In 19th century Britain, there was a craze that "threatened to destroy the manhood of democracy" and has been called the "Victorian video game".
In this episode, we learn why cheap literature caused such a panic and why it wasn't quite as bad as it seemed.
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about something called the “Penny Dreadful”.
[00:00:28] A penny is, as you may know, the smallest denomination of the British pound, and dreadful means awful, very bad, terrible.
[00:00:38] And put together, a “Penny Dreadful” was a type of short horror story popular during the Victorian era.
[00:00:46] It’s a genre that has all but died out today, in its original format at least, but was one of the biggest crazes of 19th Century Britain, even being called “the Victorian equivalent of video games”, and being described as “Britain’s first taste of mass-produced popular culture for the young".
[00:01:07] So let’s get right into it and talk about the phenomenon of the penny dreadful.
[00:01:15] “The rising moon was just peeping above the horizon, and a few faint, sickly beams of light shot up from it into the night sky.
[00:01:25] Standing in the middle of the road […] was a horse and rider. The moonlight shimmered upon both with a strange effect.
[00:01:34] The rider was tall and muscular and sat in the saddle with an ease and grace.
[00:01:41] The steed, [or horse], which he rode was none other than the celebrated ‘Black Bess’, her rider went by the name of Dick Turpin.”
[00:01:52] The horseman was leaning forward in his saddle and intensely listening as a carriage approached.
[00:01:58] Inside the carriage were a man and wife and they were travelling with a rare treasure, a golden cup, which they had been closely guarding throughout their journey.
[00:02:09] As the couple made their way towards Turpin, they suddenly heard a gunshot and got so frightened that their golden cup fell to the floor.
[00:02:19] Then they heard a voice: “pull up, coachman, or you are a dead man!”
[00:02:25] It was Turpin, and when the coach stopped he approached the window.
[00:02:30] The husband’s terror was clear on his face and he asked if Turpin was going to kill them.
[00:02:36] Turpin assured that he was not before he lifted his hat and said “I am sorry to trouble you, but this is really a case of necessity.”
[00:02:45] He then demanded their money, jewellery and the golden cup.
[00:02:50] Fearing Turpin and his gun, the couple did as they were told and got out of the carriage to give their riches to the robber while the coachman, or driver, had ran off to get help.
[00:03:02] As they struggled to remove their jewellery and grab the golden cup from the floor of the carriage, an army of around 12 police emerged from around the corner…
[00:03:14] This is the story from the very first instalment, or episode, of Black Bess, a series that would go on to become the most popular of the Penny Dreadfuls.
[00:03:26] The sudden ending, or cliffhanger, was typical of these stories as they had to keep their readers eagerly awaiting the next episode the following week.
[00:03:37] And this strategy was clearly a success, as Black Bess continued for a whopping 254 books.
[00:03:46] People couldn’t get enough of the adventures of Dick Turpin, the highwayman who lived a century before these tales made him famous in the 1860s.
[00:03:57] And Turpin was not alone, for tales about highwaymen were the longest lasting trend within penny dreadful literature.
[00:04:06] By the time Turpin rode onto the scene in 1868, penny dreadfuls had been around for roughly 30 years, and there were more than a million copies being sold every week.
[00:04:19] Given that many would be bought and read aloud to groups of multiple people, it’s safe to assume that the number of people who either read or listened to a Penny Dreadful story would be several times this number.
[00:04:34] And when you think that the entire population of England and Wales was 17 million people in 1851, we are likely talking about the vast majority of the teenage population of the country.
[00:04:49] But what was so special about these stories?
[00:04:52] And how did they get so popular?
[00:04:55] Well, as the name suggests, penny dreadfuls were sold for a single penny.
[00:05:02] Sure, a penny back in the 19th century was worth a lot more than it is today, but it was still very cheap. One penny is about 25p now, it's a quarter of a pound, but perhaps a better comparison is that one instalment of these books was about the same price as a loaf of bread.
[00:05:25] And to give you another point of comparison, this genre was very cheap compared to normal books, books you may well have heard of.
[00:05:35] For example, an instalment of a Charles Dickens novel such as Oliver Twist would cost around 12 pennies, or 1 shilling.
[00:05:45] Before you’re thinking, hang on, these Penny Dreadfuls are just short stories or chapters of a book, no wonder Oliver Twist was more expensive, it's an entire book, remember that Charles Dickens also published his books in the same, serialised, format, with new instalments coming out over a period of weeks or months.
[00:06:07] So, each instalment of a Penny Dreadful was incredibly cheap, less than 1/10th of the cost of a normal book.
[00:06:16] As you might expect, this low price tag did a great deal to expand the number of people who were able to read or, if they were illiterate, listen to these stories, and in so doing for the first time it opened up literature to society’s poorest, which in Victorian England, was the majority of the population.
[00:06:39] So, how was it possible to make them so cheap?
[00:06:43] Well, partly, automation. Innovations in printing technology allowed for mass produced prints on very cheap and thin paper.
[00:06:53] With the invention of the steam powered press in 1814, printing had become mechanical and automated.
[00:07:01] It was 5 times faster than the at-the-time revolutionary Gutenberg printing press.
[00:07:07] Paper was cheap, for once, and the process of printing onto the paper, and then putting it all together, was more efficient than ever before.
[00:07:17] To keep costs low, they did not have fancy thick book covers, they were simply 8 to 16 pages of thin paper with columns of text.
[00:07:28] Really, they were more like a modern-day magazine or comic book.
[00:07:34] And let’s not forget the cost of actually writing the stories.
[00:07:39] This genre, much like what is disparagingly called “airport novels” nowadays, was written quickly, often with generic and formulaic characters.
[00:07:52] Authors working for publishing houses would write tirelessly, often being paid a penny per line and being responsible for up to 10 stories at the same time.
[00:08:04] As a result, Penny Dreadfuls were criticised for their lack of literary merit, for not being particularly good books.
[00:08:12] We’ll come to some of the results of this shortly, but the point to remember here is that they were very cheap to make, meaning that they could be sold for the cost of a loaf of bread.
