Join host CORINTHIAN FINN (a.k.a. Finn J.D. John 18th Baron Dunwitch*), for a one-hour-long spree through the scandal-sheets and story papers of early-Victorian London!

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For COMPLETE SHOW NOTES, including art and links to resources, see ⁠⁠pennydread.com/discord.⁠⁠

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IN TODAY'S "TWOPENNY TORRIDS" EPISODE:

• 01:45: STREET POETRY: From an 1840s broadside ballad: “Please Your Wife” and “Making Love by Moonlight.”
• 06:10: BLACK BESS; or, THE KNIGHT OF THE ROAD (starring HIGHWAYMAN DICK TURPIN), Chapter 75-79: The highwaymen, as they approach Durley Chine, are unaware that there’s still a hyperactive manhunt on for both of them, and that was what the dragoons were up to. Luckily, as they approach Durley Chine, it’s gotten dark, and they observe a dozen or so men with lanterns spreading out around the gates of Durley Chine. King puts the pieces together and realizes the highwaymen are the subject of an intensive manhunt. They’re guarding Durley Chine to nab them when they try to break out, if they’re hiding inside. But Black Bess is in the park! How are they going to get her out? Will they escape capture by the soldiers?
• 44:45: INTRODUCING OUR HOSTESS: MISS LITTLETON, of No. 3 Salisbury-street, Strand. 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. “A fine plump girl,” the anonymous author writes, “with dark hair, large eyes, and dark eye-brows.”
• 48:00: A RATHER NAUGHTY COCK-AND-HEN-CLUB SONG: "The Frenchman,” a frisky song about a traveling Frenchman who, inquiring with a heavy French accent about his lost “snuff-pox,” everyone thinks he is asking them if they have The Pox.
• 50:30: 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:

• DRAW-LATCHES: (from intro) House burglars.
• DIMBER MOTS: (ibid) Pretty girls.
• GRAVEL-TAX COLLECTORS: (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.
• BLOODS, PINKS, BUCKS: (ibid) High-spirited young rich men of what today we’d call college age.
• SPORTING THEIR BLUNT: (ibid) Throwing money around.
• BUMPER: (ibid) Liquor glass.
• BINGO: (ibid) Hard liquor, usually gin.
• SLUICE YOUR IVORIES: (ibid) Take a big drink.
• THE POX: (from cock-and-hen-club song, “The Frenchman”) Syphilis; or, in a heavy French accent, a box.
• 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.

* The Barony of Dunwich is located in a deep forest glade west of Arkham (where, as H.P. Lovecraft put it, “the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut; there are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight.”) Actually it is a good 3,000 miles west of Arkham. It is not to be confused with Dunwich, the English seacoast town that fell house by house into the sea centuries ago, or Dunsany, the home until 1957 of legendary fantasy author Edward J.M.D. Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany.