply amusing himself. On the specious plan alluded to they make soldiers in France. In that country miniature guns, swords, and cannons are looked on as almost the only playthings fit for a boy, and the result furnishes significant proof of how great is the influence of the toys of the child on the character and disposition of the man. Take away from an English boy his accustomed playthings and he would mope and be miserable. In sheer desperation he would be driven so constantly to his books that, ere he attained his teens, he would have become so terribly clever as to be a nuisance and an abhorrence to all who knew him: his heart would grow grey while yet his head bore the curly locks of youth, and there would be for him nothing in the world that was not sour to his taste as a green goose-berry.

There would be danger of this alarming state of affairs coming to pass in the event of England being "Boycotted" by other nations, including Germany, France, and Switzerland, from which countries nine-tenths of the toys placed in the hands of English children are derived. We have not the knack of cheap toy-making. It would be a gain to us if we had. It is not a sufficient reason that we do not give our attention to it; because the scanty pay the women and children toy-makers of Germany and Switzerland receive makes it more profitable to import toys than to invest capital for their home production. I don't know what the rate of pay of a German toy-maker may be, but if she earns less than our lucifer-box maker or our slop tailoress, it is a marvel how she keeps whole - hearted enough to stick to toy-making at all. There are thousands of poor souls, women and girls, residing in the back streets of London, whose average earnings do not exceed sixpence a-day, and such, if they could be taught to move their fingers at toy-making as nimbly as they are compelled to at the starving trades at which they at present find employment, the occupation would be far pleasanter, and might be made to pay as well, or better.

And this idea is the more worth consideration in view of the undoubted fact that year-by-year the custom of introducing toys at our domestic festivities grows more common. This is due, no doubt, in great part, to our adoption of the German Christmas tree; and it may perhaps be argued that, since we are indebted to Germany for the pretty idea of the tree, we should not begrudge that country the privilege of providing the fruit for it, especially as the crop she assures us is so abundant and unfailing. There is enough for all. Choice fruit, in shape of imitation horses and donkeys, so elaborately made and finished that they cost almost half as much as the living creatures of the common sort, and clockwork peacocks valued at a guinea and a-half and Noah's arks with every animal so true to nature that the price of the whole collection, with the ark to keep them in, is ten or twelve pounds; and farmyards, with sheep that bleat when you stroke their fleecy backs, and tin ponds for the ducks and geese to swim in. These high- class fruits of the Christmas-tree, for those who can afford to indulge in such luxuries, with hundreds of cases, each one as large almost as a two-roomed country cottage, and stuffed full with toys, cheap and common, are such as eventually find their way at Christmas and on New Year's Eve to the fancy shops and the countless toy-stalls that now, on such occasions, may be seen in every street market-place in the metropolis. Cheap and common though they may be, however, the toys of Poverty Market are neither slovenly in shape, nor coarse and vulgar in design. The only exceptions to the rule are those hideous wooden painted dolls, with eyes that invariably squint, and whose matchwood legs, hinged to their square trunks, stretch out with obstinate rigidity and break off short when any attempt is made to compose them. Where these monstrosities hail from, and how it happens that they still find a place in the English toy market is quite unaccountable, unless it is that there are still to be found amongst the more ignorant of the poorer classes, mothers whose reign over their children is a reign of terror, and part of whose system it is to scare a fractious child by thrusting one of these dreadful little bogies before its eyes. But in every other respect the improvement that has taken place in the manufacture of the cheapest kind of toys is as amazing as it is gratifying.

There was a time, and that not more than a quarter of a century since, when almost the only toy (excepting the squinting penny doll above mentioned) with which a poor man's child was acquainted was the famous "lamb," with its body of clay, cotton-wool for fleece, and five lucifer matches for its legs and tail. Nor was this curiosity of nature to be always obtained. People had to wait for the day when the old woman who appeared to hold a monopoly for their manufacture came round. It was lucky for the old soul that she did not live in these later times, or, with her ringing cry she might have found herself "put down" along with the muffin bell.

"If I'd as much money as I could tell, I'd never come crying young lambs to sell," piped up the old woman; and she did such a trade that it is by no means certain that the reason why she retired from the trade was not that one day she found time to tell over the money she had accumulated, and, finding she had enough, she gave over lamb-making, and that particular breed for which she was renowned became extinct.