[00:08:24] And the result of these penny dreadfuls being so affordable was, of course, that they could be bought and enjoyed by people who would never have been able to buy a book before.
[00:08:36] The 19th century was, after all, a time of booming literacy rates in Britain, principally due to the widespread availability of schooling for children.
[00:08:47] In the 1830s, under 50% of women and only around 60% of men could read.
[00:08:54] Within just 40 years, by the mid 1870s, 90% of the British population could read.
[00:09:03] And despite these better education outcomes for children, as you may know, life in Victorian Britain was pretty tough and miserable, especially at the start of the 19th century.
[00:09:17] In 1821, almost half of the entire workforce was under the age of 20 and the average age children began working was just 10 years old.
[00:09:30] They would work in factories, on farms, as chimney sweeps, in all manner of tough and dangerous jobs. Even Charles Dickens, who became the most celebrated and successful of Victorian writers, worked as a child in a factory that produced boot polish.
[00:09:49] Throughout the 19th century, the British government did pass legislation to improve the plight of the working poor, but it was a slow process.
[00:10:00] In 1833, for example, the “Factory Act'' was celebrated as a wonderful thing for children, but what did it say? Only that you had to be 9 years old to legally work.
[00:10:14] In any case, even if it did improve, slightly, life as a child in Victorian Britain was somewhat miserable.
[00:10:22] And suddenly, along came this option of reading stories of adventure, mystery, murder, and the supernatural, all at a price that wouldn’t break the bank, that you could actually afford.
[00:10:37] As such, these books provided a welcome escape from the drudgery, boredom and hardship of factory life or classroom learning, and they were a massive hit.
[00:10:50] So, you are probably wondering, what were these stories actually about?
[00:10:55] Well, you heard a bit of one at the start of this episode, and you may have heard of some of the others.
[00:11:02] Sweeney Todd, which was turned into a Tim Burton movie starring Johnny Depp, was one of the most famous Penny Dreadfuls.
[00:11:10] If you haven’t heard the story, or seen the 2007 film, this tale is all about a barber, a hairdresser, who killed his customers by slitting their throats with his razor.
[00:11:24] And the customers weren’t just killed, they were turned into meat pies and sold to unwitting members of the public.
[00:11:33] Then there was Black Bess, which we heard at the start of the episode.
[00:11:37] And these are just to name a few.
[00:11:40] Before long, increasing amounts of penny dreadfuls emerged and there was a huge choice of which weekly tale or scandalous character whose adventures its readers could follow.
[00:11:51] Between 1830 and 1850 there were up to 100 publishers offering these cheap stories.
[00:12:00] In the beginning, the stories were usually about highwaymen like Dick Turpin, men who stopped people on the roads and robbed them.
[00:12:09] Indeed, the very first penny dreadful which came out in 1836 was a collection of biographies called The Lives of the Most Notorious Highwaymen.
[00:12:20] As a quick side note, if you haven’t listened to our episode on Highwaymen, it’s quite a fun one, it’s episode number 197.
[00:12:30] Over time, though, other characters and storylines began to increase in popularity, it wasn’t only about criminals.
[00:12:39] The most popular series was The Mysteries of London, which published a new episode every week for 12 years, each one selling around a quarter of a million copies.
[00:12:52] These stories were based in the Victorian slums, or poor areas of the city where many of the readers lived, and they turned the grim surroundings into adventurous sites of mystery.
[00:13:06] Whether it was a murder or a scandalous plot against a rich and evil superior, readers loved these sensational tales.
[00:13:16] As to the question of why, well, you only have to take a look at the most popular genres on YouTube or Netflix to see that this genre, this style, this type of story, is still equally popular.
[00:13:32] True crime, mysteries, the supernatural, we can debate the reasons why, but modern series like True Detective or Stranger Things are, in some ways, simply developments, and certainly more expensive developments, on the Penny Dreadful genre.
[00:13:51] And the serialised format certainly helped boost their popularity. Just like if your favourite TV series ends on a cliffhanger, ends with something exciting happening that might change the plot completely, well this was exactly the same with the Penny Dreadful.
[00:14:10] People would save their money, eagerly awaiting the next instalment so they could see what would happen next.
[00:14:17] There were even stories of book clubs being formed, kids who couldn’t afford the 1 penny price tag would club together and buy a book to share, and even those children who weren’t able to read would join the club and listen to the story being read out loud.
[00:14:36] Initially, the subjects tended to be believable but “real-life” style stories - murderers, adventure, and so on, but all within the confines of the “real” world.
[00:14:50] As time went on, Penny Dreadfuls started to become more supernatural as well, involving supernatural beasts and goings-on.
[00:14:59] There were vampires, ghosts, evil spirits, all of whom would commit gruesome crimes to the delight of their readers.
[00:15:09] But, as with any new craze, especially one that captivates the hearts and minds of the young, it wasn’t long before there were as many critics as there were fans.
[00:15:23] Much like horror movies or violent video games today, there were adult critics who feared the impact that devouring these stories would have on the children of the time.
[00:15:35] Victorians were famously moralistic, with the upper classes feeling like they had a moral duty to protect their supposed inferiors from moral decay, and the phenomenon of the Penny Dreadful was really the first time that society en masse had had access to this kind of entertainment.
[00:15:56] It’s hard to overstate the fear and moral panic that ensued, with one newspaper in 1886 even declaring that penny dreadfuls were, I quote, “the poison which is threatening to destroy the manhood of democracy”.
[00:16:14] Why?
[00:16:15] Well, just like video games, people feared that simply reading about crime would mean that someone was more likely to commit crimes, that reading violent stories could inspire violent acts.
[00:16:29] And in the final two decades of the 19th century, after the penny dreadful craze had reached its height, people were increasingly blaming the stories for crimes actually committed by children.
[00:16:43] Almost every month, there would be news stories of crimes or acts that were blamed on Penny Dreadfuls.
[00:16:51] In 1892 there was one of some schoolboys who ran away with a gun and were caught with a note which read:
[00:17:00] “Steal the money; go to the station and get to Glasgow. Get boat for America”.
[00:17:06] People believed the boys were inspired by tales such as Jack Harkaway’s Schooldays, which was about a boy who ran away to begin a life of adventure.
