Interview with Frank Beard 1895

American Cartoons
Interview with Frank Beard,
Illustrated by Himself.
The First War Cartoons-Caricatures in Daily Newspapers-Some Artists of the Cartoon.
(Copyrighted 1895 by Frank G. Carpenter)
September 15, 1895, Morning Oregonian.

CHICAGO, Sept. 11.-- I have just had a talk with Frank Beard about himself and American caricature. He is, to a certain extent, the father of the American cartoon, and he has been making funny pictures for the newspapers all his life. He is now about 50 years of age, and his first picture was published when he was under 30. He has opened a new field in cartooning, as the editor of the Ram’s Horn. This is the Puck and Judge of Chicago, but its pictures are semi-religious instead of political. In it Frank Beard is trying to reform the religious world by exposing its shams. The paper had nothing of a circulation when he took hold of it. It now publishes 50,000 a month, and is rapidly becoming one of the leading pictorials of the country. Its field was well expressed by Mr. Beard during the talk, when I asked him as to what he thought of the future of American caricature. He replied:

“I think we are just at the beginning of the use of the cartoon. Pictures can often tell stories quicker and better than words, and I believe that cartoons can be used in the service of religion, righteousness, truth and justice without being subject to pary. I believe in the fundamental principles of Christianity, but I can take a text from the Bible, and with the utmost reverence can, through the medium of the cartoon, apply it to the civilization of today. I can point a moral in this way, and by a picture can make a tract which every man who sees it must read. This is what we are trying to do through the Ram’s Horn, and we are succeeding beyond my expectations.

THE FIRST CHALK TALK.

My talk with Frank Beard took place in his office, and before I go further I want to tell you how it was carried on. Frank Beard is as deaf as a post, and he has been so from birth. The only way to talk with him is through a black rubber tube, about as big around as a garden hose and as long as your arm. This he always has about his neck. When you talk to him he uncoils it and puts one end of it to his ear and hands you the other. You place your lips to the mouth of the tube, and through this make your connection with Frank Beard’s brain. Mr. Beard is an inveterate sketcher, and during my conversation he illustrated his points by drawing pictures, talking all the while, so that it seemed a race between his tongue and his pencil as to which should convey the idea first. There is no man in the United States who can give forth ideas in this manner as he can. He is, you know, the originator of the chalk talk, and there is hardly a town in the United States in which he has not given this sort of a lecture. Standing on the platform with a roll of paper stretched on an easel before him, and with a half-dozen colored crayons in his hand, he carries his audiences away with him while he draws pictures illustrating the philosophy, fun and satire which he throws at them in solid chunks. There are today a score or more of this kind of entertainers in the United States. Frank Beard, however, was the author of the business, and he made today a sketch for me in illustration of his story as to how he came to make the first chalk talk. Said he:

“It is now more than twenty years since I gave my first talk of this kind. I was a young artist of New York, and had just gotten married. My wife was an enthusiastic church-goer and a great deal of our courtship was carried on in going to and from the Methodist church. The result was that I struck a revival and became converted. This occurred shortly after I was married, and like other enthusiastic young Christians, I wanted to do all I could for the church. I was on hand at all the meetings, and I took part in all the church work. Now, our church, like many others in the United States, was very hard up. We were always needing money for something, and we tried to supply this by means of entertainments and socials. Soon after I joined the church the young people gave an exhibition, and the ladies suggested that I draw some pictures as a part of it. I consented, but I felt that the standing-up before an audience and sketching without saying anything in illustration of the pictures would be a very silly thing. So I concluded to make a short talk and draw the sketches in illustration of it. I wrote out my story and rehearsed it half a dozen times beforehand. The entertainment was for a Thanksgiving celebration, and one rehearsal took place at home, my wife, my mother-in-law and the turkey, which we tied up in a chair, forming the audience. Well, my wife survived, my mother-in-law did not die while I was talking, and the turkey was not spoiled. The exhibition came off in the church, and it was a great success. Other churches heard of it, and I had applications to repeat it again and again. At first I was flattered and readily consented. I never thought of charging for it until the demands became so numerous that I was unable to fill them. It was taking much of my energy and lots of my time. To put a stop to it my wife suggested that I charge so much for each entertainment. So, when the next application came, I replied that I could oblige them, but that it would cost $30. To my surprise they accepted my offer by return mail. It was so with nearly everyone who wrote, and I soon found that I was making more at my chalk talks than at my newspaper work. I then charged $40, then $50, and so on, until I now get what is considered a very good price. I don’t like to lecture very well, however. The wear and tear is too great, and you have to hurry too much to make trains.”

