"THE PENNY DREADFUL'"

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 25, 29 July 1922, Page 17

"THE PENNY DREADFUL'"

|l WORD IN ITS DEFENCE. A Wellington journalist writes: — Mr. Cntrles Wilson's recant lectors to Wellington Territorials •on reading contained apeoial references to "Jack Harkaway." This popular hero of English boys, in the later 'seventies, was not held in high repute in all their families. Re was not in mine, but ho was tolerated. Where he was absolutely banned, I know very well that there boys read him surreptitiously and, therefore, he became all the more delightful. In my own case, "Jaok Harkaway" wae not exactly taboo, as I have said, but Bteps were/taken to counteract him, and with success, by Dickens, Tom Brown; Jules Verne, Captain Marryat, and Mayne Reid, Charles Read, Harrison Ainsworth, and Thomaa Ingoldsby. "Jaok Harkaway's" exploits ran through the immensely popular weekly, ?'Tho Boys of England," whioh had as its unsuccessful rivals, "The Young Briton," and "The Young Men of Great Britain." As compared with the Yank movie hero, Jack Harkaway was a very mild personage. I saw him then on the front page of "The Boys o£ England," a blonde youth standing on the poop, his eye fixed to a telescope focussed on a lateen-sailed pirate craft with the JoTTy Roger \ fluttering in the breeze. I knew that Jack would rake that craft fore and) aft, that her deoks would be slippy'with pirates' blood, that her booty would be transferred from her holds to be shared! among his faithful orew. For himself, I knew he would account for ten men at once with that formidable hanger in bis belt; the pirate captain would fall to hia pistol and the fair maiden abducted from a Spanish ship off the coast of Guadeloupe would oling to Jack as her saviour, and rightly fall to his lot. I knew that without outlass or "pistols Jack waa good enough for six dagoes at a time, using jus bare British knuckles and no other !weapon upon them. No, Jack Horkaway, frowned upon in our homes as he was in the later 'seventies and early 'eighties, w»s not at all a person. Hia accomplishments afloat and ashore were absurd, but ho was a clean hero and British to the backbone. This reminds me of literature for boys -t a time which inoluded "Sweeney • Todd, the Barber of Fleet-street," who cut his customers' throats and sold the bodies to a pieman next door. I did not quite admire Sweeney but thought him a man of great bustness capacity. ■ Then there were Jack Sheppard, piok Turpin, Jonathan Blueskin, Sixteon-String, Jack; and later, Frank Read and his marvellous inventions anticipating submarines and aeroplanes; also Buffalo Bill (whom I met in the flesh) and Deadwood Dick—all mild heroes compared with some of tho present day film notorieties. There was really no harm, in the heroes of our boyhood. Therefore, you can guess my surprise to hear fall from the lips of a Judge of the Supreme Court of New Zealand;, * splendid man, a terrible indictment against "penny dreadfuls." I was tempted to ask his Honour if he had road any of them. I'm sure he would have honestly admitted! j if he had, that they were not *> blaok | as they were painted, and certainly had little to do with the: downfall of \ boys already warped in their morals. If he had been as conversant with such boys literature as Mr. Wilson evidently waa as a boy, he would have arrived at the conclusion of that gentleman, that they met the youth's natural inclination for advontur^. And here I will conclude with a, personal oxperienoe. Want of sufficient pocket money (a chronic complaint in my youth), combined with a desire to fall in with parental views on the literature preferred-at that time, led me to "take in" "The Boys' Own Paper," then just out. It opened with a fine story, "From Powder Monkey to Admiral, supplemented by "The Story of a Three Guinea Watch." I thought I could exchange the "Boys' Own Paper" with the ''Boys' of Bngland" and "Tho Young Men of Great Britain" with other sohoolboyt. The 8.0.P., as it was called, was brought out by the Religious Tract Sooiety to counteract the "Harkaway" and "Dick Turpin" staff. Butll found the Boys' Own far too "goody-goody" for my schoolmates, bo it was left on my hands— a dead loss. Then Harrison Ainsworth and Dickens quit© supplemented my old "dreadful" heroes, and I can "now wholly corroborate Mr. Wilson's remarks that, even the "penny awful". had ita uses.