[00:17:16] In the same year, the suicide of a 12-year-old boy who hanged himself was also blamed on penny dreadfuls.
[00:17:25] In court, the verdict was announced as “suicide during temporary insanity, induced by reading trashy novels”.
[00:17:35] But tensions really hit an all-time high in 1895, when the body of a woman was found in a house in London.
[00:17:45] The police didn’t have to search far for her killers, as they were, in fact, her 12- and 13-year-old sons.
[00:17:53] The elder boy had insisted that his brother told him to stab their mother to death, and when the police investigated, they found a huge collection of penny dreadfuls in the house.
[00:18:06] The copies were used as evidence in the case and in court a judge called for laws to “stop the inflammable and shocking literature that is sold.”
[00:18:17] All of these controversies were the beginning of the end for the penny dreadful craze, as publishers began to distance themselves from problematic material and real-life tragedies.
[00:18:30] It’s not exactly good for business if you’re being blamed for causing terrible murders and suicides.
[00:18:37] As a result, there was a gap in the market for more uplifting stories for children, stories that included moral or educational lessons, stories that ended well, stories without murder, violence or brutality, stories that a parent would be much happier to buy for their child than a Penny Dreadful.
[00:18:58] The patriotically named The Union Jack was one of them, and in fact the entire objective of The Union Jack was, and I’m quoting directly, to “put the Penny Dreadfuls out of business”.
[00:19:13] The Union Jack had another large advantage - its price.
[00:19:18] It cost half a penny, half as much money as a Penny Dreadful.
[00:19:23] For a budget-conscious audience, clearly this was a big advantage.
[00:19:30] What’s more, there was a shift away from serialised-fiction towards full-length books, so when you could buy a full novel of a few hundred pages for the price of a handful of Penny Dreadfuls, and the quality of the narrative was a lot better, this option suddenly wasn’t so expensive at all.
[00:19:51] And on the other end of the spectrum, during the 1870s there was a boom in comic books, illustrated books, Which were even more accessible than penny dreadfuls, because there were pictures.
[00:20:05] The Penny Dreadful genre was being squeezed from all sides. Everything that had made it so popular - its price, its accessibility, its blood and gore - was now available in different formats, formats that were often preferred by readers that had once snapped up every Penny Dreadful on the shelf.
[00:20:27] By the turn of the century, the Penny Dreadful had practically died out.
[00:20:33] Now, when it comes to the legacy of the Penny Dreadful, fortunately the fears about the genre destroying all morality and poisoning democracy didn't come true.
[00:20:44] Perhaps they might have inspired some reckless behaviour, even violent acts, but did they turn an entire generation into rampant serial killers?
[00:20:57] They did not.
[00:20:58] In fact, many commentators now point to the positive impact of the Penny Dreadful.
[00:21:05] Sure, they may not have had the literary merit of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, or Shakespeare, but they did encourage a generation of children to start reading.
[00:21:17] As one professor put it, penny dreadfuls gave children “an incentive to require literacy”.
[00:21:25] In other words, they gave children a reason, or some motivation to learn to read.
[00:21:30] They didn’t want to be left out when everyone else was talking about the latest robbery by Dick Turpin or who Sweeney Todd’s latest victim was.
[00:21:41] Now, it’s clearly an overstatement to say that the Penny Dreadfuls single-handedly increased literacy rates in Victorian Britain, as there were plenty of other factors that taught children how to read.
[00:21:54] But, the Penny Dreadfuls did inspire a generation to keep reading, to use the skills that they had learned at school.
[00:22:03] So, despite the critics and fears for the morality of Victorian youth, and fears that they would lead to the destruction of the very fabric of society, it certainly seems that there are many worse things a Victorian child could have done than getting addicted to Penny Dreadfuls.
[00:22:24] Ok then, that is it for today’s episode on Penny Dreadfuls.
[00:22:29] I hope it was an interesting one, and that you learned something new.
[00:22:33] As always I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:22:37] Are there equivalents of the Penny Dreadful in your language?
[00:22:41] Do you think that the concerns about violent video games or films are any different to the concerns about Penny Dreadfuls?
[00:22:49] If so, why?
[00:22:51] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:22:55] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:23:04] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:23:09] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about something called the “Penny Dreadful”.
[00:00:28] A penny is, as you may know, the smallest denomination of the British pound, and dreadful means awful, very bad, terrible.
[00:00:38] And put together, a “Penny Dreadful” was a type of short horror story popular during the Victorian era.
[00:00:46] It’s a genre that has all but died out today, in its original format at least, but was one of the biggest crazes of 19th Century Britain, even being called “the Victorian equivalent of video games”, and being described as “Britain’s first taste of mass-produced popular culture for the young".
[00:01:07] So let’s get right into it and talk about the phenomenon of the penny dreadful.
[00:01:15] “The rising moon was just peeping above the horizon, and a few faint, sickly beams of light shot up from it into the night sky.
[00:01:25] Standing in the middle of the road […] was a horse and rider. The moonlight shimmered upon both with a strange effect.
[00:01:34] The rider was tall and muscular and sat in the saddle with an ease and grace.
[00:01:41] The steed, [or horse], which he rode was none other than the celebrated ‘Black Bess’, her rider went by the name of Dick Turpin.”
[00:01:52] The horseman was leaning forward in his saddle and intensely listening as a carriage approached.
[00:01:58] Inside the carriage were a man and wife and they were travelling with a rare treasure, a golden cup, which they had been closely guarding throughout their journey.
[00:02:09] As the couple made their way towards Turpin, they suddenly heard a gunshot and got so frightened that their golden cup fell to the floor.
[00:02:19] Then they heard a voice: “pull up, coachman, or you are a dead man!”
[00:02:25] It was Turpin, and when the coach stopped he approached the window.
[00:02:30] The husband’s terror was clear on his face and he asked if Turpin was going to kill them.
[00:02:36] Turpin assured that he was not before he lifted his hat and said “I am sorry to trouble you, but this is really a case of necessity.”
[00:02:45] He then demanded their money, jewellery and the golden cup.
