Iron-Fanged Fiend Leads to Change in Publication Laws

September 23, 1954 and it had been a wet and dismal start to autumn for the children of Gorbals, Glasgow.

The leaves were falling from the trees and the nights were getting longer. All they had to look forward to was Halloween which was still a month away.

However, something happened that day that sparked off a hunt for a terrifying foe and brought hundreds of children from their homes.

Rumours spread that a seven-foot vampire, complete with iron fangs, had pounced on and eaten two young boys from the area. Now it was out prowling for more warm bodies and no-one was safe.

Well, the Glasgow weans (children) weren’t about to let that happen again. Armed with crosses, knives, sticks and dogs, a crowd of them converged at the nearby Southern Necropolis graveyard to bring the fiend down.

As a thick fog rolled over the burial ground, cries went up that the vampire had been seen. The children rushed from grave to grave, but to no avail. The Gorbals Vampire had vanished.

It started to rain and was getting dark, so the disappointed youngsters took themselves home. But they weren’t ready to give up yet. They returned to the Southern Necropolis the following night and the night after that, always on the look-out for the devilish beast.

Eventually the children grew bored and gave up, but, by that time, the story had caught the imagination of the local press and questions were asked as to what had caused such hysteria.

A culprit was soon found in the shape of American horror comics which were blamed for sparking the imaginations of the youngsters. One comic, the 1953 issue of Dark Mysteries, was found to have included a story called The Vampire with the Iron Teeth.

This led to a public campaign being set up by a coalition of teachers, Christians and communists (who were desperate to limit the influence of the American culture) to ban the comics. Local MP Alice Cullen agreed and led a debate in the House of Commons on the subject.

She said: “I think there’s one way of dealing with it – and that’s for parents to stop these comics coming into the hands of their children. I’d keep the children at home for a couple of nights and tell them: ‘It’s a lot of hooey.’”

The following year, in response to the campaign, the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act came into being, which banned the sale of ‘repulsive or horrible’ books, comics and other reading matter to children.

It is still law in the UK today.

But, were comics really to blame? Well, if you were around in Glasgow in the 1950s you would know American comics were hard to come by and few homes had television. However, children did attend local cinemas to watch a variety of different features and films.

What could have been the cause was the children’s own imagination? Local kids, having no other area in which to play, would meet up at the Southern Necropolis for various games. The graveyard, which is still there today and houses the grave of tea merchant Sir Thomas Lipton, was next to the former Dixon Blazes ironworks. The foundry fires would flare causing shadows in the nearby burial ground and smoke belched from its chimneys.

The children were also the product of their upbringing having heard the many ghoulish and scary stories from Scottish folk tales, including that of Jenny Wi’ the Iron Teeth who supposedly haunted Glasgow Green. In fact, they weren’t the first Glaswegian youngsters to have gone out monster hunting. In the 1870s, children from the Cowcaddens area of the city hunted hobgoblins and there had been various other hunts for banshees, ghosts and mad men too.

The phenomenon wasn’t even restricted to Glasgow. In Liverpool in 1964, youngsters went out hunting for leprechauns and there have been other mythological creatures associated with London (Spring Heeled Jack), Manchester (a Mummy), Cardiff (a giant) and Cumbria (the Vampire of Croglin Grange).

So, what about Gorbals today? Well, many people who were youngsters at that time still live in the area and their brave vampire hunt was immortalised by playwright Johnny McKnight in his 2016 play The Gorbals Vampire. The play was staged at the nearby Citizen’s Theatre and included many locals in its cast. Ironically, at the same time, local schools were invited to create a horror comic and design a mural depicting the vampire.

And that mural is displayed in the Gorbals today.

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