A PENNY DREADFUL

INTRODUCTION

True or False?

Real or Not Real?

Truth or Fable?

They say that Truth is stranger than Fiction! These two true stories possibly prove the point.

You decide!

The Penny Dreadful was a series of stories first started during the 19th Century. The term has been roughly interchangeable with Penny Horrible, Penny Awful and Penny Blood. These books were printed on cheap wood pulp paper and were aimed at young working class males, although I have no doubt that young working class ladies, who could read and write, also bought them to read. The term “Penny Dreadful” referred to a story published in weekly parts, each costing one penny. The subjects for these stories were sensational, focusing on exploits of detectives, criminals, or the supernatural. Hence, the cost and subject matter put together === “Penny Dreadful.”

With the rise in education and people being able to actually read, especially those from the lower classes, in Victorian Britain, these books became an affordable entertainment for almost every class of people. The improvement in printing presses also added to the availability of these books. The first Penny serials were published in the 1830s and were considerably cheaper than the serialised novels of authors such as Charles Dickens, which cost a shilling (12 pennies) per part. The stories themselves were reprints, or sometimes rewrites, of Gothic thrillers as well as new stories about famous criminals. Sweeney Todd and Dick Turpin are two famous names we find in these series, which eventually evolved into the British Comic magazines. It is a shame that very few of the original Penny Dreadful have survived to our day and this is owing to the cheap materials used and their perceived lack of value back then.

Recently, whilst researching a person in history, the thought came to my mind how very similar to a Penny Dreadful was this very true story. As one famous author put it, if only 10% was true about this particular person, she was still one of the most prolific serial killers in history.

In this book, I have chosen and researched two real life stories which could be read as “Penny Dreadful” --- but it has to be remembered that these stories are real and have been marked in history.

BATHORY ERZSEBET

The name is not well-known but the name “Countess Dracula” is!

Apart from the horror film made in 1970, I didn’t even know that Erzsebet Bathory was a real person, the film being based loosely on true events. During my research of this particular real life Countess, the problem of the truth seemed to hit a constant brick wall as so much myth has been “added” to what really happened --- roughly over four hundred years ago. What did this woman do to become a horror story within history?

Countess Elizabeth Bathory de Ecsed has been labelled by Guinness World Records as the most prolific female murderer and was accused of torturing and killing hundreds of young women between 1585 and 1609, with the help of several collaborators. Although the precise number of her victims is debated, figures have ranged from 650 down to 80, either number being a horrifying waste of innocent lives.

Elizabeth Bathory (Bathory Erzsebet --- Hungarian) was born in Hungary in 1560 or 1561, and spent her childhood at Esced Castle. Her family were top nobility and some of her relatives, on her mother’s side, were Royalty. She was born into a privileged family, showered and endowed with wealth, education and a stellar social position. Elizabeth could speak Latin, German and Greek and could eventually read, write and negotiate in four languages. This woman was a very well educated Countess, not an ignorant peasant, which makes it harder to understand “why” she did such horrendous things.

Engaged at eleven and married at fifteen, this was probably for political reasons, but still far too young by our standards today. As Elizabeth’s social standing was higher than her husband’s, who was the son of a Baron, she refused to change her name and remained a Bathory. The couple married at the Palace of Varanno in 1575 with approximately 4,500 guests, a massive wedding for such a young girl! After the wedding, the couple moved to Nadasdy Castle in Sarvar, but the groom went to Vienna to study leaving his fifteen year old bride on her own.

Torturing peasants was the norm back in that century. Because the rich had all the power, even within the Law of the Land, the poor didn’t stand much of a chance and what we call crimes today were rarely reported. The Countess would have grown up with this knowledge, learning from a very age how to torture and even why, by simply watching her relatives. It is also noted that this beautiful young woman was introduced to sex and “Satanism” by her relatives at an early age. I put the words sex and Satanism in the same sentence because of the heinous crimes that Elizabeth was said to have committed. Whilst she stayed within the boundaries of acceptable behaviour, Elizabeth was not noticed. It wasn’t until she overstepped that boundary that this Countess became noticed, even by the church, and eventually by the King, who started the inquiries into her behaviour. So what did Erzsebet Bathory “do” to become noticed?

