Junior Detectives in the story papers and comics

[Lew Stringer]

Aren't we losing our way a bit here?

You're right. We're completely , miles from the Junior Detectives topic. Sorry.

[Raven]

Not to worry. Phoenix will be putting us back on track very soon with dozens of examples of interesting junior kid detective stories he's kindly unearthed.

[philcom55]

I'm surprised nobody in the UK ever tried a strip in the style of the hugely successful 'Emil and the Detectives' (I'm pretty sure I've got an American adaptation of the film that was based on it somewhere). I suppose 'Hue and Cry' from the Childrens' Film Foundation could be included in the same category as well.

- Phil Rushton

[Kashgar]

Surely 'Hue and Cry' was an Ealing film Phil unless you're referring to a later movie altogether.

[Raven]

I'm surprised nobody in the UK ever tried a strip in the style of the hugely successful 'Emil and the Detectives' (I'm pretty sure I've got an American adaptation of the film that was based on it somewhere). I suppose 'Hue and Cry' from the Childrens' Film Foundation could be included in the same category as well.

- Phil Rushton

The American adaptation of Emil and the Detectives is probably the 1964 Disney version, which came out on UK VHS some time back. Hue and Cry was an Ealing film, though, not from the Children's Film Foundation - and, of course, includes clues in a boys' weekly serial paper, to add extra Comics UK-style interest.

[philcom55]

Surely 'Hue and Cry' was an Ealing film Phil unless you're referring to a later movie altogether.

Agghhh!!! That'll teach me to knock off posts when I'm half asleep from just completing a grueling night-shift! Of course you're right - the CFF didn't start up until the 1950s, and they could have only dreamed about making a film as good as Hue and Cry anyway (though as Raven says, its use of a fictional children's paper/comic called 'The Trump' makes it uniquely relevant in this context.).


...Funnily enough I hadn't thought about Hue And Cry for years, but just talking about it here has made me eager to watch it again!

- Phil Rushton

[Kashgar]

Alistair Sim is great as the Trump's answer to Charles Hamilton. Mind you, yet again, the premise of the movie doesn't really fit the parameters of this strand as Harry Fowler and his mates are no more 'junior detectives' than say Lion's schoolboy Sandy Dean was in strips like 'The Museum Mystery'.

[Raven]

I've discovered some new ones in one of the 1947 issues of Comic Cuts I bought today: The Three Mustardeers! (Quite a good pun.) These three young sleuths' adventures are a tie-in with Colman's Mustard, so it's an advert feature. (The Mustardeers' Oath: We will have mustard whenever we can get it. Mustard makes good food taste better. We will have mustard - COLMAN'S MUSTARD.)

Besides eating mustard, they do help the police out, and there's a spot-the-clues chance to answer the question 'How good a detective are you?'

[Raven]

Right, Raven, first come first served. Juvenile sleuths within a fortnight ...

I say, Mr. Phoenix, that was over five of your Earth weeks ago, so should we still be anticipating the posting of your findings, or has life just become too busy right now? If so, not to worry ... though I hope to see if you found anything some time in the future.

(Though I hope you're not withholding your knowledge simply because I suggested that Sheriff Starr's gorilla/elephant deputy combination was better than the separate gorilla and elephant sidekicks of Sawdust Charlie and Bart Masters!)

[Phoenix]

I say, Mr. Phoenix, that was over five of your Earth weeks ago, so should we still be anticipating the posting of your findings, or has life just become too busy right now? If so, not to worry ... though I hope to see if you found anything some time in the future.

I think an apology is in order, Raven. You must remember though that as a Phoenix I am constantly being reborn and therefore the future and the past are shadowy concepts that I have not so far fully grasped. Of course when my findings are posted I am assuming that it will happen in your future.

(Though I hope you're not withholding your knowledge simply because I suggested that Sheriff Starr's gorilla/elephant deputy combination was better than the separate gorilla and elephant sidekicks of Sawdust Charlie and Bart Masters!)

As if!! I am certainly not the kind of person to hold grudges. Can you imagine how damaging that would be to a Phoenix? They would be held in perpetuity!! No, if I disagree with something you say, it's only because you are wrong! Watch this space.

[Phoenix]

In view of the possibility, Raven, that you might think I have missed my Monday deadline, may I point out that up here Wednesday is currently the new Monday. This is simply to give Everton's players, backroom staff and supporters a couple of extra days to recover from and meditate upon the football lesson that was handed out to them last Sunday at the Reebok, and to come up with some sort of strategy to prevent themselves from falling into the abyss currently known, somewhat bizarrely, as the Championship.

