Penny Dreadfuls and the Shaping of Juvenile Minds 1830-1890

Abstract

In Britain, penny periodicals began to appear in the early 1830s appealing to entertain young working class men at the cheap price of one penny. These periodicals started off as tall tales and entertaining stores to pass around after a long day of work. They soon started to recount more adventurous and terrific narratives of ghouls, highwaymen and pirates. These stories served as inspiration for the contemporary modern horror stories and films. People began to call these affordable papers penny “awfuls”, penny “terribles” and a more familiar name, the penny dreadfuls. The message seemed harmless enough until murder at the hands of these young men became more frequent. Parliamentarians blamed these 'penny pockets of poison' for the rise in juvenile violence instead of taking a closer look into the cause for their seemingly sudden outburst of anger and rage resulting in the loss of human life. The critical MPs even claimed that these publications threatened the destruction of democracy. The question becomes, could a few scary stories really determine the fate of society? Research for this project is based upon a collection of articles from the UK Parliamentary archives, the British Library, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and other British Periodicals.