The Countess became more skilled in torture after she married. Even at the tender young age of fifteen, she was schooled in this art by her husband who even had a torture chamber designed according to what his young bride wanted and the couple tortured together. After he finished his studies, Elizabeth’s husband was often away at war and it seemed to be at this time, and especially after his death, that the Countess started to give free reign to her “Sadistic “desires of torture. It is hard to understand how a woman who became a loving mother could torture and kill young girls, some of whom may have been only a few years older than her own daughters! It was only when she started to torture and kill the daughters of the lesser gentry, young girls who were slightly more important than the poor peasant girls, were the crimes starting to get noticed until King Matthias II ordered an investigation. What was found, if only a quarter of which may be true, is still shocking even to us in this Century. With all of the inter-breeding within the Bathory family, over three hundred years, was this Countess “touched” ----- mad or insane?

We know that Elizabeth had five children between 1585 and 1596, and in 1603 the Countess’s husband died, they had been married for twenty-nine years. The investigation started in 1610.Testimony was collected from more than three hundred witnesses, some of whom were priests, noblemen and personnel of Sarvar Castle. Here are some of the testimonies:

Evidence from a man servant:

He, with a woman, went to look for girls and the girls were promised that they were taken to be merchants or serving-women somewhere. Some of the women gave their own daughters even though it meant the girls deaths. The hands of the girls were tied behind them and they were beaten until their body was opened up. The girls would be pricked with needles or/and burnt with an iron rod, usually on the mouth, nose and lips. The mouth would be pulled apart and this is how some were tortured. Two who were suffering the pains of childbirth were killed. The Mistress (the Countess) herself tore the faces and other parts of the bodies of girls and pricked them under their nails. Some girls she starved for a week. Some were tortured inside the furnace house, some in the privy.

Isn’t this starting to sound like a Penny Dreadful story?

One woman who “assisted” the Countess:

She said that she was forced into assisting with the tortures. Some girls were forced to stand in freezing water and had more cold water poured over them. Often, the Mistress (the Countess) herself would press heated keys on to the girls flesh. One girl had honey smeared onto her naked body and was left for a day and night in the palace grounds to be bitten by ants, wasps, bees and flies. There was so much blood spilt that the Countess had to change her clothes frequently and the walls and floors of her rooms washed down regularly. Another torture was a lighted candle held to a girl’s genitals.

Another woman who was ordered to assist in these tortures:

Five girls died in the space of ten days as a result of torture.

One woman who was courageous enough to refuse in assisting with these tortures was so badly beaten herself that she had to stay in bed for a month to recover.

All those who “assisted” in the tortures agreed on the methods used;

Beatings/piercings/cuttings/burnings/ biting/freezing.

This wasn’t everything though!

The Countess became bolder and dug deep into her evil intentions as the torturing and killings became worse. Now we hear of;

A hot iron being placed into a young girl’s genitals.

Sausages being made out of dead girls flesh.

Some girls were made to sit in scolding water.

Tearing the flesh from the girl’s shoulders and dislocating their arms.

Fantastic as these tortures sound, we must remember that the witnesses themselves were tortured by the investigators in order to “get to the truth”!

Those who were involved in the torturing were swiftly executed whilst the Countess herself was shut up in the castle in Cachtice. Being of such a high noble birth, she couldn’t be tried in a normal court and a relative pleaded for her life, influencing the King not to have her killed. But some retribution had to be laid upon this wicked agent of evilness and Erzsebet Bathory started her imprisonment in 1611, behind the metre and a half of stone in part-furnished rooms which had been designed to hold the roughest of soldiers and certainly not to act as living quarters for such a high born gentlewoman. We do not know what Elizabeth did with herself during this time but we do know that she died three and a half years later in 1614. Silence is what followed this death and no more was heard or written about with regards to the Countess for over a century.

FINALE

An unbelievable story, the type we would find difficult to watch, were it a film of fiction. But Erzsebet Bathory was a real Countess with a real history and there are real documents about her life and about the investigators who looked into the accusations against this high born woman. If only a little of this is true, this beats anything written as fiction in The Penny Dreadful books!

