Romancing the Bushrangers

    

[1] Ironclad Ned Kelly.

We have no hesitation in saying that the life of Ned Kelly, the Ironclad Bushranger, is as disgraceful and disgusting a production as has ever been printed. Lord Campbell’s Act recognized the moral mischief which might be done by publications which offend against common decency, and provided for the condign punishment of the scoundrels who write print and sell them — they are, as the annals of the police courts prove every day, direct incentives to murder and robbery… — “Penny Dreadfuls,” in Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, Nov 26, 1881

The Otago Witness reports that the Salvation Army in Dunedin recently held a “novel-burning night,” which attracted a large army to the fortress. In the center of the ring on a bier were placed “yellowbacks” of all kinds, ranging from “Bluecap the Bushranger” to some of Besant’s works. — Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, NSW, March 30, 1894

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THE FIRST PENNY NUMBER of Ned Kelly, the Ironclad Australian Bushranger was published in the month of July, 1881, by the London Novelette Company. By November the penny numbers had “attained an immense circulation.” The subsequent collection of bound penny numbers was preceded with fake quotes of praise from the Times, the Telegraph and the Press. Other bound copies survived published by Alfred J. Isaacs and General Publishing Company. All three publishers seem to have been one and the same. The author of the serial was unnamed but an unlikely subtitle reveals its text is written “by one of his captors.” What follows is Kelly’s encounter with the celebrated Spanish dancer Lola Montez when he has stopped her stagecoach on a moonlit night —

“Lola Montez, Countess of Lansfeldt,” said he, “your destiny is to become the wife of Ned Kelly, the King of the Australian bush. The parson shall marry us at once, and then I’ll take you right away to your future home in the mountain ranges. What do you say to my plan, countess?”

“That I haven’t so much as seen your face. How can I tell whether I shall like you? I have shown you mine; ‘tis but fair that I should behold yours in return.”

“Well I don’t know but what it is.” And the bushranger dropped his reins on his horse’s neck, and raised his ponderous iron head-dress.

Hardly had he done so, however, when the beautiful woman (we have her portrait before us whilst we write) pulled a small pistol from within her sleeve and fired it point-blank at the bushranger’s face, accompanying the action with the contemptuous remark —

“Where seven men sit panic-stricken before a single villain, ‘tis time for a woman to show what she can do.”

Unfortunately the beautiful specimen of the sex in question had not done nearly so much as she intended.

The little bullet from her almost toy weapon, instead of penetrating the bushranger’s brain, had only shorn off a portion of his left ear.

RUBBER-FACED BURGLAR. Another improbable character was introduced later in the text — Charles Peace, the rubber-faced British burglar. The author of Ned Kelly was James Skipp Borlase (1839-1902), who used the pen name J.J.G. Bradley in a series of penny dreadfuls published by Hogarth House in the 1880s. Borlase had already narrated his own supposed experiences with criminals, gold diggers and aborigines in his first nonfiction collection, The Night Fossickers and other Australian Tales of Perils and Adventure (London: Warne, 1867), and had supplied serials for several Australian bush papers. He’d left Australia in the 70s, bound for England via America, after writing some of the outback’s formative 
detective fiction.

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[2] Town and Country Journal, July 10, 1880.

DEATH MASK. Ned Kelly was hanged on November 11, 1880. The authorities, probably under the influence of criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso, took his death mask for posterity. The death mask was later brought out for show at the Institute of Anatomy, Canberra, in September 1951. On April 12, 1929, at the old prison grounds workmen with a steam-shovel unearthed a gruesome discovery, the skeleton of Ned Kelly.

The bones, which were remarkably well-preserved, were taken by workmen to be kept as mementos. Mr. H. Lee, a contractor, of Richmond, secured the skull. There was a complete set of teeth in the upper jaw but morbid souvenir hunters removed most of them. — The Western Mail, April 18, 1927

J.P. Quaine, an antiquarian bookseller of South Yarra, Melbourne, Australia, wrote to penny dreadful collector Barry Ono that

The crowd fought amongst themselves like hungry dogs over the bones of the fifty years buried outlaw. They burned them up with the steam shovel during alterations to the old Melbourne jail, also Deeming’s body. The latter was scrambled for by women, above all! I must confess that Australians are a race of bloody savages.