You may buy a lamb for a penny still on any street market stall, and, with all respect for the memory, of the old woman, it is worth an entire flock of the ridiculous things she used to turn out at the price. You may buy every other kind of toy at an equally reasonable rate-a clockwork mouse for twopence, and a set of doll's tea-things for three- pence, either in china or artistically turned in wood. The ancient and ludicrous spotted hare with his body like a ninepin and his legs mere stumps, has retired in favour of an animal symmetrically shaped and finished; while the long established peg top has found a formidable rival in a self-acting spring spinner of handsome appearance, the price of which is only one penny. The very marbles are not what they were when I was a boy. There were only two sorts then, and they were known as "commoneys" and "stoneys." The first were brittle disappointments in baked clay, and as often as not shattered themselves and our hopes as well at the moment of victory. The others were more durable, but they were exceedingly expensive. You got no more than six or eight for a penny probably. But marbles are moulded in glass now - elegant little globes, curiously threaded and coloured with all the hues of the rainbow - and I saw them the other day in Brick Lane being sold at the rate of ten for a halfpenny, which, one way and another, is evidence of the eternal fitness of things. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." There never was a time when our schoolboy Jacks, and Jills as well, were so hardly worked as now. They require, consequently, a more abundant supply of toys than formerly, and at a price fairly within their means, and lo! here they are.

In connection with the toy interest there have always been two of its features that I could never understand, nor was anyone I ever yet applied to able to give me any satisfactory information. In the first place, who are the unknown geniuses constantly racking their inventive faculties to produce some new whimsy penny plaything? and, secondly, by whom is it that the said latest inventions carried hot from the factory (wherever that may be) to the neighbourhood of the Royal Exchange, there to be retailed by a band of gutter speculators who seemingly are engaged exclusively in this line of business? As to the first question, it is quite certain that the novelties are not all the creation of one man's brain. Any one familiar with the neighbourhood of the Bank of England, the Exchange and Broad Street, with eyes to see and ears to listen, cannot have missed the fact that scarce a day passes without there being "something new in the hands of the penny toymen exhibited and bawled out to tempt those of the crowd that throng the pavement. The variety is endless. To-day it is a magic mousetrap, a marvellous microscope, or a dancing donkey; tomorrow, a Chinese puzzle of rings and links, a Japanese parasol, a squeaking Jack-in-the-box, a jumping frog, or a wonderful bird- whistle. It would occupy at least half a column to enumerate merely the names of these new wares and toy tricks, that sell by hundreds on a Monday, and are represented by something else on Wednesday, becoming at that time so stale and unprofitable that unsold stock represents so much wasted capital.

What is the system on which the novelties are produced? Are there anywhere in London speculative toy-makers, opulent men who have made much money at the game, and who daily are to be found at their handsome city chambers to give audience to needy inventors with something to sell? Do they wait in an ante-room and crowd on the stairs, there being so many of them, each one jealously hugging in the breast pocket of his shabby old coat the last offspring of his ingenuity in the shape of a comical "grandfather's clock," or a dancing clown, or a magic mirror, and passing one at a time into the great man's presence? One would like unobserved to be a witness of the proceedings. The encourager of genius lolling in his chair at his ease, and with gold-rimmed glasses bestriding his shrewd nose, condescendingly contemplating the "frolicsome donkey" the poor needy wretch of an inventor has brought for his inspection, and which he earnestly recommends as being sure to "take" with the public, while he jerks at the string and shows how by that means the animal cocks its ears and flings up its hind legs, to the dismay of the gay young lady who occupies the saddle. The patron shakes his head.

"Not so bad," says he, "but where's the profit to come from, selling 'em to the trade at fourpence-ha'penny a dozen, with all that precious lot of pasteboard and paint to find, to say nothing about the j'ints and the string. I'll say seven and six, if you like, for the notion, but I won't give another shilling."

And the inventor of the frolicsome donkey, with a sigh (he had asked fifteen shillings for the article), pockets the money, and retires to make way for a brother genius, who has belaboured his brains for a week past to bring to perfection a guttapercha mouse that squeaks when its tail is pinched.

I don't of course say that this is the sort of thing that really goes on; it merely occurs to my mind as being possible, because, unless the ingenious little articles one sees offered for sale cost next to nothing in their production, it would be impossible for the "trade" to maintain its briskness. It is brisk, undoubtedly, in the localities indicated - in Threadneedle Street, and in the neighbourhood of the Stock Exchange - which shows how much success in the most trifling businesses depends on an instinctive knowledge of the desires and weaknesses of our fellow creatures. As an ignorant and inexperienced person with the last invented jumping frog to dispose of, I should no more think of taking it to the Stock Exchange than to the top of the monument. What on earth should a "bull" or a "bear" know, or desire to know, about jumping frogs? or mice that squeak when their tales are pinched, or frolicsome donkeys? You would never dream they could take delight in such absurdities to see them when they are in the street conspiring iii pairs, or brooding solitary, and using their pencil point as a toothpick, lost to the world for the time in a field of figures. Fancy breaking in on such a man's cogitation by soliciting him to buy a Punch's squeaker. The idea is too ridiculous to be for a moment entertained. There appears to be one way of accounting for the mystery and only one.

