The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends

Simon Young

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781496839473
• eBook ISBN: 9781496839442
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Modern British History
• Index: Social Sciences

Winner of the 2023 Brian McConnell Book Award from the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research In the last fifty years, folklorists have amassed an extraordinary corpus of contemporary legends including the "Choking Doberman, " the "Eaten Ticket, " and the "Vanishing Hitchhiker." But what about the urban legends of the past? These legends and tales have rarely been collected, and when they occasionally appear, they do so as ancestors or precursors of the urban legends of today, rather than as stories in their own right. In The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends, Simon Young fills this gap for British folklore (and for the wider English-speaking world) of the 1800s. Young introduces seventy Victorian urban legends ranging from "Beetle Eyes" to the "Shoplifter's Dilemma" and from "Hands in the Muff" to the "Suicide Club." While a handful of these stories are already known, the vast majority have never been identified, and they have certainly never received scholarly treatment. Young begins the volume with a lengthy introduction assessing nineteenth-century media, emphasizing the importance of the written word to the perpetuation and preservation of these myths. He draws on numerous nineteenth-century books, periodicals, and ephemera, including digitized newspaper archives—particularly the British Newspaper Archive, an exciting new hunting ground for folklorists. The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends will appeal to an academic audience as well as to anyone who is interested in urban legends.

Table of contents

• Cover
• The NAIL in the SKULL and Other VICTORIAN URBAN LEGENDS
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The Baby Picnic
• 2. Beetle Eyes
• 3. The Bosom Serpent
• 4. Buried Alive
• 5. The Cautious Druggist
• 6. Child Pie
• 7. The Chimney Boy
• 8. Chloroformed!
• 9. Covert Catholics
• 10. Cycling Afflictions
• 11. Death Dice
• 12. Devil Take Me!
• 13. Do You Know Her?
• 14. Downie’s Slaughter
• 15. Dressing the Workhouse Corpse
• 16. Drugged on a Train
• 17. The Eagle and the Baby
• 18. Egg Ring
• 19. Familiar Enemies
• 20. Fish Ring
• 21. The Galvanic Convict
• 22. The Ghost in Search of Help
• 23. Ghost Wager
• 24. Ghostly Donation
• 25. Hands in the Muff
• 26. Harem Prisoner
• 27. Hero Survives
• 28. Hollow Tree Death
• 29. Human Sausages
• 30. I Lost the Ring Here
• 31. I’m Jack the Ripper!
• 32. Immured Lovers
• 33. The Injured Garotter
• 34. Jolting the Coffin
• 35. The Judge and the Foreman
• 36. The Lady and the Ring
• 37. The Lawyer and the Poisoned Cakes
• 38. The Long Pack
• 39. Message in a Hat
• 40. A Million Postage Stamps
• 41. The Mistletoe Bride
• 42. A Modern Jonah!
• 43. Nail in the Coffin
• 44. The Nail in the Skull
• 45. The Omnibus Driver’s Holiday
• 46. One Little Piggy
• 47. Paying for His Burial
• 48. The Pickpocket’s Ring
• 49. Poison Duel
• 50. Prayers and the Thief
• 51. The Red Hand!
• 52. The Returned Watch
• 53. Selling Sovereigns
• 54. Sewer Monsters
• 55. She’s My Daughter?
• 56. Shooting at a Ghost
• 57. The Shoplifter’s Dilemma
• 58. The Skeletons That Eloped
• 59. The Spanish Prisoner
• 60. The Suicide Club
• 61. Swallowed Up
• 62. The Tell-Tale Eye
• 63. Tick Tock
• 64. There’s Gold in Those Sewers
• 65. Tunnel Kissing
• 66. The Vanishing Lady
• 67. Watch the Clock
• 68. Wild Thing
• 69. The Wrong Bed
• 70. The Wrong Trousers
• Notes
• Bibliography
• About the Author