Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 288 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 288: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Analysis: Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil This is a page of running prose from a Victorian penny dreadful serial titled "Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil" (page 270). The text depicts a tense scene in Barbados where Tom, identified as a white American, confronts colonial authorities by baring his back and daring them to whip him, while local officials debate jurisdiction over what appears to be a mixed-race individual. A doctor is summoned, arriving with dry humor about the heat. The dialogue employs heavy dialect and period-specific racist language reflecting the colonial Caribbean setting and the sensation fiction genre's sensationalism.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
270 Tom ANDERSON, DarE-DEVIL “Are you white?” “A white man, and an American.” Three or four spectators, who had come downstairs with him, stood looking on, — men who represented money and place in Barbados. “Howner’s horders, please Your Ludship,” and the “whipping-boss” held out Higgins’s scrawl. “Jailer’ll tell yer so, sir. “E’s *Iggins’s ’arf-breed. american. ’Eered *Iggins say as ‘ow ’e was a mulatto from the Rebel Plantations, Your Ludship.”’ “Hi would say ’e was a gingercake-colored nigger, Hi would.” Tom plucked off his shirt, and turned his back to the eyes of more than one member of the Barbados Legisla- tive Assembly. “T dare you to lay a blow on that back!” ‘There were undertoned exclamations. “Please Yer Ludship, horders is horders, and —”’ “Wait a minute, Hodge.” “Has Your Ludship pleases, hof course. Hif Your Lud- ship will be responsible.” “T’ll be entirely responsible.” “Has Yer Ludship knows, Hi can’t hinterfere between a slave and ‘is howner — hif the nigger ’as got a white blotch on ’is bloomin’ back has big has a wormul!”’ “True: but I will.” He pressed a coin in Hodge’s hand. “Go upstairs, Hodge; give my compliments to Dr. Macglashan and tell him I[’ll thank him very much to come down here for a minute.” Not another (audible) word was spoken until the mes- senger came back with a long, gangling Scotchman. Dr. Macglashan — despite a thirty-years fight with bilious- remittent fever in Barbados — still had a spark of humor left in him. “My-dear Marquis, I thocht ye had a case o’ sun- stroke? Naething else should make you call me doun in this oven —”’ CONNIE KOOKS (E(0) m