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 —

0:02:00: TERRIBLE TIDBIT OF THE DAY for August 7:

• A melancholy account of four small children who in 1855 fell in the River Tame, the swift current of which ill-named river swept them mercilessly away. Only three were saved.

0:03:15: THE MARINE SPECTRE (from The Terrific Register):

• Eager to teach his friend the folly of supernatural dread, a man faked his own death so that he could return, wrapped in a bedsheet, and play ghost. What could possibly go wrong?

0:10:10: THE LAST MOMENTS OF JOHN A. SIMPSON, FOR MURDERING HIS SWEETHEART (a broadsheet ballad).

• John Simpson, 21, had gotten his girlfriend, Annie Ratcliffe, pregnant; and the couple had agreed to get married. On her wedding morning, in a public house, John reached into his pocket for a straight razor, and ....

0:16:40: HORRORS OF A GUILTY CONSCIENCE (from the Terrific Register).

• A short account of the experience of Joseph Le Bon in both meting out and receiving what passed for justice during the French Revolution.

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!

GLOSSARY OF FLASH TERMS USED IN THIS EPISODE:

• High gloak: A well-dressed highwayman.
• Arch doxy: High-ranking female canter, gypsy-band leader, or criminal mastermind
• Tears of the tankard: Strong ale.
• Scandal-broth: Tea.
• Cat lap: Another term for tea.
• Scragging: Hanging.
• Kiddies and kiddiesses: Flash lads and lasses
• Sherry off: To leave, in a tolerable hurry. A corruption of "sheer off."
• Flats: Suckers.

• Chaffing: Talking and bantering while taking a glass or two.
• Knight of the brush and moon: Drunken fellow wandering amok in fields and ditches trying to stagger home.