SHOW NOTES:

(For complete show notes, including art and links, go to pennydread.com/discord and look in the Season 6 feed)

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01:40: HANGED TODAY IN HISTORY (June 2, 1621): Former fishmonger John Rowse came into a small fortune, which he squandered so completely that his wife and two young daughters were in danger of being made to beg. He decided that rather than going back to work as a fishmonger to earn a living for his family, he’d solve the problem by murdering them. (Special thanks to executedtoday.com, at which much more about this story can be found)

09:45: SWEENEY TODD, THE BARBER OF FLEET-STREET, Chapters 103-105: Todd returns to his shop all smiles, and Johanna is convinced he has murdered Mrs. Lovett. Meanwhile, over at that worthy’s pie-shop, she has hired a neighbour to watch the place, and put the captive cook off with a bottle of wine and a promise to free him within 24 hours after the 4:00 batch of pies goes up. The cook, after seeing the letter, eyes the pie elevator speculatively, seeming to be hatching a scheme … what’s he got in mind, do you think?

52:15: HORRID BROADSIDE: “The Execution of James Bloomfield Rush.” (April 23, 1849) The crime, trial, and execution of a murderer whose scheme to get title to his landlord’s property by murdering the whole family and blaming the relatives with which they were feuding collapsed when his would-be victims recognized him through his false beard and wig.

GLOSSARY OF EARLY-VICTORIAN SLANG USED IN THIS EPISODE:

• FLY MOTS: Cool chicks.
• MILLERS: Prizefighters.
• KNIGHTS OF THE BLADE: Swaggering companions who are boastful of their prowess and may also claim a military rank — Captain, Major, Colonel — that they don’t really have a right to.
• SNICKER: Large liquor glass.
• OLD TOM: Top-shelf gin.
• PRATE ROAST: A loquacious fellow.
• PINKS OF FASHION: Sharp-dressed men.
• GRAANUM GOLD: Old hoarded money.
• TIP OUR RAGS A GALLOP: Run away as fast as we can.
• GRABS: Law enforcement personnel.
• TOUCH, or PUT THE TOUCH ON: To arrest.
• HELL CATS: Dangerous ladies who frequent the “hells” (gambling dens).
• BLACKLEGS: Professional gamblers who cheat to win.
• SPICE ISLANDERS: Swindlers. A double pun: Mace is a spice; a mace-man is a swindler; so a Spice Islander is, as it were, a resident of Swindle Island.
• SPEELING-CRIB: A “hell” (gambling den).
• COVENT GARDEN: London neighbourhood that was, in the Regency and early Victorian, famous as a place where bloods, bucks and choice spirits went to sport their blunt. Upscale gambling hells and brothels were conveniently close by the Royal Opera and Drury-lane Theatre.

SHOW NOTES — for — EPISODE THREE (Season Six)

(May 24, 2026)

• 00:45: A local legend from HAUNTED ENGLAND: THE PENGUIN BOOK OF GHOSTS: Remember the scene in Black Bess where Dick Turpin and Tom King find the skeletons of the two lovers locked in the vault in the abandoned mansion? Turns out that story was based on a real ghostly legend from the village of Apsley Guise, in Bedfordshire! Dick Turpin himself is involved in the legend and is one of the ghosts said to haunt Woodfield House.
• 05:15: EARLY VICTORIAN GHOSTLY SHORT STORY, to-wit: WAS IT AN ILLUSION?, by AMELIA EDWARDS (1881), Part 1 of 2 parts: A Church of England cleric and inspector of parochial schools named Mr. Frazer travels to a far-distant corner of his “beat” to a town called Pit End. On the road he sees only two people: a limping man who looks right through him as if he weren’t there, and a youth with a fishing pole who seems to appear out of thin air. The cleric arrives in Pit End, and meets the master of the local school … it’s the limping man. He swears he didn’t leave the village the day before, and when the cleric asks about the fishing lad, he’s visibly frightened. — Then a seam opens up, and the lake drains into one of the mines, and reveals something horrible ….
• 31:15: GHOSTLY POETRY, to-wit: THE RISING OF THE DEAD and THE BINDING OF THE LOST, by EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON (1883).
• 36:00: DRACULA, by BRAM STOKER (1897), Chapter 1: We start out reading Jonathan Harker’s journal recounting his trip to the Carpathians to meet Count Dracula, who has invited him thither. It reads like a well-written travelogue as Harker remarks on local costumes and cuisine and complains about the unpunctuality of the trains as he makes his way on them through Austria and Hungary and into Transylvania, and then to Bistritz, the nearest town to Castle Dracula, and on to the castle … but all the local seem terrified for him, and frequently cross themselves. They mutter to each other and he catches words like “Satan” and “hell” and “witch” and “vampire” ….
• 1:12:30: An anecdote from LORD HALIFAX’S GHOST BOOK: Mr. Drury, the clergyman at Chilton Polden in Cornwall, was injured and unable to preach one Easter, so his brother came to town to pinch-hit for him. Upon arriving, he had a vivid dream of his own coming death ….