There are mysteries of Mammon's acre, and this may be of them. Everyone is aware how terribly harassing to the mental powers are complicated calculations made offhand, and frequently against time, which has to be beaten by a neck-by half a head, if money is to be made by the speculation. It is possible-nay, probable - that, under extraordinary pressure, the brain even of a bull may become heated and disturbed and a bear be conscious of symptoms that make him feel uncomfortable. The proper and immediate thing, of course, is to resort to some means of tranquilising the nervous system. The simplest remedies are always the safest, and sometimes the most efficacious. Is it impossible, then, that an excited bull, feeling the fit coming on, may hurry to his chambers and bid his faithful clerk make haste and procure him some toy the contemplation of which shall amuse him, though only for a couple of minutes? He knows that if he can but laugh his congestion will be relieved, and he will be himself again. He therefore sends out into Broad-street for a frolicsome donkey, or a Punch's squeaker, communes with one or the other the secrecy of his chamber for a few minutes, and then emerges as cool and self-possessed a bull as ever pastured in a Devon meadow. If I have hit on a correct solution of the matter, the constant craving in the neighbourhood in question for novel toys is accounted for.

-          James Greenwood, Mysteries of Modern London, 1883

There you have it, parents; by ignoring the incessant advertising and not getting your children the latest must-have gadgets that they desired this Christmas, you have actually destroyed their future. Now, one of those clay sheep sounds delightful…

"...And the Quiet, Unfrequented Glen Turned into a Lovely Garden.” Or: Saltburn-by-the-Sea: Victorian Seaside Town:

Recently I traveled to a little town not too far from Middlesborough in order to attend a birthday party.  My father was born in nearby Saltburn-by-the-Sea, and I’m sure I was taken there as a child by my Grandparents, who live in the little town I visited, but I can’t remember all that much other than a museum dedicated to smuggling (which Saltburn saw a lot of in the 1700’s).

I know that as a child my Grandmother also took me to Whitby, where Bram Stoker wrote ‘Dracula’ in 1897, and to York, the ancient town transformed by the railways in 1839. I was, at the age of twelve, also taken to Beamish open air museum – where the Victorian and Edwardian era’s prevail, and you can visit shops, farms and businesses preserved as they would have been in days gone by.

Was the seed of Victoriana planted in my young self during these visits? Who knows?

My most recent visit required a stay in a hotel, and in the foyer was a large display of brochures and pamphlets for various local attractions. The Sea-Life Centre, York Museum, Beamish, of course, but the one that most caught my eye was the brochure for Saltburn-by-the-Sea. I wondered what was there, in the seaside town where my father was born, so I picked it up and put it in my bag to read later.

Back at home the following day the brochure dropped out of my bag, and I thumbed through it. I discovered that the town of Saltburn-by-the-Sea was an almost entirely Victorian creation.

With that in mind, and also the fact that I have a link to the seaside town, I decided to write about it here, but, where to start?

I spoke with Laine of http://www.saltburnbysea.com which is a terrific website, crammed with photographs old and new, Victorian and Edwardian newspaper articles and a whole host of Saltburn related information, and I was allowed to use the website’s article on Victorian Saltburn, which saved me an awful lot of research and time.

The history of Saltburn is not that dissimilar to some other British coastal towns that grew up in the Victorian era. The belief that sea air was good for the constitution and would benefit those with ailments, lead to many Victorians taking their holidays on the coast. The world, of course, was much smaller then. A trip to, say, Spain, would take forever compared to the travel technology at our disposal today, and so places like Blackpool, Brighton, Eastbourne, Margate and – a favourite of Dickens – Broadstairs, capitalized. Entertainments were thrown up; parks, hotels, restaurants, bathing machines and piers and much more were all built to accommodate the seasonal influx of city-dwellers looking to ‘take the air’ by the sea.

The Founding of Saltburn-by-the-Sea

Before 1860 only ‘old’ Saltburn existed. Where Saltburn by the Sea was eventually to be developed, farms grew oats, beans, turnips, clover or lay fallow. The discovery and exploitation of iron ore in the mid 1800’s was to make the most dramatic change in the fortunes of the Saltburn area.