JACK THE RIPPER

The first serial killer we hear of, within the Victorian Era, is Jack the Ripper. This person terrorized Whitechapel, London, for at least six months and left such a mark on history that even today we are horrified by this person’s horrendous and murderous acts. The question has been turned from “who” was Jack the Ripper to “why” did he do such terrible things? Not content to just kill his victims, this human butchered his victims in such a way that it was thought that he could have been a skilled surgeon. To put this in context, this happened at a time when only the studied doctors and skilled surgeons knew the body and where certain parts were within the body. This murderer didn’t just “butcher”, tearing open the body and just taking anything, he knew where to cut and where the body parts were that he wanted to take! This is terrifying even for us today, who have seen some terrible crimes on the local news. We can only imagine the hysteria it must have caused within the Victorian Era!

This now sounds like a Penny Dreadful story, with its horrendous murders and almost supernatural feel. A lot of theories have been mentioned about Jack the Ripper, a popular one being that “he” was a demon as surely no human could so such dreadful acts. The sad thing is that over the years leading up to today, we can actually believe that a human can be responsible for such heinous crimes. The unusual thing about this very true story is that the only thing we actually know about the murderer is from the murders themselves but the evidence we have today does lead us to a man with a name, only now can we have any idea “who” Jack The Ripper was, we can only guess as to “why” he did those heinous crimes.

Jack the Ripper was said to have murdered five women, although it is possible that he may have killed more, it is just that five definitely had his “signature” on them. It seemed that the more he killed the worst became the actual mutilations, finishing with the fifth and most horrific. Beating any Penny Dreadful series and still being talked about over one hundred years later, this person knew he would never get caught, being an extremely clever and possibly sick individual. There’s no doubt that he had a reason behind these horrific murders, ideas of which have filled many modern books. The reality is that Jack the Ripper encouraged the police force to better itself, becoming the amazing piece of work it is today. With DNA testing and science, I do not doubt that if this happened today ----- the murderer would have been caught! But back in the Victorian Era this had never been seen before and the police could only deal with it with the limited knowledge they had, and we have to admire their spirit back then as they really wanted to stop these heinous crimes.

To set the backdrop against these murders, Victorian Britain was an extremely difficult place in which to live, especially for the lower classes and the poor, many of whom just didn’t stand much of a chance. The streets of London looked very different back then, some streets resembling rabbit warrens. You had to know the streets well in order to not get lost or seen, a fact not lost on Jack the Ripper. Immigration into London became a problem, especially with regard to the number of Jews settling which stirred up bitter feelings. There were no Laws with regards to working conditions and wages and the very poor just did what they could to survive. The children didn’t seem to have much innocence, with no education and often no living parents to look after them, they became the hardened society within the poor in London. This is how really bad life was back then:

“When men found it almost impossible to get work, many an East End slum family’s very survival depended on a wife or a daughter prostituting herself on the streets.” (Quoted from Jack the Ripper’s London by Richard Jones)

We can’t imagine this today but that way of life was all the poor Londoners, who lived in the horrific slums, knew back then. I mention prostitution because all five of the murder victims were prostitutes, driven to the trade by poverty and circumstances.

THE FIRST VICTIM MARY ANN NICHOLS

The body was discovered around 3:40am on Friday 31st August, 1888, in Buck’s Row, Whitechapel. The throat was severed by two cuts, and the lower part of the abdomen was partly ripped opened by a deep, jagged wound. Several other incisions on the abdomen were caused by the same knife. Llewellyn, who had joined the police officers who were at the murder scene, at 4am and examined the body and because the legs were still warm, in Llewellyn’s opinion, Mary had not been dead for more than half an hour. The murderer worked and disappeared extremely fast! One of the last sightings of this unfortunate woman was at 2.30am and within the next hour Mary met her killer and took him into the dark gateway in Buck’s Row where she was killed. Mary was a prostitute.

Mary Ann Nichols (1845-1888) was 43 years of age at the time of her death. She had been married and had five children but because of her excessive drinking, the couple separated and her estranged husband kept the children. He would send an allowance of five shillings a week to Mary but stopped when he found out that she was working as a prostitute. After he had viewed her body at the mortuary, Mary’s estranged husband said: “It has come to a sad end at last.”

A normal woman who fell into drink and lost her marriage and the security this can bring, as a result Mary became a prostitute and met her death --- a sad end indeed!