[3] Hogarth House Edition 1880s.

BEFORE NED KELLY. James Skipp Borlase had written an early bushranger romance In London, as J.J.G. Bradley. Bluecap the Bushranger; or, the Australian Dick Turpin commenced in Charles Fox’s The Boys’ Standard, Vol. 1, No. 25, published in April 1876 as “Written by a retired Victorian Trooper.” Bluecap the Bushranger; or, the Australian Dick Turpin was reissued in 11 penny numbers by Hogarth House in the 1880s. Short as this penny dreadful was it would prove to be popular fare and was still circulating, described as a yellow back in Australia in 1895.

Like Ned Kelly, Bluecap or Blue Cap — an alias for Robert Cotterell — was a real person, a hunted bushranger captured at Humbug Creek in November 1867. Bluecap and a companion, astride stolen horses, had robbed a Chinese man at gunpoint for a measly two or three pounds and a pocket-handkerchief. He was sentenced to 10 years “on the roads.” The police constables called him “Bluey.” There was a second Blue Cap, several years later, but it was Cottrell, the original Bluecap, who was in the newspapers while Borlase was residing in Melbourne. No matter, Borlase dispensed with the facts and fashioned a thrilling and violent highwayman romance that was both funny and horrible to read.

He wore on his head a cap of bright blue cloth, fitting close like a skull-cap, and with two long lappels that fastened under his chin. From the summit of this cap stood erect a dozen or so of bright crimson and blue feathers, to a height of nearly a yard. It was easy to be seen that they consisted of the entire tail of a blue mountain macaw.

This singular head-dress covered the whole of his shaven skull, and gave him a half-Indian, half Morisco, and wholly savage and demon-like appearance.

“I have been tailoring as well as plundering,” he said with a laugh. This old cap, made to keep a traveler’s ears warm in a colder climate than this, will give me a name, and in return I will give it a name. Henceforth I am known, and known only, as

‘BLUE CAP, THE BUSHRANGER!’

Within a month or two Australian mothers shall hush their brats to sleep with the terror of that name.

[4] The Boys of New York, 1876, courtesy Joe Rainone.

Norman Munro reprinted Bluecap the Bushranger; or, the Australian Dick Turpin shortly afterwards in the American story paper The Boys of New York, beginning in Volume 2, No. 60. October 9, 1876. His serials in the weekly proved so popular that J.G. Bradley (who was J.G.G. Bradley at Hogarth House in London) became a house name for American authors of an endless variety of serials, some good and some indifferent.

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AFTERWORD. I once came across a book called Stirring Tales of Colonial Adventure; A Book for Boys by Skipp Borlase with illustrations by Lancelot Speed, F. Warne, London, New York, 1894. It was another version of The Night Fossickers, where Borlase claims to have known many convicts and criminals, and enjoyed their company. It identified Skipp Borlase as author of Daring Deeds, Tales of the Bush, Yackandandah Station and The Mysteries of Melbourne. On January 27, 1870, The Mysteries of Melbourne began circulation as a newspaper serial by “Kelp.” You can view Chapter one HERE.

[5] London: Alfred J. Isaacs Edition, 1881.

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Read Bluecap the Bushranger; or, the Australian Dick Turpin — HERE.

Read Ned Kelly, the Ironclad Australian Bushranger — HERE.

NOTE: The two links above which were live at the time of posting (April 17, 2016) appear to now be available only by subscription. See HERE.

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James Skipp Borlase (1839-1902)

“We have no hesitation in saying that the life of Ned Kelly, the Ironclad Bushranger is as disgraceful and disgusting a production as has ever been printed.” -- Saturday Review, 26 Nov 1881.

Ned Kelly, the Ironclad Australian Bushranger was published by Alfred J. Isaacs & Sons of 16 Camomile Street, London, in 1881. Isaacs was not a huge publisher of penny dreadful, in fact this was their only known title. However, the last page of the bound volume (it was first distributed in penny numbers) lists the “Anonyma” series of popular novels with 16 titles in picture board’s priced 2 shillings each. Publishers C. H. Clarke and Henry Vickers names appeared on some of the boards for Ned Kelly. As well Chapter CCXXIII has a series of quotes from the London press which gives the address of the publisher as “Illustrated London Novelette” office, at 280 Strand, as the issuer of the original 38 penny numbers. This was the General Publishing Company. The Illustrated London Novelette published “complete novels” from 1880 to 1893.