[00:02:50] Fearing Turpin and his gun, the couple did as they were told and got out of the carriage to give their riches to the robber while the coachman, or driver, had ran off to get help.
[00:03:02] As they struggled to remove their jewellery and grab the golden cup from the floor of the carriage, an army of around 12 police emerged from around the corner…
[00:03:14] This is the story from the very first instalment, or episode, of Black Bess, a series that would go on to become the most popular of the Penny Dreadfuls.
[00:03:26] The sudden ending, or cliffhanger, was typical of these stories as they had to keep their readers eagerly awaiting the next episode the following week.
[00:03:37] And this strategy was clearly a success, as Black Bess continued for a whopping 254 books.
[00:03:46] People couldn’t get enough of the adventures of Dick Turpin, the highwayman who lived a century before these tales made him famous in the 1860s.
[00:03:57] And Turpin was not alone, for tales about highwaymen were the longest lasting trend within penny dreadful literature.
[00:04:06] By the time Turpin rode onto the scene in 1868, penny dreadfuls had been around for roughly 30 years, and there were more than a million copies being sold every week.
[00:04:19] Given that many would be bought and read aloud to groups of multiple people, it’s safe to assume that the number of people who either read or listened to a Penny Dreadful story would be several times this number.
[00:04:34] And when you think that the entire population of England and Wales was 17 million people in 1851, we are likely talking about the vast majority of the teenage population of the country.
[00:04:49] But what was so special about these stories?
[00:04:52] And how did they get so popular?
[00:04:55] Well, as the name suggests, penny dreadfuls were sold for a single penny.
[00:05:02] Sure, a penny back in the 19th century was worth a lot more than it is today, but it was still very cheap. One penny is about 25p now, it's a quarter of a pound, but perhaps a better comparison is that one instalment of these books was about the same price as a loaf of bread.
[00:05:25] And to give you another point of comparison, this genre was very cheap compared to normal books, books you may well have heard of.
[00:05:35] For example, an instalment of a Charles Dickens novel such as Oliver Twist would cost around 12 pennies, or 1 shilling.
[00:05:45] Before you’re thinking, hang on, these Penny Dreadfuls are just short stories or chapters of a book, no wonder Oliver Twist was more expensive, it's an entire book, remember that Charles Dickens also published his books in the same, serialised, format, with new instalments coming out over a period of weeks or months.
[00:06:07] So, each instalment of a Penny Dreadful was incredibly cheap, less than 1/10th of the cost of a normal book.
[00:06:16] As you might expect, this low price tag did a great deal to expand the number of people who were able to read or, if they were illiterate, listen to these stories, and in so doing for the first time it opened up literature to society’s poorest, which in Victorian England, was the majority of the population.
[00:06:39] So, how was it possible to make them so cheap?
[00:06:43] Well, partly, automation. Innovations in printing technology allowed for mass produced prints on very cheap and thin paper.
[00:06:53] With the invention of the steam powered press in 1814, printing had become mechanical and automated.
[00:07:01] It was 5 times faster than the at-the-time revolutionary Gutenberg printing press.
[00:07:07] Paper was cheap, for once, and the process of printing onto the paper, and then putting it all together, was more efficient than ever before.
[00:07:17] To keep costs low, they did not have fancy thick book covers, they were simply 8 to 16 pages of thin paper with columns of text.
[00:07:28] Really, they were more like a modern-day magazine or comic book.
[00:07:34] And let’s not forget the cost of actually writing the stories.
[00:07:39] This genre, much like what is disparagingly called “airport novels” nowadays, was written quickly, often with generic and formulaic characters.
[00:07:52] Authors working for publishing houses would write tirelessly, often being paid a penny per line and being responsible for up to 10 stories at the same time.
[00:08:04] As a result, Penny Dreadfuls were criticised for their lack of literary merit, for not being particularly good books.
[00:08:12] We’ll come to some of the results of this shortly, but the point to remember here is that they were very cheap to make, meaning that they could be sold for the cost of a loaf of bread.
[00:08:24] And the result of these penny dreadfuls being so affordable was, of course, that they could be bought and enjoyed by people who would never have been able to buy a book before.
[00:08:36] The 19th century was, after all, a time of booming literacy rates in Britain, principally due to the widespread availability of schooling for children.
[00:08:47] In the 1830s, under 50% of women and only around 60% of men could read.
[00:08:54] Within just 40 years, by the mid 1870s, 90% of the British population could read.
[00:09:03] And despite these better education outcomes for children, as you may know, life in Victorian Britain was pretty tough and miserable, especially at the start of the 19th century.
[00:09:17] In 1821, almost half of the entire workforce was under the age of 20 and the average age children began working was just 10 years old.
[00:09:30] They would work in factories, on farms, as chimney sweeps, in all manner of tough and dangerous jobs. Even Charles Dickens, who became the most celebrated and successful of Victorian writers, worked as a child in a factory that produced boot polish.
[00:09:49] Throughout the 19th century, the British government did pass legislation to improve the plight of the working poor, but it was a slow process.
[00:10:00] In 1833, for example, the “Factory Act'' was celebrated as a wonderful thing for children, but what did it say? Only that you had to be 9 years old to legally work.
[00:10:14] In any case, even if it did improve, slightly, life as a child in Victorian Britain was somewhat miserable.
[00:10:22] And suddenly, along came this option of reading stories of adventure, mystery, murder, and the supernatural, all at a price that wouldn’t break the bank, that you could actually afford.
[00:10:37] As such, these books provided a welcome escape from the drudgery, boredom and hardship of factory life or classroom learning, and they were a massive hit.
[00:10:50] So, you are probably wondering, what were these stories actually about?
[00:10:55] Well, you heard a bit of one at the start of this episode, and you may have heard of some of the others.
[00:11:02] Sweeney Todd, which was turned into a Tim Burton movie starring Johnny Depp, was one of the most famous Penny Dreadfuls.
[00:11:10] If you haven’t heard the story, or seen the 2007 film, this tale is all about a barber, a hairdresser, who killed his customers by slitting their throats with his razor.
[00:11:24] And the customers weren’t just killed, they were turned into meat pies and sold to unwitting members of the public.