In the industrial history of the 19th century the Pease family held a foremost position. For several generations in succession the name of Pease retained great pre-eminence in the industrial world of the North. Great commercial ability combined with a strong gift of foresight and an indomitable enterprise characterised both Edward Pease and his immediate descendants.

The family held several firms. These included the firm of Joseph Pease & Partners, coal-owners. J. W. Pease & Co. dealt in ironstone and limestone, the banking business was carried on under the style of J & J. W. Pease, and the extensive woollen mills were carried on under the name of Henry Pease & Co. The head-quarters of all these firms was to be found in Northgate, Darlington, some thirty miles away.

The Pease family’s two most important undertakings were the coal mines in South Durham, and the ironstone mines in Cleveland. In the development of the Cleveland ironstone industry they took a leading part, and the first royalty taken in their name was dated in March 1852, from which time they stood at the forefront of Cleveland mine owners.

Henry Pease, the youngest son of Edward Pease, began his apprenticeship in a family tanning establishment in Darlington. In 1881, at the time of his death, there were still three woollen mills in Darlington belonging to the firm of Henry Pease & Co. In an article published in the 'London Society' in November 1881, Henry was described as having been;

 'a man of such energy of character' that he was 'not likely to escape being caught by the railway fever which raged around him' and 'no sooner had he attained his majority than he ... entered heart and soul into the work of railway promotion.'

Henry Pease's name came to be connected with nearly all the lines of importance that were projected in the North of England, some of which were originated by him. From 1830-35 he was mentioned in the minute books of the S & D Railway as a troubleshooter, resolving technical difficulties. For over forty years he was unremitting in his attendance in the board room of one Railway Company or another, his latter years being engaged principally on behalf of the North Eastern Railway Company. It is, therefore, possible to state that perhaps no man of his time had a longer or more distinguished career as a railway director.

Henry Pease

Henry was associated with his brother, Joseph, in the founding of the Middlesbrough & Guisborough line, and was the lines first chairman. He also played an active role in the establishment of a line between Darlington and Barnard Castle and subsequently the South Durham and Lancashire Union Railway. After the establishment of the latter, several amalgamations were effected - at the suggestion of Henry Pease. The South Durham and Lancashire was amalgamated with the Stockton & Darlington, which, together with its tributary lines, was itself absorbed into the North Eastern system.

His wider influence was felt in a number of directions. As well as being a board member of Pease & Partners in their many enterprises, eventually becoming a senior partner of the firm, he also became an MP for South Durham between 1859 and 1865, and took an active part in the Sunday Closing Bill. He owned the building firm that erected the Darlington Iron Co. and owned the brickworks that provided the white firebricks used extensively on the first buildings erected in Saltburn by the Sea. He was chairman of the Stockton & Middlesbrough Water Company and the Weardale & Shildon Water Co. He also became the first Mayor of Darlington.

Henry Pease, like his father, was also a member of the Quaker Society of Friends and of the Peace Society. As a Quaker, he traveled to Russia in an attempt to stem the outbreak of war with England in 1853. As a member of the Peace Society, he visited the French Emperor, Napoleon III, in 1867. Henry also visited America for three months in 1856.

Mary Pease, writing in retrospect of her husband’s life, says that in 1859 Henry Pease was staying with his brother at Marske when one evening he returned late for dinner. He explained that he had walked to Saltburn, and that seated on the hillside he had seen, in a sort of prophetic vision, on the edge of the cliff before him, “a town arise and the quiet unfrequented glen turned into a lovely garden.”

The decision on developing Saltburn met with opposition from the S & D board - Mr George Morley of Guisborough stating that he thought it was 'a very bad speculation.' for having lived in the area he thought it 'a nasty bleak cold place, and the sand is horrid'. Opposition was also encountered from others who felt that Lord Zetland should promote the development of Redcar and Marske rather than Saltburn.

The Hoist

Whatever objections were raised, plans went ahead and, having secured the support of the railway company, Henry Pease formed the Saltburn Improvement Company in 1859. As Lord Zetland owned the land on the cliff top, the SIC approached him in 1860 offering to buy 10 acres of Penn Pasture, which formed part of Rifts Farm, whose farmhouse stood where the west side of Hilda Place is now. It was to be the first of 11 lots the company would buy over the next 16 years, totaling nearly 135 acres.

