TRIGGER WARNING: This is a Ha'penny Horrid 'Hursday episode. "Horrid" as in "horror." Thursday is the day we do all the grimdark, grisly, horrifying stories. If murders, war crimes, parricides, and other awful stuff are not something you are interested in hearing about, even 200 years later — feel free to skip this episode and circle back this coming Sunday for the regular Penny Dreadful Variety Hour, when this podcast will be back to being a bright, sunny romp through Penny Dreadful stories!

A half-hour- long 'Hursday Horrid Minisode IN WHICH —

0:03:00: TERRIBLE TIDBIT OF THE DAY for July 31:

• An account of two dreadful suicides, one highly suspicious, recounted in Household Words Magazine in 1850 and 1853 respectively, penned by editor Charles Dickens;

0:05:30: HORRIBLE MURDER OF A CHILD BY STARVATION (from The Terrific Register):

• The horrific story of Sarah and Sallie Metyard, mother and daughter, two mitten-knitters whose abuse of their apprentices crossed into murder one day in 1762. One of their victims, Anne Nayler, is rumored to haunt Farringdon Station, which was later built on the gulley-hole in which her body was dumped, to this day.

0:17:00: THE HARTLEPOOL TRAGEDY (a broadsheet ballad).

• In June of 1727, a merchant named William Stephenson murdered his pregnant mistress by hurling her off the moor and into the sea. He was caught and hanged the following month. This broadsheet ballad, printed in the early 1800s and sold on the streets by criers, tells her story in prose and verse.

PLUS —

• A few allegedly-funny "dad jokes" from Joe Miller's Jests, to lighten the mood a little.

Join host Finn J.D. John. for a half-hour-long spree through the darkest and loathliest stories seen on the streets of early-Victorian London! Grab a flicker of blue ruin, switch off your mirror neurons, and let's go!