A BOY SKETCHER.

“When did you make your first cartoon, Mr. Beard?” I asked.
“My inclination to make caricatures dates back to my boyhood, “ was the reply, “My father was an artist, you know, and he has painted some very good pictures. When I was a boy, away back in the ‘30s, we lived in Plainville, Ohio, a little town near Cleveland. The chief county paper at this time was the Yankee Notions. It would be considered a very poor thing today, but it was the best of its kind then. As soon as I saw it, I became one of its regular subscribers. All of my spare cents went for it. When I was about 10 years old, I came in to my mother one day with this paper in my hand and said: “Ma, I am going to draw some pictures and send them to the Yankee Notions.”
“’All right my son,’ was the reply, ‘If you think you can do so.’
“I then asked her to give me the jokes, that I might make pictures to them. She objected to this, and told me that I must make the jokes, as well as the pictures. And that the man who made the one always made the other. This bothered me somewhat, but I finally succeeded in making a joke and a picture. I mailed it to the paper, and in due time received 50 cents for it. This seemed a great deal of money to me, and for a long time after that I thought of nothing but jokes and pictures. I kept sending more jokes, and sometimes, I remember, I got as much as $5 at a time for 10 jokes. This was a fortune for a schoolboy, and I was the envy of my companions.”

FRANK BEARD’S FIRST CARTOON.

“Do you remember what that first joke was, Mr. Beard?”
“Yes,” replied the cartoonist, with a laugh. “It was not the most elegant, but it was such as a schoolboy might naturally originate. It represented a lean, old schoolmistress, with a spelling-book in one hand and a ruler in the other, sitting before a little boy perched upon a bench, who was saying his spelling lesson. Under it were these words:

“Teacher- Bobby, what does b-e-n-c-h spell ?”
“Bobby- I don’t know, mum.”
“Teacher- Why, what are you sitting on ?”
“Bobby- I don’t like to tell.”

“My other schoolboy efforts were somewhat similar, such as any schoolboy might originate. One, for instance, was a professor, reading from his lecture, with a little girl standing beside him with a statuette of Bonaparte in her hand. The professor meditatively exclaims: “Analyse or break the bony part and the inside will be found to hollow out.” Following this were the words: “So Ann Elizar breaks the Bonaparte, but presently hollers out herself.” I continued making cartoons like this throughout my schooldays. It didn’t pay much, however.

“You were in the army, Mr. Beard; how could you pass the examining board, with your deaf ears?” I asked.
“That is quite a story,” replied Frank Beard. “I tried to pass the officers, but failed. I was just 18 when Fort Sumter was red upon. With the first shot an epidemic of patriotism broke out all over the North. Everyone wanted to go right away and fight for his country. I got the epidemic and was crazy to go. I went down to Camp Dennison near Columbus, Ohio, and attempted to pass the examiners. This was at the first of the war, and they were more particular then than later on. I knew they would not pass me if they discovered I was deaf, so I learned the order of the questions and committed the answers to be given to them. I met a number of men who had been examined, and I thought I had it down pat, when I went in. It happened, however, that one of the board had heard something of my infirmity, and at his whispered suggestion the order of the questions was changed. Instead of asking me my name the first question was:

‘How old are you?”
“Frank Beard,” I boldly answered.
“What is your name?”
“Eighteen years old,” was my reply.

“This went on for perhaps half a dozen questions, when the officers burst into laughing, and I saw that it was no go. I hung around the camp for a short time, and was about to go back home in despair, when one of the captains took pity on me. He told me that I might go with his company without pay, and that he would get me a uniform and a musket. He did so, and I served through the war as a private without pay. I did some sketching, but not much, and made just about as much out of my pictures as I would have received from Uncle Sam had I been on the regular pay-rolls. This seems rather extraordinary now. You can hardly understand it. It was not strange in 1861. Patriotism was then alive. The country was on fire with it. There were thousands of young men who would have done the same.”
“What was your regiment?”
“My regiment was the Seventh Ohio. We had a rather serious time during some parts of the war. A number of our officers were killed, but I escaped without being wounded. I underwent all the duties of a private soldier, though the officers were very lenient with me, on account of my receiving no pay.”