The author of Ned Kelly was James Skipp Borlase who used the pen name J. J. G. Bradley (1839-1902). James Skipp Borlase was born in Truro, Cornwall in 1839 to James John Grenfell and Frances Catharine Borlase. In the 1851 census he was living with an aunt and uncle at Ringmore, Stokeinteignhead, Devonshire. His first known published literary work was a poem published in The What-Not; or, Ladies Handy-book in 1859. His address at this time was 12, North Parade, Penzance, Cornwall.

The Solicitors Journal reports that Borlase passed his examination in 1862 and was articled (or assigned) to his father J. J. G. Borlase and J. Roscoria. Borlase practiced law as a solicitor from Jun 1862 to Dec 1863. He apparently contributed to the Family Herald and London Journal. Two short tales appeared in the Odd-Fellows Magazine published in Manchester; ‘Ecarte’ in1862 and ‘Dr. Norton; or, Love in Death, a Sketch from a Law-Students Diary,’ in 1864. ‘Dr. Norton’ was resold c. 1867 to the Australian Journal under the new title ‘Our Fellow-Lodger.’

He married Rosanna Flamank in Sept 1863 and the couple took ship to Australia in March 1864. Borlase worked as a solicitor, but deserted his wife in 1865 and ran off to Tasmania. He was arrested and returned to his wife in Melbourne where they reconciled. He was a staff writer for the Australian Journal from 1865 to 1869. His AJ crime series was collected in book-form as The Night Fossickers in 1867, with the addition of at least one chapter written by Mary Helena Fortune (1833-1909), a Canadian who wrote under the name of ‘Waif Wander.’ Borlase edited Fun; or, the Tasmanian Charivari from April to Sept 1867. The year 1868, in Sydney, he began syndicating fiction supplements to bush papers in New South Wales. He apparently wrote a Mysteries of Melbourne which is only known through title chains (‘by author of…).

Borlase returned to the UK in 1869, followed by accusations of plagiarism, and wrote articles for Temple Bar, and Once a Week. Most of his work from that point on appeared in penny dreadful and boys’ story periodicals. 

He wrote Through a Thousand Perils, Mazeppa; or, The Demon Horse of the Ukraine, and That Rascal Jack, a Tale of Thrashemwell College, for the Emmett’s Sons of Brittania as J. J. G. Bradley. Wreck of the Golden Cloud; or, The Three Gallant Middies, Skeleton Island; or, the Pirates’ Hidden Treasure, and The Mastiff of the Guard: a Tale of Van Diemans Land, were published in The Young Englishman. For the Boys’ Standard he wrote Gentleman George the King of the Road (1875) illustrated by G. C. Tressider, On the Queen’s Service, illustrated by William Reynolds, Bluecap the Bushranger; or, The Australian Dick Turpin (1876), The King of Diamonds; or, the Adventures of the Pack in France, (a sequel to Gentleman George) and Young Will Watch, the Smuggler King. 

Bluecap, Gentleman George, King of Diamonds and On the Queen’s Service were serialized in The Boys of New York as by J.G. Bradley and an American author used the pseudonym in The American Gentleman George, Starlight Tom; or, the Riders of the Forest, and Gentleman George and his Strange Adventures for the same periodical.

In 1884 Borlase wrote Tom King: The Hero Highwayman; or, Stand and Deliver, by the author of “Lady Godiva,” “Sixteen String Jack,” “Ned Kelly,” “Will Watch,” “Prairie Perils,” “Mazeppa,” &c. Tom King was published by Pinder, Briggate, Leeds, under the title of “The Yorkshire Pocket Library.” For True Love's Sake: a Tale of Paris and The Police Minister: a Tale of St. Petersburg were published by Warne in 1890.