[00:11:33] Then there was Black Bess, which we heard at the start of the episode.
[00:11:37] And these are just to name a few.
[00:11:40] Before long, increasing amounts of penny dreadfuls emerged and there was a huge choice of which weekly tale or scandalous character whose adventures its readers could follow.
[00:11:51] Between 1830 and 1850 there were up to 100 publishers offering these cheap stories.
[00:12:00] In the beginning, the stories were usually about highwaymen like Dick Turpin, men who stopped people on the roads and robbed them.
[00:12:09] Indeed, the very first penny dreadful which came out in 1836 was a collection of biographies called The Lives of the Most Notorious Highwaymen.
[00:12:20] As a quick side note, if you haven’t listened to our episode on Highwaymen, it’s quite a fun one, it’s episode number 197.
[00:12:30] Over time, though, other characters and storylines began to increase in popularity, it wasn’t only about criminals.
[00:12:39] The most popular series was The Mysteries of London, which published a new episode every week for 12 years, each one selling around a quarter of a million copies.
[00:12:52] These stories were based in the Victorian slums, or poor areas of the city where many of the readers lived, and they turned the grim surroundings into adventurous sites of mystery.
[00:13:06] Whether it was a murder or a scandalous plot against a rich and evil superior, readers loved these sensational tales.
[00:13:16] As to the question of why, well, you only have to take a look at the most popular genres on YouTube or Netflix to see that this genre, this style, this type of story, is still equally popular.
[00:13:32] True crime, mysteries, the supernatural, we can debate the reasons why, but modern series like True Detective or Stranger Things are, in some ways, simply developments, and certainly more expensive developments, on the Penny Dreadful genre.
[00:13:51] And the serialised format certainly helped boost their popularity. Just like if your favourite TV series ends on a cliffhanger, ends with something exciting happening that might change the plot completely, well this was exactly the same with the Penny Dreadful.
[00:14:10] People would save their money, eagerly awaiting the next instalment so they could see what would happen next.
[00:14:17] There were even stories of book clubs being formed, kids who couldn’t afford the 1 penny price tag would club together and buy a book to share, and even those children who weren’t able to read would join the club and listen to the story being read out loud.
[00:14:36] Initially, the subjects tended to be believable but “real-life” style stories - murderers, adventure, and so on, but all within the confines of the “real” world.
[00:14:50] As time went on, Penny Dreadfuls started to become more supernatural as well, involving supernatural beasts and goings-on.
[00:14:59] There were vampires, ghosts, evil spirits, all of whom would commit gruesome crimes to the delight of their readers.
[00:15:09] But, as with any new craze, especially one that captivates the hearts and minds of the young, it wasn’t long before there were as many critics as there were fans.
[00:15:23] Much like horror movies or violent video games today, there were adult critics who feared the impact that devouring these stories would have on the children of the time.
[00:15:35] Victorians were famously moralistic, with the upper classes feeling like they had a moral duty to protect their supposed inferiors from moral decay, and the phenomenon of the Penny Dreadful was really the first time that society en masse had had access to this kind of entertainment.
[00:15:56] It’s hard to overstate the fear and moral panic that ensued, with one newspaper in 1886 even declaring that penny dreadfuls were, I quote, “the poison which is threatening to destroy the manhood of democracy”.
[00:16:14] Why?
[00:16:15] Well, just like video games, people feared that simply reading about crime would mean that someone was more likely to commit crimes, that reading violent stories could inspire violent acts.
[00:16:29] And in the final two decades of the 19th century, after the penny dreadful craze had reached its height, people were increasingly blaming the stories for crimes actually committed by children.
[00:16:43] Almost every month, there would be news stories of crimes or acts that were blamed on Penny Dreadfuls.
[00:16:51] In 1892 there was one of some schoolboys who ran away with a gun and were caught with a note which read:
[00:17:00] “Steal the money; go to the station and get to Glasgow. Get boat for America”.
[00:17:06] People believed the boys were inspired by tales such as Jack Harkaway’s Schooldays, which was about a boy who ran away to begin a life of adventure.
[00:17:16] In the same year, the suicide of a 12-year-old boy who hanged himself was also blamed on penny dreadfuls.
[00:17:25] In court, the verdict was announced as “suicide during temporary insanity, induced by reading trashy novels”.
[00:17:35] But tensions really hit an all-time high in 1895, when the body of a woman was found in a house in London.
[00:17:45] The police didn’t have to search far for her killers, as they were, in fact, her 12- and 13-year-old sons.
[00:17:53] The elder boy had insisted that his brother told him to stab their mother to death, and when the police investigated, they found a huge collection of penny dreadfuls in the house.
[00:18:06] The copies were used as evidence in the case and in court a judge called for laws to “stop the inflammable and shocking literature that is sold.”
[00:18:17] All of these controversies were the beginning of the end for the penny dreadful craze, as publishers began to distance themselves from problematic material and real-life tragedies.
[00:18:30] It’s not exactly good for business if you’re being blamed for causing terrible murders and suicides.
[00:18:37] As a result, there was a gap in the market for more uplifting stories for children, stories that included moral or educational lessons, stories that ended well, stories without murder, violence or brutality, stories that a parent would be much happier to buy for their child than a Penny Dreadful.
[00:18:58] The patriotically named The Union Jack was one of them, and in fact the entire objective of The Union Jack was, and I’m quoting directly, to “put the Penny Dreadfuls out of business”.
[00:19:13] The Union Jack had another large advantage - its price.
[00:19:18] It cost half a penny, half as much money as a Penny Dreadful.
[00:19:23] For a budget-conscious audience, clearly this was a big advantage.
[00:19:30] What’s more, there was a shift away from serialised-fiction towards full-length books, so when you could buy a full novel of a few hundred pages for the price of a handful of Penny Dreadfuls, and the quality of the narrative was a lot better, this option suddenly wasn’t so expensive at all.
[00:19:51] And on the other end of the spectrum, during the 1870s there was a boom in comic books, illustrated books, Which were even more accessible than penny dreadfuls, because there were pictures.