AS AN ARTIST PRIVATE.

“You must have had some curious experiences?” I said.
“No, not particularly so,” replied Frank Beard. “My life was that of the private soldier. I had perhaps a few more privileges than some others, but not many. I remember one funny thing which occurred during the campaign in West Virginia. Lieutenant-Colonel Creighton was in command of our regiment. We were on a hard march, and we had gone for nearly a day without water. I was very thirsty and I noted that the colonel’s Negro servant had a load of full canteens on his back. I concluded to have some of that water, and I assaulted him and grabbed a canteen. The colonel saw me, and he came up and asked me what I meant by such action. I replied that I was thirsty and that I was bound to have a drink. I said, “You fellows riding along on your horses don’t know how we fellows on foot suffer. You ought to get down and try it, if I had a horse like you, I wouldn’t grumble, and I wouldn’t growl at the fellows who grabbed at canteens to save their lives.”
“Well,” said Colonel Creighton, “why don’t you get a horse?”
“I would if I could,” I replied, “but if I did you would not let me ride it.”
“Yes I would,” was the rejoinder.
“Then where can I get one?”
“There is a cavalry regiment just behind us,” replied Colonel Creighton. “It is in camp over there, two miles away. Why don’t you go there tonight and take this one?”
“He said this, of course, in a joke. There was much liberty allowed between officers and men at the beginning of the war, and he had no idea that I would carry out his suggestion. That night, however, I slipped out of camp and went to the cavalry regiment. I took the best horse I could find and brought it back with me. Before morning the cavalry regiment was ordered to march on, and no inquiry was ever made about the horse. He had the letters U.S. branded upon him, and he was a first class animal. The colonel carried out his promise and didn’t object. I rode him for more than a year, and it was only through my peculiar position as an artist private that I was permitted to do so.”

THE FIRST GREAT WAR CARTOON.

“The war was practically the mother of American newspaper caricature, Mr. Beard, was it not ?”
“Yes,” was the reply. “The illustrated newspaper grew rapidly during the war. Before it the only cartoons of much account which we had, were in the paper which I spoke of, known as the ‘Yankee Notions.’ It is true there were cartoons, but they did not appear in the newspapers. They were drawn and lithographed and sold by the sheet. The cartoon most in vogue prior to the war consisted of stilted figures, with words coming out of their mouths, and the words and not the pictures told the story. I think I am the author of what was, perhaps, the first war cartoon. It was in 1861, and it represented a Southern march on Washington. General Scott was in command of the army, and was defending the capital. The rebels were threatening to march to the North. I made a cartoon representing General Scott as a big bull-dog, with a cocked hat on its head, sitting behind a plate containing a bone marked ‘Washington.’”
“Back of him were some tents and the American flag. In front of the bone, and trembling in fear, cowered a lean, hungry hound, labelled ‘Jeff Davis.’ This hound was looking at the bone, but it feared to seize it. Under the cartoon were the words, “Why don’t you take it?” This cartoon made a great hit. It was lithographed, and we sold it in Cincinnati for 10 cents a copy. It was copied all over the country. It made a great sensation. The newspapers published it, and the commercial houses had cuts made from it and put on their envelopes. Had I had the sense to have copyrighted it I would have made a great deal of money out of it. But I was a boy then, and did not know as much as I do now.”

“What did you do after the war closed?”
“I went to New York and made sketches for the Yankee Notions. I did work on a number of different papers, and tuned my hand at anything I could find to do in the way of sketching. I had a bad time at first, and sometimes I nearly starved. I have walked the streets night after night in New York because I had not enough to pay for lodging, and I have made many a lunch off crackers and cheese. I could have gotten money, of course, by sending home, but I was too proud to do so. After a while, however, I got a foothold, and I did work on nearly all of the illustrated papers.”

THE AMERICAN CARTOON.

“Tell me something about cartoon making in America ?”
“The first paper that published cartoons was the Yankee Notions of which I told you. This was owned by a man named Strong, and it had a long run. Then Nicknacks appeared, which was followed by the Comic Monthly and Frank Leslie’s Budget of Fun. Then we had Vanity Fair and then Mrs. Grundy, illustrated by Thomas Nast and published by Harper’s. Puck and Judge were later creations, and now the daily newspapers are publishing their cartoons.”
“Speaking of the cartoons in the dailies, Mr. Beard, do you think it has come to stay ?”
“Yes,” was the reply. “Pictures tell a story so much quicker than anything else that they will always be in demand. They have increased the circulation of the daily and Sunday newspapers, and they are improving in quality right along. I believe they will continue to improve, and that invention will make such processes of printing that they will be able to produce good work in the daily papers. I think the demand for good sketches increases. Printing must be illustrated nowadays, and the cheap processes will make an increased demand.”