In 1891 Borlase contributed The Golden Creek; or, Lost in the Bush to the Boys' Champion, which had incorporated The Boys’ Leisure Hour that year. He also contributed to Pearson’s Big Budget (1897-1909). He had married again, a much younger girl, and at the turn of the century was supplying newspaper serials for the Tillotson & Son syndicate who had been publishing his serials since the 1870s. In the 1880s and 1890s he was writing books for Cassell & Co. which were serialized in newspapers throughout the British Empire and in the New York Sunday Mercury. 

Some of the Borlase titles I found running in newspapers from 1896 until his death were The World's Wicked Ways; or, The City of Pleasure, Peril and Perdition, Nina the Nihilist, Loved by an Empress; or, the Palace of Ice a Romance of Holy Russia, The Black Hand, The Black Bloodhound, Queen of the Harem, Murdered at Mid-Day; or, the Girl with Three Lovers, Darker than Death, An Ocean Secret: Being a Strange Story of a Dead Man’s Gold, Recalled to Life, The Shadow of the Knout, and A Wild Wooing and a Weird Wedding. He wrote To Avenge Gordon!; or, The Last Dash for Khartoum, a Tale of Love and War, published in 1898. His last newspaper serial was Boer or Briton? or, Equal Rights for all Whites, a Tale of Love and War in South Africa in 1900. The 1901 census shows him living at Brighton with second wife Susanna and 17 year old daughter Fanny. Borlase died in Brighton at the age of 70 on Nov 1, 1909. [Author Dies at Brighton, Brighton Gazette, Nov 6, 1909. Thanks to Petra Weber]

William Reynolds

William Reynolds was a British cartoonist and illustrator of the 1870’s. Boyhood’s Battles originally appeared in The Boys’ Standard in 1877 and was reprinted in Boys’ Leisure Hour in 1886. Reynolds was a regular contributor of caption strips to Funny Folks and Judy. The Spring-Heeled Jack strip is from James Henderson’s Funny Folks, 26 Oct 1878, based on newspaper accounts of the haunting of a military barracks at Aldershot.

Below are two illustrations for On the Queen’s Service: A Tale of Many Lands, by J. J. G. Bradley (James Skipp Borlase) from Hogarth House in the eighties. On the Queen’s Service first appearance was in the Boys’ Standard in 1875 and it was reprinted in the Boys’ Leisure Hour in 1884.

Following are the notes I took when I had a chance to read On the Queen’s Service, the story of a Victorian James Bond:

On The Queen’s Service: A Tale Of Many Lands is a story told in the first person by Lieutenant Harry Dunbar, who, in 1855, is charged with delivering dispatches to Constantinople, by way of Mont Cenis, Turin, Milan, Trieste, and the Adriatic. He starts off in January from England and travels by train, coach and horseback. He meets a mysterious Frenchman, Louis Foucalt on board the train, and Foucalt saves his life three times. Foucalt has a double in Count Eugene Potacki, a wicked Pole working for the Russians. Actually the amiable Foucalt disappears and Dunbar runs into many villainous people with the same face. Maybe Foucalt has a triple or a friple. The action takes place at a frenetic pace in the Crimean at Sebastopol, the Caucasian Mountains, and in one memorable incident he crashes a balloon on top of Mount Ararat, where he spies Noah’s Ark, sitting frozen in snow on the mountaintop. There are horrors and gore aplenty as Dunbar is dispatched from battlefields to besieged cities. In Kars the inhabitants are reduced to eating cats and live rats.

Dunbar follows a seductive veiled Turkish woman; ‘ “-- I was very far from being an anchorite.” He is surrounded by a harem of beauties, all suspiciously plump and healthy looking. Of course “- in short, monsieur, you were enticed hither to be killed and eaten.” “Eaten!” I exclaimed, a thrill of the most intense horror causing my very hair to bristle on my head. “Yes, eaten, monsieur. Would you not sacrifice yourself for our sakes? Fie, fie, where is your chivalry as a soldier?” Every member of the beautiful troupe had gathered around me now, each one with a drawn dagger in her hand.’

Luckily a cannonball flies through the window and cuts the seductress in two, solving the women’s food problem for the moment. Dunbar makes his way back to headquarters and “absolutely fainted away.”