THE SECOND VICTIM ANNIE CHAPMAN

The body was discovered at around 6am on Saturday 8th September, 1888. The throat was severed by two cuts, the abdomen was slashed entirely open, and it was discovered the uterus had been removed and the intestines had been lifted from the body and placed by one of the shoulders. The police surgeon Dr.Phillips suggested that the murderer possessed some anatomical knowledge because of the speed in which he performed the murder. Annie had been seen alive at 5.30am and her body found at 6am!

Annie Chapman (1841-1888) married and had three children, one of whom died young, one was put into an institution for the disabled. Again like Mary, Annie fell into excessive drinking and the couple separated, her estranged husband sending her an allowance of ten shillings a week up until his death in 1886. After this, Annie supported herself by selling crotchet and artificial flowers, topping up her income with prostitution. Another victim who fell into this degrading life which meant her death.

THE THIRD AND FOURTH VICTIMS

ELIZABETH STRIDE

CATHERINE EDDOWES

Both these women were murdered in the early morning of Sunday 30th September, 1888.

Elizabeth was discovered dead at around 1am in Dutfield’s Yard in Whitechapel. One clear-cut incision has severed the main artery on the left side of the neck, there were no other mutilations. It is believed the killer had been interrupted!

Catherine’s body was discovered 45 minutes after Elizabeth’s, in Mitre Square in the City of London. The throat was severed and the abdomen was ripped open. The left kidney and the major part of the uterus had been removed.

These two murders were called “the double event.”

Again, both Elizabeth and Catherine had married and because of excessive drinking again, lost their security within marriage with both turning to prostitution, which eventually led to their horrific deaths.

This is now sounding worse than any Penny Dreadful series, the fact that this serial killer was actually a real person making the “story” (so far) terrifying!

THE FIFTH VICTIM! THE LAST VICTIM?

MARY JANE KELLY

Mary Jane Kelly (1863-1888) was the youngest known victim of Jack the Ripper being 25 years old when she met her death. She married in around 1879 but her husband died in a mining accident roughly three years later. Mary was now on her own and worked, like so many other women of the time, as a prostitute, which eventually led to her death. What a horrible death too!

Mary was found dead, in her room, at 10.45am, 9th November, 1888. Dr.Phillips, along with qualified Dr.Bond, suggested that the extensive mutilations would have taken two hours to perform, the killer feeling he had more time as he was inside Mary’s room, undisturbed. Rigor Mortis set in as they were examining the body, indicating that death occurred between 2am and 8am. Dr, Bond’s notes read:

“The body was lying naked in the middle of the bed, the shoulders flat but the axis of the body at inclined to the left side of the bed. The head was turned on the left cheek. ----- The elbow was bent, the forearm supine with the fingers clenched. The legs were wide apart, the left thigh at right angles to the trunk and the right forming an obtuse angle with the pubis. The whole of the surface of the abdomen and thighs was removed and the abdominal cavity emptied of its viscera. The breasts were cut off, the arms mutilated by several jagged wounds and the face hacked beyond recognition of the features. The tissues of the neck were severed all round down to the bone. The viscera was found in various parts viz (as follows): the uterus and kidneys with one breast under the head, the other breast by the right foot, the liver between the feet, the intestines by the right side and the spleen by the left side of the body ----- The face was gashed in all directions, the nose, cheeks, eyebrows, and ears were partly removed.”

The report goes on to tell us that the heart was removed and taken, the only part of the body to be taken.

Mary was mutilated beyond recognition!

FINALE

Jack The Ripper is an apt name for this serial killer, ripping his victims apart and taking parts of the bodies. Was he a sick unbalanced individual? Was this ritual sacrifice? What was the reason that all five victims were prostitutes? Answers we may possibly never find as we can only “guess” as to why this happened over one hundred years ago. With DNA testing and the advanced technology the police use today, it had been suggested that a man, Aaron Kosminski, was possibly Jack The Ripper, and the book “Naming Jack The Ripper” by Russell Edwards gives the evidence to support this.

This is one real life story that really beats any Penny Dreadful series!

THE FINAL CHAPTER

With Erzsebet Bathory and Jack the Ripper we see two notorious, prolific and heinous murderers. They lived centuries apart and yet both affected history, making their blood-stained marks within our history books. The truth of these events are stranger than any fiction written and it is terrifying to know these events actually happened.

A Penny Dreadful?

These true life stories read worse than any Penny Dreadful series written!

THE END