MORE MONEY FOR ARTISTS.

“What is the effect of this on artists and illustrators ?”
“It increases their value, of course,” replied Frank Beard, “But it also brings up a great crop of new sketchers and of mediocre men. By the poor processes of printing now used in the papers the sketches of the best artists look scarcely better than those of the amateurs who scratch out pictures on the chalk plates in the country newspaper offices. Take Dana Gibson’s pictures. They would lose half their force if published in the daily newspapers instead of the magazines. Still, the increased demand helps the better artists too. Prices are twice as high now as they have been in the past, and the demand for drawings has never been so great as it is now. It is easy to find a man who can draw. It is hard to find one who can tell what to draw. What the world needs is men with ideas. We want creative men, and such men receive higher prices every year. They will be worth more and more as time goes on. Machinery does not hurt them. The only factory that can turn them out is God Almighty.”

-- “Frank G. Carpenter.”

Arthur Heming (1870-1940)

By John Adcock

Arthur Heming was a contemporary of Sir Charles G. D. Roberts and Ernest Thompson Seton, the originators of the realistic Canadian wildlife story. He was born Arthur Henry Howard Heming in Paris, Ontario on 17 January 1870. He studied art at the Hamilton Art School, the New York Art Student’s League and under illustrator Frank Brangwyn in London, England. He was author and illustrator of Spirit Lake (1907), The Drama of the Forests (1921), and The Living Forest (1921), and an associate of the Group of Seven. He worked as an illustrator for Harper’s Magazine and the Canadian Magazine. He died at Hamilton, Ontario on 31 October 1940.

His love of art and nature was inherited from his parents. “My mother sympathised with my earliest efforts. She encouraged me always with love and understanding. Father took an interest in my love of nature till I took to running away from school to the woods.”

Heming illustrated two wildlife books by William Alexander Fraser, “The Canadian Kipling,” Mooswa and others of the Boundaries (1900), and The Outcasts (1901).

The Boston Herald praised Mooswa and others of the Boundaries

“Takes its place at once beside the Jungle Book. A group of stories capitally told, of the lives and doings of the animals.

The Chicago Tribune said of The Outcasts

“It has the freedom and mystery of that great unknown country up towards the Arctic circle, and the fascination of animal existence.”

W. A. Fraser was born at River John, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, in 1859. He was educated in New York and Boston and spent seven years prospecting oil in India and a further six years prospecting in the Canadian Northwest. He began his literary career as a journalist on the Detroit Free Press. Fraser wrote numerous short stories and novels about India, the Canadian wilderness, and horse-racing. He died at Toronto 9 Nov 1933.

Babes in the Wood

John Hassall illustrated numerous children's books, fairy tales and nursery rhymes for Blackie & Sons at the turn of the century. These two examples are from Modern Pen Drawings: European and American edited by Charles Holme, Offices of 'The Studio' MCMI. Top 'Babes in the Wood', Bottom, 'Lion and the Unicorn.'

*John Hassall (1868-1948) HERE

*London Art Schools 1925 HERE

Letitia by George Morland

LETITIA, painter George Morland's popular series of paintings engraved by J. R. Smith in 1789. The six plates were re-issued in 1811 at seven-and-sixpence each. Morland's long-suffering wife Anne (Ward) Morland, sister of William Ward the engraver, is believed to have been the model for Letitia.













*George Morland by J. T. H. Baily, London: Otto Limited, 1906

Old Boys' Book Collectors Part Eight

BARRY ONO,

the Self-proclaimed “King of the Penny Dreadfuls”

by Michael Holmes

There is an excellent biography of this colourful character given in the introduction to the catalogue collection of his books published by the British Library. Incidentally Ono's collection was bequeathed to the British Museum when he died, but remained un-catalogued for over 20 years until Louis James used it while researching his book FICTION FOR THE WORKING MAN in the late 50s early 1960s.

