The Wild Boys of London; or, The Children of the Night was anonymously-written, and the identity of the writer has never been confirmed.

The Wild Boys of London begins with an appeal to the reader, asking their sympathy for the difficult lives of the homeless children of London. The penny dreadful then begins telling the story of Joseph Lane, who is an honest workman until he falls into the evil company of Matt the Mongrel, who encourages Joseph to drink. Joseph becomes a drunk, is fired for his drinking, and makes his family miserable. While drunk Joseph tries to beat his ten-year-old son Dick, but Mary Lane, Joseph’s sweet, innocent wife, intercepts the blow meant for Dick. Enraged, Joseph beats Mary, and Matt sneers at Mary’s pleas for help and encourages Joseph. Dick takes a shovel and begins hitting Joseph, who is a coward and flees from his son. Dick goes in search of food for his starving mother and meets his friend Sam “Dolphin” Bateman, a homeless boy who is wise in the ways of the street. Dolphin takes Dick to the headquarters of the Children of the Night, a club of homeless boys who Dolphin is a member of. The headquarters of the Children of the Night is in a ruined building on the Thames; the boys live in the building’s cellar, which can only be reached by swimming under the Thames and through a tunnel of rubble. The Children of the Night, who also call themselves the Wild Boys (“What is a Wild Boy?” “Well, a cove as rambles about the streets and lives as best he can; that’s a Wild Boy”¹), steal and connive to get food, and each contributes their daily winnings to feed the group. Dick enjoys being with the Wild Boys, although they drink beer, which he does not approve of. One of the Wild Boys sees a woman throw herself into the Thames, and the boys swim out and rescue her. She reluctantly allows herself to be saved, and before she says goodbye to the boys she mentions that she is a wealthy (if unhappy) relative of the Queen.

The Wild Boys of London then flashes back and tells the story of Arthur Grattan. He is the son of Lord Wintermerle, but he was stolen from his father as a baby and was raised in obscurity by George Meredith, a schoolmaster. Stephen Grantham, a nephew of Wintermerle, engineered the abduction so that he could kill Wintermerle and gain the Wintermerle estate. But Grantham is a libertine and a scoundrel and treats his wife, Emily Munroe, badly (“the love fit lasted a longer time than it usually does with me; but I had to let her go at last”²). She eventually sickens of his poor treatment of her and tries to drown herself, but she is saved by the Wild Boys. Meanwhile Grantham is being watched and followed by the Night Avengers of the Iron League, a secret society; they eventually confront him and give him a warning to mend his ways. Having abandoned his wife, Joseph Lane takes to crime with Mongrel Matt but is caught during a burglary attempt and is arrested.

Arthur wanders into a park and gets on the bad side of the Wild Boys because of his fancy clothing. They throw mud on him, and he punches one and tries to use his cane on the others. They tackle him, but he is rescued by Frank Moreton, the son of the builder who formerly employed Joseph Lane. Arthur sees that the Wild Boys are homeless and gives them his spare change, which makes them like him. Stephen Grantham meets with the lovely Isabelle, who despises Grantham and loves George Meredith, Arthur’s adoptive father. Grantham then finds Arthur, in the park, and befriends him, telling him about his great destiny. When Arthur returns home he finds George garroted and badly wounded, but not yet dead, and bearing on his forehead an imprint which matches one of Grantham’s rings. Dick goes to work as a crossing sweeper to earn money and then saves the life of Andrew Blake, a detective, during an attack by the murderous Michael Savage. Mary is thrown out of her home for nonpayment of rent. Arthur meets with Grantham, who somehow persuades Arthur that he had nothing to do with the assault on George Meredith. Grantham then has Arthur drugged and orders Michael Savage, Grantham’s flunky, to hold Arthur in isolation. The Wild Boys find Grantham’s wife, Emily Munroe, unconscious in a sewer and take her to their home and feed her. They also find Grantham’s pocketbook with her, and when they see a reward posted for the return of the pocketbook Dolphin brings it to Grantham. Unfortunately, one letter is missing from the pocketbook, and that is the letter which Grantham is most interested in. Grantham leans on Dolphin and frightens him enough to make him tell where the pocketbook was found.

Joseph Lane is released by prison but is unable to find work because of his prison record. He eventually goes to work for Frank Moreton, but through the evil scheme of Mongrel Matt and Michael Savage Lane is fired. Savage then takes Lane drinking and hires him for a burglary, promising him easy money through little effort. But the burglary is of Grantham’s house, and what Matt, Lane, and Savage take away is not a box of valuable gold and silver plate, but a box containing the bloody (but still breathing) body of George Meredith. The police arrest Savage, but Mongrel Matt and Joseph Lane escape. Grantham denies having anything to do with the box or the body inside it and is not charged with anything. A member of the Night Avengers of the Iron League visits Grantham and gives him a second warning. Savage escapes from the police, and Grantham orders him to kill Arthur. The Wild Boys see Mongrel Matt steal a basket of food from two young children, and the Boys hassle Matt until he returns the basket to the children. Arthur tries and fails to escape from the man holding him, but the Dolphin sees the escape attempt, summons the Wild Boys, and leads a rescue. A stranger, Ralph Montreal, prevents Savage from killing Arthur, Ralph takes the unconscious Arthur to Frank Moreton’s home, where Ralph lives. When Arthur wakes up he tells Ralph what he knows, and Ralph goes to confront Grantham. Ralph is an adventurer and man-about-town who already knows a great deal about Grantham and knows that he is responsible for the attempted murders of George Meredith and Lord Wintermerle. Ralph sees Grantham and admits to being a member of the Night Avengers. Ralph tells Grantham that he will soon be punished for his evil deeds. Grantham responds that he is the leader of another secret society, the Companions of the Silver Dagger, and that the Companions are now at war with the Iron League.