[00:20:05] The Penny Dreadful genre was being squeezed from all sides. Everything that had made it so popular - its price, its accessibility, its blood and gore - was now available in different formats, formats that were often preferred by readers that had once snapped up every Penny Dreadful on the shelf.
[00:20:27] By the turn of the century, the Penny Dreadful had practically died out.
[00:20:33] Now, when it comes to the legacy of the Penny Dreadful, fortunately the fears about the genre destroying all morality and poisoning democracy didn't come true.
[00:20:44] Perhaps they might have inspired some reckless behaviour, even violent acts, but did they turn an entire generation into rampant serial killers?
[00:20:57] They did not.
[00:20:58] In fact, many commentators now point to the positive impact of the Penny Dreadful.
[00:21:05] Sure, they may not have had the literary merit of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, or Shakespeare, but they did encourage a generation of children to start reading.
[00:21:17] As one professor put it, penny dreadfuls gave children “an incentive to require literacy”.
[00:21:25] In other words, they gave children a reason, or some motivation to learn to read.
[00:21:30] They didn’t want to be left out when everyone else was talking about the latest robbery by Dick Turpin or who Sweeney Todd’s latest victim was.
[00:21:41] Now, it’s clearly an overstatement to say that the Penny Dreadfuls single-handedly increased literacy rates in Victorian Britain, as there were plenty of other factors that taught children how to read.
[00:21:54] But, the Penny Dreadfuls did inspire a generation to keep reading, to use the skills that they had learned at school.
[00:22:03] So, despite the critics and fears for the morality of Victorian youth, and fears that they would lead to the destruction of the very fabric of society, it certainly seems that there are many worse things a Victorian child could have done than getting addicted to Penny Dreadfuls.
[00:22:24] Ok then, that is it for today’s episode on Penny Dreadfuls.
[00:22:29] I hope it was an interesting one, and that you learned something new.
[00:22:33] As always I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:22:37] Are there equivalents of the Penny Dreadful in your language?
[00:22:41] Do you think that the concerns about violent video games or films are any different to the concerns about Penny Dreadfuls?
[00:22:49] If so, why?
[00:22:51] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:22:55] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:23:04] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:23:09] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about something called the “Penny Dreadful”.
[00:00:28] A penny is, as you may know, the smallest denomination of the British pound, and dreadful means awful, very bad, terrible.
[00:00:38] And put together, a “Penny Dreadful” was a type of short horror story popular during the Victorian era.
[00:00:46] It’s a genre that has all but died out today, in its original format at least, but was one of the biggest crazes of 19th Century Britain, even being called “the Victorian equivalent of video games”, and being described as “Britain’s first taste of mass-produced popular culture for the young".
[00:01:07] So let’s get right into it and talk about the phenomenon of the penny dreadful.
[00:01:15] “The rising moon was just peeping above the horizon, and a few faint, sickly beams of light shot up from it into the night sky.
[00:01:25] Standing in the middle of the road […] was a horse and rider. The moonlight shimmered upon both with a strange effect.
[00:01:34] The rider was tall and muscular and sat in the saddle with an ease and grace.
[00:01:41] The steed, [or horse], which he rode was none other than the celebrated ‘Black Bess’, her rider went by the name of Dick Turpin.”
[00:01:52] The horseman was leaning forward in his saddle and intensely listening as a carriage approached.
[00:01:58] Inside the carriage were a man and wife and they were travelling with a rare treasure, a golden cup, which they had been closely guarding throughout their journey.
[00:02:09] As the couple made their way towards Turpin, they suddenly heard a gunshot and got so frightened that their golden cup fell to the floor.
[00:02:19] Then they heard a voice: “pull up, coachman, or you are a dead man!”
[00:02:25] It was Turpin, and when the coach stopped he approached the window.
[00:02:30] The husband’s terror was clear on his face and he asked if Turpin was going to kill them.
[00:02:36] Turpin assured that he was not before he lifted his hat and said “I am sorry to trouble you, but this is really a case of necessity.”
[00:02:45] He then demanded their money, jewellery and the golden cup.
[00:02:50] Fearing Turpin and his gun, the couple did as they were told and got out of the carriage to give their riches to the robber while the coachman, or driver, had ran off to get help.
[00:03:02] As they struggled to remove their jewellery and grab the golden cup from the floor of the carriage, an army of around 12 police emerged from around the corner…
[00:03:14] This is the story from the very first instalment, or episode, of Black Bess, a series that would go on to become the most popular of the Penny Dreadfuls.
[00:03:26] The sudden ending, or cliffhanger, was typical of these stories as they had to keep their readers eagerly awaiting the next episode the following week.
[00:03:37] And this strategy was clearly a success, as Black Bess continued for a whopping 254 books.
[00:03:46] People couldn’t get enough of the adventures of Dick Turpin, the highwayman who lived a century before these tales made him famous in the 1860s.
[00:03:57] And Turpin was not alone, for tales about highwaymen were the longest lasting trend within penny dreadful literature.
[00:04:06] By the time Turpin rode onto the scene in 1868, penny dreadfuls had been around for roughly 30 years, and there were more than a million copies being sold every week.
[00:04:19] Given that many would be bought and read aloud to groups of multiple people, it’s safe to assume that the number of people who either read or listened to a Penny Dreadful story would be several times this number.
[00:04:34] And when you think that the entire population of England and Wales was 17 million people in 1851, we are likely talking about the vast majority of the teenage population of the country.
[00:04:49] But what was so special about these stories?
[00:04:52] And how did they get so popular?
[00:04:55] Well, as the name suggests, penny dreadfuls were sold for a single penny.
[00:05:02] Sure, a penny back in the 19th century was worth a lot more than it is today, but it was still very cheap. One penny is about 25p now, it's a quarter of a pound, but perhaps a better comparison is that one instalment of these books was about the same price as a loaf of bread.
[00:05:25] And to give you another point of comparison, this genre was very cheap compared to normal books, books you may well have heard of.
[00:05:35] For example, an instalment of a Charles Dickens novel such as Oliver Twist would cost around 12 pennies, or 1 shilling.
