Flesh-Ripping Ghouls of London: Murder, Madness & Gore from the Penny Bloods (Creation Oneiros Scorpionic) - Softcover

Prest, Thomas Peckett; Rymer, James Malcolm

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1902197518 ISBN 13: 9781902197517

Publisher: Creation Oneiros, 2012

Synopsis

At the beginning of the 19th century, higher standards of education, the invention of fast and efficient printing presses, and cheap paper production combined to create a new, mass market for literature in England: sensationalistic, graphic "shilling shockers" for the masses. By 1827, macabre literary material dealing with witchcraft, deformity, depravity, insanity, sadism and gore, could be found in such publications as Legends Of Terror, a 40-part omnibus of supernatural tales, and The Casket, a weekly magazine-type publication which touted itself as "the first of the penny papers"; this was also the period when numerous annals of violent crime, such as The Tell-Tale and The Terrific Register, were published.

Edward Lloyd, a bookseller turned publisher, detonated the penny-pulp market from 1836 onwards with the inauguration of a new line of sensationalistic mass-produced "penny bloods", filled with wild, vivid and gruesome stories and serials written by a pool of writers that included Thomas Peckett Prest, James Malcolm Rymer, and E.P. Hingston. Best-known amongst these works were Varney The Vampyre and The String Of Pearls, featuring Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber. One of Lloyd's most successful rivals, both as an author and later as an editor and publisher, was G.W.M. Reynolds, whose grim 1845 serial Mysteries Of London was immensely popular; in 1846 Reynolds started his own journal, Reynolds' Miscellany, launched with a new serial shocker by Reynolds himself entitled Wagner The Wehr-Wolf.

FLESH-RIPPING GHOULS OF LONDON is a new anthology which collects 30 true-crime reports, serial chapters and short stories from the golden age of the penny bloods. It constitutes the widest history and selection of this literary output currently available.

About this title

About the Author:

Thomas Peckett Prest (AKA Thomas Preskett Prest) (probable dates 1810-1859) was a British pulp writer, journalist and musician. He was a prolific producer of penny dreadfuls. He is now remembered as the co-creator (with James Malcolm Rymer) of the fictional Sweeney Todd, the 'demon barber' immortalized in his The String of Pearls.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

A DEN OF HORRORS

However filthy, unhealthy, and repulsive the entire neighbourhood of West Street (Smithfield), Field Lane, and Saffron Hill, may appear at the present day, it was far worse some years ago. There were then but few cesspools; and scarcely any of those which did exist possessed any drains. The knackers' yards of Cow Cross, and the establishments in Castle Street where horses' flesh is boiled down to supply food for the dogs and cats of the metropolis, send forth now, as they did then, a foetid and sickening odour which could not possibly be borne by a delicate stomach. At the windows of those establishments the bones of the animals are hung to bleach, and offend the eye as much as the horrible stench of the flesh acts repugnantly to the nerves. Upwards of sixty horses a day are frequently slaughtered in each yard; and many of them are in the last stage of disease when sent to their "long home." Should there not be a rapid demand for the meat on the part of the itinerant purveyors of that article for canine and feline favourites, it speedily becomes putrid; and a smell, which would alone appear sufficient to create a pestilence, pervades the neighbourhood.

As if nothing should be wanting to render that district as filthy and unhealthy as possible, water is scarce. There is in this absence of a plentiful supply of that wholesome article, an actual apology for dirt. Some of the houses have small back yards, in which the inhabitants keep pigs. A short time ago, an infant belonging to a poor widow, who occupied a back room on the ground-floor of one of these hovels, died, and was laid upon the sacking of the bed while the mother went out to make arrangements for its interment. During her absence a pig entered the room from the yard, and feasted upon the dead child's face!

In that densely populated neighbourhood that we are describing hundreds of families each live and sleep in one room. When a member of one of these families happens to die, the corpse is kept in the close room where the rest still continue to live and sleep. Poverty frequently compels the unhappy relatives to keep the body for days ― aye, and weeks. Rapid decomposition takes place; animal life generates quickly; and in four-and-twenty hours myriads of loathsome animalculae are seen crawling about. The very undertakers' men fall sick at these disgusting ― these revolting spectacles.

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About this edition

• Publisher: Creation Oneiros
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1902197518
• ISBN 13: 9781902197517
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 216