The Penny Dreadful Hour: A Feast of Early-Victorian Street Literature and Stories

3.03: The villain raises the knife just as Spring-Heel'd Jack arrives! — The Policeman's Murder. — Killed by fear itself! (A Ha'penny Horror 'Hursday half-hour episode)


Listen Later

A half-hour- long 'Hursday Horrors Minisode IN WHICH —

0:01:55: SPRING-HEEL'D JACK, Ch. 17, IN WHICH —:

  • Richard Clavering tries to bluster his way out, but it’s not a good look, looming over his unconscious lady with a knife in his fist. Jack unmasks — and we learn he and Clavering know each other socially! So … did Jack overhear the part about the loaded dice? What will he do if he does? And what will happen to poor Jessie?


0:16:25: TRIGGER WARNING!

  • This is a Ha'penny Horrid 'Hursday episode. "Horrid" as in "horror." Thursday is the day we do all the grimdark, grisly, horrifying stories, starting right after the chapter of the daily Dreadful! So: If murders, war crimes, parricides, and other awful stuff are not something you are interested in hearing about, even 200 years later — you should skip to the next podcast in your queue after the Dreadful finishes up. Don't worry, we'll be back this coming Sunday for the regular Penny Dreadful Variety Hour, when this podcast will be back to being a bright, sunny romp through Penny Dreadful stories!


0:16:55: TERRIBLE TIDBIT OF THE DAY for August 7:

  • The story of a young mother of 10 who got drunk and tried to kill herself by jumping off Blackfriars Bridge, on Aug. 21, 1852.



0:19:05: THE BRUTAL MURDER AT ST. HELENS (a broadsheet ballad).

  • When Sgt. Sewell of the city police tried to detain a young man whom he knew to be wanted on a warrant, the young reprobate whipped out a pepperbox pistol and shot him twice. Liverpool printer John White memorialized the crime with a mournful broadsheet ballad.


0:23:25: THE TERRIFIC REGISTER:

  • A few examples from history of times when persons believing they were about to die, simply dropped dead without the intervention of the headsman's ax.


Join host Finn J.D. John. for a half-hour-long spree through the darkest and loathliest stories seen on the streets of early-Victorian London! Grab a flicker of blue ruin, switch off your mirror neurons, and let's go!

GLOSSARY OF FLASH TERMS USED IN THIS EPISODE:

  • High spicer: Highway robber.
  • Topping cove: Hangman.
  • Mizzle: Take leave.
  • Scragging: Hanging.
  • Kiddies and kiddiesses: Flash lads and lasses
  • Sherry off: To leave, in a tolerable hurry. A corruption of "sheer off."
  • Flats: Suckers.
  • Chaffing: Talking and bantering while taking a glass or two.
  • Knight of the brush and moon: Drunken fellow wandering amok in fields and ditches trying to stagger home.
  • "Dram-o-tick poet" (from the Joe Miller joke at the end of the episode): A pun. A dram, of course, is a glass of spirits. "Tick" refers to marking down a debt by making a tickmark, as in a pub when drinking on credit.
...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

The Penny Dreadful Hour: A Feast of Early-Victorian Street Literature and StoriesBy Finn J.D. John/ Pulp-Lit Productions

  • 4.4
  • 4.4
  • 4.4
  • 4.4
  • 4.4

4.4

9 ratings


More shows like The Penny Dreadful Hour: A Feast of Early-Victorian Street Literature and Stories

View all
Focus on the Family with Jim Daly by Focus on the Family

Focus on the Family with Jim Daly

4,854 Listeners

Offbeat Oregon History podcast by www.offbeatoregon.com (finn @ offbeatoregon.com)

Offbeat Oregon History podcast

195 Listeners

The Ancients by History Hit

The Ancients

3,272 Listeners

Everything Everywhere Daily by Gary Arndt

Everything Everywhere Daily

2,131 Listeners

Short History Of... by NOISER

Short History Of...

2,819 Listeners