It is worth bearing in mind that issue 1 of Adventure had a Dixon Hawke story, and since that time there have been hundreds and hundreds of detective serials and completes in The Big Five. In many instances young people have been doing detective work of various sorts but pure schoolboy detectives are thin on the ground. In order to answer your question fairly I am ignoring all serials, such as those involving The Stormy Orphans in The Wizard for example, which started in 1926, because only some of the episodes involved detective work per se. I don't have every pre-war issue of The Big Five but I don't have any gap big enough to house any kind of serial, detective or otherwise, so I think I can safely say that there are only three.

1.The Battersea Bustlers : Adventure 110 (Oct. 20 1923) - 123 (Jan. 19 1924)
Seven boys, varying in age from 11 to 14, use a cellar in an empty house in a narrow street off Battersea Park Road as the headquarters of their group or gang. The president, Ted Green (13), is not a Londoner, indeed he addresses the gang's meetings rather like a trade union boss from Lancashire or Yorkshire. The boys are Brother Burrows, Brother Grimes etc. Everyone wears a mask during the meetings, which have a formal flavour. The routine has the boys stand up, when so instructed by Ted, and respond to the question, Brothers, who are we? with We are the Battersea Bustlers, and to Wot is our motto? with We-never-sleep. Then anybody who has an issue to raise can do so but only when called upon. Sometimes potential new members are presented at this point and they have to swear allegiance to the gang and agree to abide by its rules and aims, all of which involve keeping their eyes open for potential criminals, whose activities they eagerly set out to undermine, at the same time as they need eyes in the back of their head in case they get waylaid by the Kynaston Street gang. Ted has invented a mythical chief who nominally rules over the whole society, but by the end of the first adventure they have a real protector in Sir Hector Grierson, who arranges for the boys to have a more amenable room for their meetings, and even funds some of their detective work. The way Ted organises the gang is the key to their successes, along with a certain amount of luck to be fair. He has a sixth sense where mysteries are concerned. He is scrupulously honest but is brave and resourceful, and quite willing to mix it if necessary during his single-minded quests to round up the assortment of jewel thieves, fences, kidnappers and murderous thugs that are hardly ever aware that they are a challenge to Ted's sharp mind and his ability to see patterns and then decide quickly on an appropriate plan of action. Ted uses the club members as foot soldiers, a role for which they are incredibly useful, especially shadowing suspects. Ted often gets them to work in pairs so that one can keep watch on a suspect when he has clearly reached his destination while the other boy hotfoots it back to Ted or some other member so that somehow Ted can cover as many of the possible eventualities that he can see at any one time. All the stories are completes.

2. The Battersea Wemblers : Adventure 201 (Jul. 18 1925) - 207 (Aug. 29 1925)
More of the same, although Sir Hector only appears once, in court to get an innocent Ted off a criminal charge. It has to be said that Brother Piper was an able deputy when he stepped up to the plate in Ted's absence, and so the boys solved yet another mystery. All the episodes are based at the British Empire Exhibition, which took place in 1924/25 and was centred upon the relatively newly-built Wembley Stadium, hence the title. The stories were interesting enough and, curiously, one of them involved helping a girl, a rather ungrateful, hoity-toity 12-year old. One good idea straddled two episodes as Joe Biles of the Kynaston Street gang temporarily persuaded Ted and the boys that he genuinely wanted to change allegiance. He was even given the club passwords. He actually lasted three months but when it was clear that he was a fifth columnist he was tried, found guilty and a sound thrashing was administered as a warning to anybody else with the same treacherous ideas.