For those unfamiliar with Ono I give the following thumbnail sketch: Barry Ono’s real name was Frederick Valentine Harrison (1876 - 1941) and as he explains in the article below he began collecting as a London schoolboy when penny dreadfuls were still in their heyday. He became a music hall performer in the years prior to WWI and, for reasons unknown, adopted the stage name Barry Ono. He had a relative success as a stage performer with his act ‘The Old Music Hall in Twelve Minutes’ in which he'd imitate various stars of the past, their songs and monologues. He also composed songs himself and I recently discovered an old song book of his in the British Library. In the front cover margin is printed a note which very tellingly illustrates Ono's love of self-publicity, exaggerated patriotism, and the influence of Victorian boys literature:

‘Barry Ono wrote, composed and sang ‘Give Three Cheers for Belgium, what have they done to the Kaiser?’ within three hours of news in London papers of the German invasion of Belgium, thus claiming to be the First Artiste in the world to SING a song of the War, and the first Author to WRITE one.

Ono seems to have always dabbled in book-dealing and when times were lean with his stage career he was able to earn a living as a bookseller. In fact he made quite a success of it and had several shops around London. He seems to have retired from the stage at the end of the 20’s and went on to make a fairly good living as a book dealer. Ono was not shy about blowing his own trumpet as you can see, and an echo of this charming braggadocio can be seen in his advertisements from the time where he describes his collection as “… bigger than all the museums of the world combined, and bigger than any other collection.”

It certainly was a vast collection from several accounts, and between the years 1933 and 1936 the little ‘Collector's Miscellany,’ a monthly pamphlet for collectors of old boys books, published an ongoing list of the Ono library. He was prolific in producing articles for the above publication, and would also write for overseas equivalents like ‘Dime Novel Round-Up.’ These would usually be lively and warm-hearted in their praise for the old books, and true to form Ono would usually work in a want ad for anyone harbouring old penny numbers.

The year before the article below appeared Ono had taken part in a hobbies exhibition at the famous London department store, Selfridges. The famous picture of him seated amongst a stall covered in penny dreadfuls, was taken at this. His passionate half hour talks on the joys of collecting old bloods during the exhibition seems to have prompted the Pathe News to make a short on him and his books.

Ono was a collector first and a dealer second, or so it would seem to me. His door was always open to fellow collectors and to any interested members of the general public who wanted to view his books. One of the rarest bloods which he had - MAY TURPIN THE QUEEN OF THE ROAD (only a combined part 1 & 2 issued by the infamous Newsagents Publishing Company) -- is said to have come from an old collector called Charley Harris who found it for a few pennies in the Caledonian Road market. The late collector, Bill Lofts, himself a former collector of old boys books and author of several books on the subject, related the anecdote he had heard of how Charley had taken the old penny number to Barry Ono who had paid him £5 for it, a sizeable sum equivalent to a month's wages at the time. If he was anything he was not mean.

Barry Ono died on the 6th February 1941 in Barnstable. His name still lives on amongst the handful of collectors of bloods and dreadfuls, and it always adds an extra special poignancy to a volume when you see his old book-label pasted inside.

THE BAZAAR Feb 28, 1936

COLLECTING PENNY DREADFULS
THE LITERATURE OF THRILLS AND HORRORS

BY BARRY ONO

the well known variety star who has the world's largest collection of old boys’ ‘bloods’ and ‘penny dreadfuls.’ On the variety stage Mr. Ono was largely responsible for the revival of interest in Victorian popular songs. To the music hall profession he is known as ‘our unofficial K.C.,’ on account of his skilled advocacy of the profession’s case to the authorities on entertainment’s tax and other political problems.

“I could easily serve a six month sentence here with pleasure” said a man looking round my library. And what, ladies and gentlemen does that library contain - Hamlet, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, all the books with which people are in the habit of saying they could spend a lifetime on a desert Island? Not a bit of it. My library consists entirely of penny dreadfuls. Over a thousand of them.

We are apt to sniff at each other's pleasures. The man who likes old masters feels superior to the man who merely likes old port, and if our taste is for Bach, jazz fills us with righteous anger. This sniffiness however is not a law of nature. The large hearted few can enjoy both port and old masters, Bach and jazz at different times and in different places. It is to these I appeal on behalf of the penny dreadful

This picturesque byway in literature has its special interest and we lose something if we refuse to turn down it now and then even if the name on the signpost is ‘Cut Throat Alley.’

To begin with the people who enjoy penny dreadfuls, whether openly or secretly, are by no means only office boys or Smith Minors. Robert Louis Stevenson had a passion for them and I could reel off lists of doctors, clergy and hard-bitten scientists who have coveted my library.

