The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends

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"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"-- 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