3. Doodle McFee -The Schoolboy Detective : The Rover 441 (Sep. 27 1930) - 455 (Jan. 3 1931)
This is a humorous series, not laugh-out-loud exactly, but very satisfying. A notice hangs on the door of Study 3 of the Upper Fourth at St. Swithin's School. It reads, Doodle McFee, Private Detective. Are you being blackmailed? Is a prison cell staring you in the face? Have you lost anything? If so, then consult Doodle McFee. Terms moderate. The scale of charges includes Blackmail 3d : Forgery and Arson 2d : Recovering Lost Property 1d to 6d : Assassination of Headmaster 1s 6d : Other Masters 1s. Clearly we are dealing here with a very different level of criminality. Doodle's special friends, Nudger Bean and Stodge Bickley were just as likely as anybody else to need Doodle's intelligence and expertise to get them out of trouble. Doodle seems to be allowed to dress just one step up from a tramp, and one possible reason for this is that all the teachers acknowledge Doodle's preeminence and several require it and have to pay for it....through the nose, as Doodle knows which side his bread is buttered on and certainly knows his worth. That is not to say that his brain is never challenged, just that he does always solve the mystery. Mr Yapley has to pay him a shilling when Doodle discovers that the teacher's jacket with a valuable cigarette lighter in the pocket had not after all been stolen by the accused tramp, 'Appy Ted. When the Headmaster's parrot disappears, Stodge admits to the sleuth of St. Swithin's that he has taken it and hidden it with a view to getting Third Form master, Mr Dyer into trouble. The latter has been heard by many pupils screaming at the parrot and wishing it dead. Doodle immediately adds Recovering lost animals and birds 5s to his price list. Things do not progress smoothly though as the bird disappears from the locked room where Stodge has left it. Doodle now needs to earn his money. Eventually suspicion falls on the porter, who is finally forced by Doodle to pay 5s into the local hospital collecting box the following Saturday if he doesn't want his evil deed inquired into by the Headmaster. The sleuth then pops down to see Mr Dyer and presents him with a bill for 5s for recovering lost parrot and punishing culprit. There are even tears of joy in Mr Dyer's eyes as he parts with the cash.

[felneymike]

Well yeah but a Wednesday about 6 months later?

I've probably already mentioned Nelson Lee back in the past. Of course he had his "boy assistant" Nipper, as Sexton Blake did Tinker (though I get the impression Nipper was about 14 and Tinker was around 19 as he regularly drove cars, flew aeroplanes etc). But for most of his history Nelson Lee was also a teacher and often the other boys at his school would take an (often accidental!) hand in cases, and perhaps even find the vital clue!

"Our Ernie" was also once mistaken for Sexton Blake, and solved a case clumsily. The strip appears in the 80's "The Sexton Blake Detective Library" collection, which also contains the first four issues of that publication and a 'straight' strip.

[Raven]

Thanks for reaching back through the smaze of time to give us those three, Phoenix - the first I'd heard of any of them, I think. Did any of these stories get front covers?

Doodle McFee sounds the best - I like the names: Doodle, Nudger Bean, Stodge Bickley; it sounds like the (presumably anonymous) writer had a bit of flair. And "Assassination of Headmaster 1s 6d : Other Masters 1s." is nice. So obscure: the only mention on the internet of "Doodle McFee" is for someone who has a MySpace page in that name.

The Battersea Wemblers sounds historically interesting.

Maybe I'll come across some of these one day.

So do you mean there are only those three in the pre-war story papers, or the whole of D C Thomsondom? Will you be revealing more from the later papers and comics?

[paw broon]

Sorry in advance if these have been mentioned previously but I spent a fair bit of time raking through boxes to find them and wanted to to do something with the results. The Schoolboy Detectives is the title of #22 of the Nugget Library (pre 1920's ) But as has been pointed out about other school stories, these are only schoolboys, in a school, not in a detective's office, detecting.
Then there is Bullet , young assistant of "that remarkable detective", Norman Steele. Yet another version of Tinker. I'm looking at, "No Escape", Newnes Adventure Library #79 No date.
Jack Nugget was the assistant of Peter Flint in the stories in the Nugget Library around 1st. W.W.
And the great Dixon Brett's assistant was Pat Malone in the Diamond Library and Aldine Thrillers (both AldinePublishing Co.). He also had another assistant called Slook but I'm sure this one wasn't a "youth".
Tubby Haig had a young assistant with "the sharpest eyes in the world" called Rags and they appeared in Bulldog Library published by Newnes.
And, of course, Ferrers Locke's assistant was Jack Drake, who did a bit of detecting, from Lockes's office, before ending up in public school.
Finally, Falcon Swift, whose adventures appeared in the Boys' Magazine in the 20's, had a young assistant called Chick Conway.
None of these are detectives in their own right but they do detectivy things. It was fun digging them out.

[Raven]

Thanks for those, paw - maybe most of those do fit more into the 'kid sidekick' category - like Dick Tracy's little helper Junior - than the 'kid sleuth for hire' category, but still interesting to hear of. The Schoolboy Detectives sounds like it could be a proper example of the genre, though. Pre-1920s? The first British detective branch was started in 1842, so I wonder when the first ever manifestation of young detectives in the papers was.

If you can add more details to the above examples: any synopses or particularly good or interesting adventures to look out for, for example, please do.

There's a whole world of lost, forgotten stuff out there, isn't there? Very little - or no -info on the internet about most of it. But take something like the Tubby Haig/Bulldog Library stories - are they interesting enough to seek out or just an antiquated curiosity now; well written or hack work?

Oh, and colcool007, did you finish reading the Sandy's Secret War serial?