The schoolmaster who buried his friend in a cave, then out-argued the bones at York. Thirteen years and one sentence gave him away. Tonight's dispatch on Eugene Aram. https://bakerstreetholmes.substack.com/p/the-schoolmaster-who-knew-too-many #TrueCrime #PennyDreadful #18thCentury

Jack Sheppard had been dead a hundred years and more when the penny serial brought him back — and a valet in Park Lane said it put a murder in his head. Tonight: the housebreaker everyone knew. https://bakerstreetholmes.substack.com/p/the-housebreaker-everyone-knew #PennyDreadful

An 1839 Edinburgh penny serial sold Mediterranean terror by instalment - a ship that wore her own name in flames across her stern. Tonight in The Midnight Dispatch. https://bakerstreetholmes.substack.com/p/the-demon-ship-off-malta #PennyDreadful

No one in a Holborn inn should ever bear a dead man's face. Tonight's dispatch turns the opening of Reynolds' penny serial, The Mysteries of the Court of London. https://bakerstreetholmes.substack.com/p/the-likeness-at-the-george-and-blue #VictorianLondon #PennyDreadful

Will they never copy the Devil with a penny? So ran the taunt on Prest's 'Maniac Father' (Lloyd's, c.1842), where a seduced girl's wronged sire turns lunatic and the scaffold darkens the page. A penny bought the shiver. #PennyDreadful #VictorianLondon

Here is the dreadful sold for a penny — 'Black Bess; or, the Knight of the Road,' by Edward Viles (1844): a mare with wings, galloping Dick Turpin from London to York in one night. All legend, sir, and all irresistible. #PennyDreadful #LondonHistory

Tonight's dispatch: the old bargain in the Black Forest — Reynolds's Wagner the Wehr-Wolf, where a stranger comes to the door and the price is two conditions. #PennyDreadful #VictorianLondon

Lloyd's #PennyDreadful, 1846, no. 8 — a barber in Fleet Street who keeps his cellar stairs measured. In 'The String of Pearls' the laugh runs thin, the coins jingle, and a reader counts the steps down. Sixpence buys the shudder. #VictorianLondon