YOUTHFUL ENTERPRISE

One big mental specialist offered me a small fortune for ‘The Mysteries of Bedlam’ and ‘The Maniac of the Deep’ and any with lunacy in their titles.

A Mormon came all the way for Salt Lake City to persuade me to part with my copy of ‘Jessie The Mormon's Daughter’ and an Australian almost wept when I refused to sell him ‘Ned Kelly; or The Ironclad Australian Bushranger.’

I began my collection early. My mother, having listened to the warnings issued by schoolmasters and clergymen as to what happened to boys who read penny bloods, forbade me my favourite literature. But although I only had 2d pocket money a week I still managed to spend 10d on ‘dreadfuls.’

We lived off the Waterloo Road, and in those days there was a row of iron spike topped railings down the steps leading to the bridge. I had seen the old iron man with his barrow, and one day when I looked like going without my ‘Boys Standard’ and ‘Boys Leisure Hour’ I pulled up a loose rail and sold it to him for 2d. After that my stock of dreadfuls grew and the railings vanished spear by spear.

At the age of twelve I became a proprietor of the Boys' Lending Library. I bound my ‘Boys Standards’ and ‘Sweeney Todds’ up in brown paper volumes of twelve numbers. The entrance fee was sixpence and a penny per week per volume. Soon the queue outside our house grew so long that the police interfered and my career as librarian ended.

In 1903 I sold my whole collection for £4. If I could buy it back now for £250 it would be a bargain, My present collection has been built up since 1912. It consists of tales written between 1840 and 1900, the great age of the penny dreadful.

These old books were by no means the sordid rubbish which the puritanical considered them J.F. Smith, the historian, and Phiz (Hablot K. Browne) the Dickens illustrator, both worked on them.

Even the penny-a-line hacks, whose names are forgotten by all but collectors, were many of them competent writers who knew how to keep suspense alive from week to week and understood the construction of a plot as few authors today understand it.

Not all of them were proud of their excursions into the lurid. When Edward Lloyd, the publisher of those fascinating works, VARNEY THE VAMPYRE OR THE FEAST OF BLOOD and THE SECRETS OF THE SEWERS OF LONDON, became a rising literary light in the Reform Club, he commissioned Edward Viles, a fellow writer of dreadfuls and creator of the famous Black Bess saga, to go round all the coffee houses and buy up every number of his works that could be found lying about for patrons to read as they ate their fish and chips. Fortunately Viles did not succeed in buying and destroying all Lloyd's tales, for I have nearly 200 in my collection.

VALUABLE COPIES DESTROYED

Often people do not realise the value of such books, particularly when they happen to be stained or tattered as old boys' books tend to be.

The other day a man brought me in a small bundle some of which I had thought to be unobtainable. “Where did you get these?” I asked, “Oh, there were stacks of them in the house where I was caretaker, but after the old owner died his son told me to put them on the boiler fire. I just saved these because I thought they might interest you.” “Interest me,” I said, “why man you have burnt a fortune.”

The days of ‘Gentleman Jack’ ‘Turpin and Bess’ and ‘The She Tiger or the Female Fiend of Paris’ are so long past that when ‘Dracula’ was written people hailed it as a new sort of book. To those who knew the old dreadfuls it was very mild stuff.

In the great days of the thriller, light and shade were stronger and the colours were slapped on with a vigorous brush.

For instance a reputable publisher giving instructions to the engraver for woodcuts to illustrate Lloyd's stories told him that the eyes of the victims must protrude from their sockets and blood be shown spurting from the place where a head had been, while the head itself, likewise bespattered with gore, reposed on the ground in the forefront of the picture.

Often the titles, especially the second titles, of such books were masterpieces in themselves. It would be difficult to outdo “The Blighted Heart, or The old Priory Ruins” or “Deadwood Dick the Prince of the Road” or “The Black Rider of the Black Hills” or “Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”

This last had a long history before it reached its familiar form. When it first appeared Todd was a mean, slinking figure. Then one day a man, now a personage in the wholesale book trade, picked up a copy for 6d on a stall and took it to Charles Fox, the publisher and editor of “The Boys Standard,” who to his surprise bought it for 30s.