[00:05:45] Before you’re thinking, hang on, these Penny Dreadfuls are just short stories or chapters of a book, no wonder Oliver Twist was more expensive, it's an entire book, remember that Charles Dickens also published his books in the same, serialised, format, with new instalments coming out over a period of weeks or months.
[00:06:07] So, each instalment of a Penny Dreadful was incredibly cheap, less than 1/10th of the cost of a normal book.
[00:06:16] As you might expect, this low price tag did a great deal to expand the number of people who were able to read or, if they were illiterate, listen to these stories, and in so doing for the first time it opened up literature to society’s poorest, which in Victorian England, was the majority of the population.
[00:06:39] So, how was it possible to make them so cheap?
[00:06:43] Well, partly, automation. Innovations in printing technology allowed for mass produced prints on very cheap and thin paper.
[00:06:53] With the invention of the steam powered press in 1814, printing had become mechanical and automated.
[00:07:01] It was 5 times faster than the at-the-time revolutionary Gutenberg printing press.
[00:07:07] Paper was cheap, for once, and the process of printing onto the paper, and then putting it all together, was more efficient than ever before.
[00:07:17] To keep costs low, they did not have fancy thick book covers, they were simply 8 to 16 pages of thin paper with columns of text.
[00:07:28] Really, they were more like a modern-day magazine or comic book.
[00:07:34] And let’s not forget the cost of actually writing the stories.
[00:07:39] This genre, much like what is disparagingly called “airport novels” nowadays, was written quickly, often with generic and formulaic characters.
[00:07:52] Authors working for publishing houses would write tirelessly, often being paid a penny per line and being responsible for up to 10 stories at the same time.
[00:08:04] As a result, Penny Dreadfuls were criticised for their lack of literary merit, for not being particularly good books.
[00:08:12] We’ll come to some of the results of this shortly, but the point to remember here is that they were very cheap to make, meaning that they could be sold for the cost of a loaf of bread.
[00:08:24] And the result of these penny dreadfuls being so affordable was, of course, that they could be bought and enjoyed by people who would never have been able to buy a book before.
[00:08:36] The 19th century was, after all, a time of booming literacy rates in Britain, principally due to the widespread availability of schooling for children.
[00:08:47] In the 1830s, under 50% of women and only around 60% of men could read.
[00:08:54] Within just 40 years, by the mid 1870s, 90% of the British population could read.
[00:09:03] And despite these better education outcomes for children, as you may know, life in Victorian Britain was pretty tough and miserable, especially at the start of the 19th century.
[00:09:17] In 1821, almost half of the entire workforce was under the age of 20 and the average age children began working was just 10 years old.
[00:09:30] They would work in factories, on farms, as chimney sweeps, in all manner of tough and dangerous jobs. Even Charles Dickens, who became the most celebrated and successful of Victorian writers, worked as a child in a factory that produced boot polish.
[00:09:49] Throughout the 19th century, the British government did pass legislation to improve the plight of the working poor, but it was a slow process.
[00:10:00] In 1833, for example, the “Factory Act'' was celebrated as a wonderful thing for children, but what did it say? Only that you had to be 9 years old to legally work.
[00:10:14] In any case, even if it did improve, slightly, life as a child in Victorian Britain was somewhat miserable.
[00:10:22] And suddenly, along came this option of reading stories of adventure, mystery, murder, and the supernatural, all at a price that wouldn’t break the bank, that you could actually afford.
[00:10:37] As such, these books provided a welcome escape from the drudgery, boredom and hardship of factory life or classroom learning, and they were a massive hit.
[00:10:50] So, you are probably wondering, what were these stories actually about?
[00:10:55] Well, you heard a bit of one at the start of this episode, and you may have heard of some of the others.
[00:11:02] Sweeney Todd, which was turned into a Tim Burton movie starring Johnny Depp, was one of the most famous Penny Dreadfuls.
[00:11:10] If you haven’t heard the story, or seen the 2007 film, this tale is all about a barber, a hairdresser, who killed his customers by slitting their throats with his razor.
[00:11:24] And the customers weren’t just killed, they were turned into meat pies and sold to unwitting members of the public.
[00:11:33] Then there was Black Bess, which we heard at the start of the episode.
[00:11:37] And these are just to name a few.
[00:11:40] Before long, increasing amounts of penny dreadfuls emerged and there was a huge choice of which weekly tale or scandalous character whose adventures its readers could follow.
[00:11:51] Between 1830 and 1850 there were up to 100 publishers offering these cheap stories.
[00:12:00] In the beginning, the stories were usually about highwaymen like Dick Turpin, men who stopped people on the roads and robbed them.
[00:12:09] Indeed, the very first penny dreadful which came out in 1836 was a collection of biographies called The Lives of the Most Notorious Highwaymen.
[00:12:20] As a quick side note, if you haven’t listened to our episode on Highwaymen, it’s quite a fun one, it’s episode number 197.
[00:12:30] Over time, though, other characters and storylines began to increase in popularity, it wasn’t only about criminals.
[00:12:39] The most popular series was The Mysteries of London, which published a new episode every week for 12 years, each one selling around a quarter of a million copies.
[00:12:52] These stories were based in the Victorian slums, or poor areas of the city where many of the readers lived, and they turned the grim surroundings into adventurous sites of mystery.
[00:13:06] Whether it was a murder or a scandalous plot against a rich and evil superior, readers loved these sensational tales.
[00:13:16] As to the question of why, well, you only have to take a look at the most popular genres on YouTube or Netflix to see that this genre, this style, this type of story, is still equally popular.
[00:13:32] True crime, mysteries, the supernatural, we can debate the reasons why, but modern series like True Detective or Stranger Things are, in some ways, simply developments, and certainly more expensive developments, on the Penny Dreadful genre.
[00:13:51] And the serialised format certainly helped boost their popularity. Just like if your favourite TV series ends on a cliffhanger, ends with something exciting happening that might change the plot completely, well this was exactly the same with the Penny Dreadful.
[00:14:10] People would save their money, eagerly awaiting the next instalment so they could see what would happen next.
[00:14:17] There were even stories of book clubs being formed, kids who couldn’t afford the 1 penny price tag would club together and buy a book to share, and even those children who weren’t able to read would join the club and listen to the story being read out loud.