In Hyde Park Ralph saves the life of a beautiful noblewoman, Edith, when her horse runs wild. She allows Ralph to escort her home, and they get on well, flirting and bantering, but Grantham appears at Edith’s home, and they quarrel. Grantham has been wooing Edith and intended to make her his mistress, and he is resentful that Ralph, who is not an aristocrat, is presuming to speak with Edith. When Ralph reveals that Grantham is married Edith is appalled and rejects Grantham in favor of Ralph. When Ralph returns to his room he receives a message that George Meredith is being held hostage by the Silver Daggers. Ralph is sure that this is a trap, but follows Grantham anyhow, thinking that he will be able to escape from the trap. Grantham lets Ralph follow him into the lair of the Silver Daggers. Ralph finds Meredith, but Grantham manages to trap the pair in the cellars of the Silver Daggers’ house and tells them that he intends to starve them to death. Dolphin spends some of the money he got from Grantham on new clothes, and then introduces himself to a nice young lady. Dick Lane, who was captured by the police on the night of the burglary of Grantham’s house, is released on Andrew Blake’s orders. The Wild Boys and Blake stop another attempt at kidnapping Andrew Grattan. The Night Avengers defeat the Silver Daggers several times. A child stealer, Mother Wilkins, tries and fails to kidnap Dick Lane. The dreadful ends without any resolution of the plotlines.

The Wild Boys of London is one of the most infamous of the penny dreadfuls. At the time of its publication it was notorious, and when a second edition of the dreadful was published in 1876 the Lord Chamberlain, John Robert Townshend, ordered the suppression of the dreadful before its completion. The reason given for the suppression was “on account of its wide circulation and its effect on its readers.”³ The Wild Boys was widely imitated and inspired a number of other similar dreadfuls, including The Wild Boys of Paris (1866). But the modern reader is unlikely to see what the fuss was about and why The Wild Boys, of all dreadfuls, was singled out. It is far less violent than The Skeleton Crew, far less sexual than Fanny White, and much less amoral than Charley Wag.

The Wild Boys of London is actually a much more conservative penny dreadful than the other controversial dreadfuls. The dreadful’s view of the aristocracy is only slightly more positive than Fanny White’s, but the author of The Wild Boys also portrays New Money in negative terms. The dreadful shows striking workers to be greedy, portrays factory owners as almost entirely benevolent, and portrays the average factory worker as a lazy drunk. Although the dreadful excuses the Wild Boys’ petty thefts on the grounds that they must do so to survive, adults who steal are treated much less kindly, and it is the vicious Michael Savage who makes the argument that stealing from capitalists is no crime. (Such arguments appear in the Colonel Clay mysteries [see: The African Millionaire], but in those stories the hero, not the villain, is the one to make the argument). Jewish moneylenders are portrayed in antisemitic terms, and the conspiratorial secret society, a common motif in 1860s penny dreadfuls (see: The Skeleton Horseman), is compared in a footnote to the Freemasons. The notorious demi-mondaine Catherine Walters (1839-1920), a.k.a. “Anonyma,” a.k.a. “Skittles,” is mentioned but is treated as contemptible. Finally, the author of The Wild Boys makes a point to condemn other penny dreadfuls. Dolphin loves them: “sich rattling tales, too—‘The Black Phantom; or, the White Spectre of Pink Rock.’ It’s fine, it is; somebody’s killed every week, and it’s only a penny.”⁴ But the heroic Dick Lane, the character the reader is clearly meant to identify with, refuses to read a penny dreadful or any highwayman novel and mentions Dick Turpin (see: Rookwood) and Paul Clifford (see: Proto-Mystery) by name.

The Wild Boys is a much less enjoyable read than the more lurid penny dreadfuls. The Wild Boys speak in street slang which becomes an increasing effort to decipher. The plot is overstuffed and full of continuous complications, none of which the author makes any effort to resolve before the interruption of the dreadful. The dreadful’s only bright spots are the illustrations, done by “Phiz,” and the Dolphin, a vivid, Artful Dodger-like cockney rogue. Dolphin has far more life than the dull Dick Lane and Arthur Grattan, and the Dolphin gets the best lines: “Dolphin’s a hard fish to catch.”⁵

¹ Wild Boys of London, volume 1 (London: Newsagents’ Publishing Company, 1866), 93.

² Wild Boys of London, volume 1, 21.

³ Qtd. in New York Times Saturday Review of Books and Art (Jan 29, 1969): 42.

⁴ Wild Boys of London, volume 1, 13.

⁵ Wild Boys of London, volume 1, 36.