GLOSSARY OF EARLY-VICTORIAN SLANG USED IN THIS EPISODE:

• COUNT-CARDS: Fine fellows.
• GNOSTICS: Knowing coves, or “wise guys.”
• KNIGHTS OF THE BRUSH AND MOON: Drunken fellows running amok in fields and ditches late at night, trying to stagger home.
• SHERRY OFF: Run away.
• FLATS: Suckers.
• GET FLY TO THE FAKEMENT: Get wise to the swindle.
• MOABITES: Bailiffs.
• PHILISTIES: Also means bailiffs.
• CRAPING COVES: Hangmen.
• YE OLD STONE PITCHER: Newgate Prison.
• PADDINGTON FAIR: Execution day at Tyburn, which is in Paddington Parish. Paddington is also a pun, as “pad” was a flash word for “thief” or “robber.”
• BRUSH OFF: Leave. Note this phrase means something slightly different today.

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SHOW NOTES — for — EPISODE 2 (Season Six)

(May 17, 2026)

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• 01:55: STREET POETRY: From a broadside ballad: “I Shall be Married on Monday Morning,” about a very young milkmaid looking forward eagerly to her wedding night. (1845).
• 04:40: BLACK BESS; or, THE KNIGHT OF THE ROAD (starring HIGHWAYMAN DICK TURPIN), Chapter 71-73: Tying up the sentry, Dick Turpin and Tom King hurry out into the storm — and when they arrive, they see a great light burning at the summit of the highest rock. It’s a decoy lighthouse! The smugglers aren’t just smugglers, they’re ship wreckers! And now a ship has fallen prey to them, decoyed onto the rocks! Scrambling over the dark rocks in the pitch darkness with the storm raging around them, the highwaymen try to get close enough to the wreck to save whoever they can … and avenge whoever they can’t.
• 44:55: INTRODUCING MISS READ: One of the “ladies of the evening” listed and described in Harris’s List of Covent-garden Ladies, a directory for bucks and bloods out on the town in the early 1800s. Miss Read is described as 22 years old, very pretty, with dark eyes and eyebrows and a remarkable enthusiasm for fox-hunting and other sports of the field.
• 48:10: A RATHER NAUGHTY COCK-AND-HEN-CLUB SONG: "The Milk-maid” (about a milkmaid who decides to try her skill upon a local swain. Set to the tune of “Let’s Haste to the Wedding.”)
• 51:00: A FEW MILDLY DIRTY JOKES from what passed in 1830 for a dirty joke book: "The Joke-Cracker" by Martin Merryman, Esq.

GLOSSARY OF EARLY-VICTORIAN SLANG USED IN THIS EPISODE:

• KEN-CRACKERS: (from intro) Housebreakers.
• ANGLING COVES: (ibid) Receiveers of stolen goods.
• KNIGHTS OF THE ROAD: (ibid) Highway robbers.
• CORINTHIAN: (ibid) Sporting man of rank and fashion, most famously represented by Corinthian Tom from Pierce Egan’s “Life in London,” the story of the adventures of a wealthy Regency rake named Tom and his country cousin Jerry as they rampage through the streets of London on a continual spree.
• CYPRIANS: (From the introduction to Hostess Miss XXX) Ladies of easy virtue, a classical reference to the island of Cyprus, supposedly peopled with sexually frisky ladies.
• SPORTING THEIR BLUNT: (ibid) Throwing money around.
• FLICKER: (ibid) Liquor glass.
• JACKY: (ibid) Gin.
• SLUICE YOUR IVORIES: (ibid) Take a big drink.
• MORRIS OFF: (from outro) Run away at top speed.
• BEAKS ON THE NOSE: Police detectives or magistrates on an investigation.
• DIDDLE COVES: Bartender or landlord in a gin palace or dram shop.
• DAFFY DOXIES: Racy ladies who enjoy drinking daffy (gin).
• CAPTAIN LUSHINGTONS: Habitual drunks.
• BOOZING-KEN: Drinking den.
• SMITHFIELD: In the early 1800s a notoriously crowded and dangerous neighborhood in which a very unsanitary open-air livestock market was regularly held until the 1850s.