[00:14:36] Initially, the subjects tended to be believable but “real-life” style stories - murderers, adventure, and so on, but all within the confines of the “real” world.
[00:14:50] As time went on, Penny Dreadfuls started to become more supernatural as well, involving supernatural beasts and goings-on.
[00:14:59] There were vampires, ghosts, evil spirits, all of whom would commit gruesome crimes to the delight of their readers.
[00:15:09] But, as with any new craze, especially one that captivates the hearts and minds of the young, it wasn’t long before there were as many critics as there were fans.
[00:15:23] Much like horror movies or violent video games today, there were adult critics who feared the impact that devouring these stories would have on the children of the time.
[00:15:35] Victorians were famously moralistic, with the upper classes feeling like they had a moral duty to protect their supposed inferiors from moral decay, and the phenomenon of the Penny Dreadful was really the first time that society en masse had had access to this kind of entertainment.
[00:15:56] It’s hard to overstate the fear and moral panic that ensued, with one newspaper in 1886 even declaring that penny dreadfuls were, I quote, “the poison which is threatening to destroy the manhood of democracy”.
[00:16:14] Why?
[00:16:15] Well, just like video games, people feared that simply reading about crime would mean that someone was more likely to commit crimes, that reading violent stories could inspire violent acts.
[00:16:29] And in the final two decades of the 19th century, after the penny dreadful craze had reached its height, people were increasingly blaming the stories for crimes actually committed by children.
[00:16:43] Almost every month, there would be news stories of crimes or acts that were blamed on Penny Dreadfuls.
[00:16:51] In 1892 there was one of some schoolboys who ran away with a gun and were caught with a note which read:
[00:17:00] “Steal the money; go to the station and get to Glasgow. Get boat for America”.
[00:17:06] People believed the boys were inspired by tales such as Jack Harkaway’s Schooldays, which was about a boy who ran away to begin a life of adventure.
[00:17:16] In the same year, the suicide of a 12-year-old boy who hanged himself was also blamed on penny dreadfuls.
[00:17:25] In court, the verdict was announced as “suicide during temporary insanity, induced by reading trashy novels”.
[00:17:35] But tensions really hit an all-time high in 1895, when the body of a woman was found in a house in London.
[00:17:45] The police didn’t have to search far for her killers, as they were, in fact, her 12- and 13-year-old sons.
[00:17:53] The elder boy had insisted that his brother told him to stab their mother to death, and when the police investigated, they found a huge collection of penny dreadfuls in the house.
[00:18:06] The copies were used as evidence in the case and in court a judge called for laws to “stop the inflammable and shocking literature that is sold.”
[00:18:17] All of these controversies were the beginning of the end for the penny dreadful craze, as publishers began to distance themselves from problematic material and real-life tragedies.
[00:18:30] It’s not exactly good for business if you’re being blamed for causing terrible murders and suicides.
[00:18:37] As a result, there was a gap in the market for more uplifting stories for children, stories that included moral or educational lessons, stories that ended well, stories without murder, violence or brutality, stories that a parent would be much happier to buy for their child than a Penny Dreadful.
[00:18:58] The patriotically named The Union Jack was one of them, and in fact the entire objective of The Union Jack was, and I’m quoting directly, to “put the Penny Dreadfuls out of business”.
[00:19:13] The Union Jack had another large advantage - its price.
[00:19:18] It cost half a penny, half as much money as a Penny Dreadful.
[00:19:23] For a budget-conscious audience, clearly this was a big advantage.
[00:19:30] What’s more, there was a shift away from serialised-fiction towards full-length books, so when you could buy a full novel of a few hundred pages for the price of a handful of Penny Dreadfuls, and the quality of the narrative was a lot better, this option suddenly wasn’t so expensive at all.
[00:19:51] And on the other end of the spectrum, during the 1870s there was a boom in comic books, illustrated books, Which were even more accessible than penny dreadfuls, because there were pictures.
[00:20:05] The Penny Dreadful genre was being squeezed from all sides. Everything that had made it so popular - its price, its accessibility, its blood and gore - was now available in different formats, formats that were often preferred by readers that had once snapped up every Penny Dreadful on the shelf.
[00:20:27] By the turn of the century, the Penny Dreadful had practically died out.
[00:20:33] Now, when it comes to the legacy of the Penny Dreadful, fortunately the fears about the genre destroying all morality and poisoning democracy didn't come true.
[00:20:44] Perhaps they might have inspired some reckless behaviour, even violent acts, but did they turn an entire generation into rampant serial killers?
[00:20:57] They did not.
[00:20:58] In fact, many commentators now point to the positive impact of the Penny Dreadful.
[00:21:05] Sure, they may not have had the literary merit of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, or Shakespeare, but they did encourage a generation of children to start reading.
[00:21:17] As one professor put it, penny dreadfuls gave children “an incentive to require literacy”.
[00:21:25] In other words, they gave children a reason, or some motivation to learn to read.
[00:21:30] They didn’t want to be left out when everyone else was talking about the latest robbery by Dick Turpin or who Sweeney Todd’s latest victim was.
[00:21:41] Now, it’s clearly an overstatement to say that the Penny Dreadfuls single-handedly increased literacy rates in Victorian Britain, as there were plenty of other factors that taught children how to read.
[00:21:54] But, the Penny Dreadfuls did inspire a generation to keep reading, to use the skills that they had learned at school.
[00:22:03] So, despite the critics and fears for the morality of Victorian youth, and fears that they would lead to the destruction of the very fabric of society, it certainly seems that there are many worse things a Victorian child could have done than getting addicted to Penny Dreadfuls.
[00:22:24] Ok then, that is it for today’s episode on Penny Dreadfuls.
[00:22:29] I hope it was an interesting one, and that you learned something new.
[00:22:33] As always I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:22:37] Are there equivalents of the Penny Dreadful in your language?
[00:22:41] Do you think that the concerns about violent video games or films are any different to the concerns about Penny Dreadfuls?
[00:22:49] If so, why?
[00:22:51] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:22:55] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:23:04] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:23:09] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