Whilst the offer of £120 per acre was being considered, Henry Pease and Thomas McNay visited Scarborough, ostensibly to inspect the towns sewage disposal system. During this visit Henry's attention was engaged by the pleasure grounds which were being developed there, and thus began his own personal passion for the development of similar grounds at Saltburn.

George Dickinson of Darlington was employed to lay out a plan of the town. The buildings had to have uniform roof lines, slate roofs, frontages of white firebricks (from the Pease’s own brickworks) and no fences.

Within twenty years the main form of the town had been created, including the Station Complex by 1862, Valley Gardens by 1861/62, Zetland Hotel by 1863 (reputed to be one of the world’s first purpose built railway hotels to have its own private platform), Wesleyan Chapel built by 1863, the Pier by 1869, and the Cliff Hoist was finished by 1870.

With the death of Henry Pease in 1881 the town’s driving force was lost and soon after, the Saltburn Improvement Company was disbanded.

Over the years no substantial new features were added to the resort and it became encapsulated in time as one of the finest early Victorian seaside towns surviving almost completely in its original form.

Many thanks to Laine of www.saltburnbysea.com – whom you can find on Twitter @Saltburnbysea – for letting me use the above article.

The Victorians certainly appeared to love the seaside, but, as ever, it is dangerous to generalize all Victorians as having a liking for the salty sea air and the sand in their boots. There were – and still are – two types of trip to the seaside; the day-trip, which is the kind I have mostly been on, and the ‘proper’ seaside holiday, which involves staying in a hotel on the coast for a week or two.

In his 1883 compendium of articles, ‘Odd People in Odd Places’, the great James Greenwood offers a distinction between the two:

“There are tens of thousands of their more fortunate fellow-creatures who have enjoyed the high privilege of visiting the domain of Neptune - of perambulating the shingly beach, and taking a header from a bathing-machine - of going fairly out to sea, probably in a shilling yacht, and braving the perils of sea-sickness - and all within the space of a dozen hours, four of which were consumed in the journey to and from London. They have, however, never enjoyed a longer holiday than eight hours by the seaside. They may be, and probably are, immensely gratified and delighted, but there is a mingling of sadness with their satisfaction.

It is, of course, very enjoyable, and a privilege to be grateful for, this single day at Margate or Brighton, but it is, at the same time, tremendously hard work, just as hard, indeed, as regards the preparation for the start, the early rising, the hurry-skurry of reaching the railway station, &c. as though the visit was to be of a fortnight's duration.

And if the eight hours' excursionist is of this opinion, with the day's delights before him, and while he is fresh and strong to bear fatigue, and his wife is in high spirits, and the children ready to clap their hands for joy, what must he think when the station bell reminds him that he has now reached the termination of his tether, and his holiday is at an end? His "eight hours" have expired, and the railway authorities, stern sticklers for the terms of contract, will start the return train within twenty minutes, and all those who are not there in time will be left behind.

It is at this point when the one day excursionist, who, as well as his wife, has an olive-branch or two with him, finds his fortitude suddenly collapse. With the youngest but one (his good lady, of course, carries the baby) bestriding his shoulder, he puts his best foot foremost from the beach to the town so as to be in good time at the station. He is hot and fagged, and his temper is not improved by the knowledge that the cherub to whom he is giving a "flying angel" is smearing his Sunday hat with the seaweed with which its little fists are full.

It is at such a time that the reflection comes home to him with fullest force - if he was possessed of means like other folk! He sees the enviable beings all about him. While he is pushing and elbowing with the crowd of his fellow-excursionists, with his back to the sea, the favourites of fortune, with perhaps a fair fortnight still before them, are sauntering beachward - not in a perspiration as he is, and with his face aglow and his neckerchief disarranged, but unruffled and tranquil, heeding that confounded bell no more than though it hung round the neck of a sheep on the adjoining downs, or was being swung by the town crier - with nothing on earth, or sea either for that matter, but pass the time in delightful idleness until dusk or bed-time, and then to retire to snowy sheets, and with the fragrant breath of the ocean sweetening the air of the bed-room, to be up again next morning bright and early, for a jolly ramble across the cliffs, or to take a pull in a little boat, and so get up a tremendous appetite for a breakfast, the staple of which is fish that, in a manner of speaking, has made but a single leap from the fishing-net into the fryingpan.

It is, I say, not very much to be wondered at should the individual, the space of whose seaside happiness is actually measured by mere hours, feel a pang of envy at the better luck of his fellow - mortals, and that he should silently register a vow that, if ever his time does come, he will make up for all his previous holiday shortcomings.”