Copyright laws were lax in those days, so Fox got one of his staff to recreated Todd in a new and more delightfully horrible image, making him heavy and coarse, with a bulldog face and adding for the first time the subtitle “The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”

Fox made a fortune out of Todd. George Sala to his great annoyance was often accused of being the author. Actually Todd was written by Thomas Peckett Prest, the notorious pirate of Dickens's works.

DIRTY WORK

Publishers of the dreadful were always competing with each other in this way. For instance, when John Cassell wanted a new writer he offered J.F. Smith, author of “Stanfield Hall” and “Minnie Grey,” who was then busy on a serial for another publisher, double salary to come to his firm.

Smith accepted, and before leaving the office put all of his characters on a boat in the Hudson River and drowned them. The MS was sent down to the printer, and it was not until the public outcry that the publisher discovered what had happened. Being a resourceful man he called in Pierce Egan the younger, who restored the characters to life and continued their careers for some 50 instalments.

All sorts of people collect dreadfuls for all sorts of reasons. One old man I knew used to chuckle to think he possessed a copy of THE LONDON MISCELLANY containing THE MYSTERY IN SCARLET written by Malcolm J. Errym, and illustrated by Phiz for which Robert Louis Stevenson had spent a fortune in vainly advertising.

Some people seek escape in these simple narratives from the tortured psychology of the modern novel. To many middle-aged men the ‘dreadful’ is still the key to that boys world in which all heroes are perfect gentlemen and blood is still hot and bright.

THE SONS OF BRITANNIA, HANDSOME HARRY OF THE FIGHTING BELVEDERE, and CHING-CHING were in a class apart. For virility, characterisation, originality of plot and in many cases, sheer artistry of illustration we have nothing quite like them today. Can it be wondered they have become the cult of the highbrow?

***

Photos and an Interview with Barry Ono can be found HERE.

*Thanks to Joe Rainone for the Barry Ono photo. Big Three Penny Dreadfuls photo courtesy Michael Holmes.

Penny Awfuls

‘PENNY AWFULS’

By James Greenwood

St. Paul's Magazine XII 1873.

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 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’ (qy. 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 worty 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.

Captain Jack; or, One of the Light Brigade

“There, my reader, is something more noble in the conduct of these boy artillery officers, than there is to be found in the trashy rubbish about boy highwaymen, pirates, and other rascals of the stamp, whose impossible doings, I am grieved to write, has been too long the class of literature placed in the hands of the intelligent youth of England.” -- George Emmett, from Captain Jack; or, One of the Light Brigade.

1868*Captain Jack; or, One of the Light Brigade* First of the Shot and Shell series by George Emmett. “Captain Jack; or, One of the Light Brigade” appeared in the Young Englishman's Journal, 1868, and sold in 21 16 page penny numbers. The artwork is by Harry Maguire and another artist, possible William Reynolds.

Shot and Shell Series >

“Shaw, the Lifeguardsman,” Young Englishman's Journal, 1868-69, (Waterloo)

“The King's Hussars,” Young Englishman's Journal, 1869, (Lucknow)

“For Valour; or, How I Won the Victoria Cross,” The Young Briton, 1869-70, (Afghanistan)

“Death or Glory; or, the Uhlans of England,” Sons of Britannia, 1870 (Crimean War)

“Karl, the Uhlan; or, the Cast of the Die,” The Young Briton, 1871 (Franco-German War)

George Emmett claimed to have been on the scene as a cavalry officer at the Charge of the Light Brigade. It may be true, his name does not appear on the survivor's lists, but he may have been in the army as he was about twenty years old at the time.

Captain Jack is a magnificent boys adventure and comparing his details with a personal narrative of the Crimean War, “The Life of James O’Malley,” I find that his account tallies completely with O'Malley's.

O’Malley wrote his book in 1893 in Montreal and his account of everything from supply lists to the Dublin embarkation point are very close to that of George Emmett’s book which was written in the seventies.























See also Lives of the Light Brigade HERE

Heinrich Kley (1863-1945)

Heinrich Kley cartoon from T. P.'s Weekly 31 Oct 1913.

The Monster Man

G. W. M. Reynolds must have had a huge morgue of newspaper clippings for use in his notorious fictions. In Mysteries of the Court of London his character of the monster-man was based on a real-life French case of July 1849, in which a man named Bertrand was involved in horrible crimes involving desecrating the dead in a cemetery. Below is Reynold’ fictional account of The Monster Man in Mysteries of the Court of London, followed by the true account of as recounted in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal 25 August 1849.