 | |
| Glasgow necropolis |
In 1954, PC Alex Deeprose was called
out to the Southern Necropolis in Glasgow. He was expecting it to be
vandalism. What he found instead was going to cause a worldwide moral
panic and the introduction of new censorship laws in Britain.
He found the bizarre sight of hundreds
of children, some as young as four and others as old as 14, armed
with knives and sticks. They were patrolling the graveyard. For
seven-foot tall vampires.
I'm exaggerating. They were looking
for a seven-foot tall vampire. According to the children, he had
iron teeth and had kidnapped and eaten two local boys.
This legend had grown, and been given
a name. The Gorbals vampire, it was called. Some of the parents of
the children had been unnerved by the urban myth, and were actively
seeking reassurances from the police that it was bogus.
So, the authorities reassured. A local
headmaster, at a time when the authority of a school headmaster
carried some weight in the community, stated in the local paper that there was nothing to the rumour. The police were adamant that no children
had been reported missing, never mind any mysterious deaths were the
victim had two bite marks on the neck and no blood left in the body –
if that had happened, PC Alex Deeprose wouldn't have gone out to
check for vandals that night, the entire Glasgow police force would
be doing double shifts, and the papers would have been carrying
public warnings.
However, the children weren't so
easily assured. The following night, this army of Buffy the vampire
slayers was out again on patrol. Then the following night.
In the 1950s, there was less sources
of information to your average person. This rumour was spread by
Chinese whispers essentially, and given a boost by its coverage in
the papers. Which is understandable. It can either be interpreted by
the reader as collective hysteria (in the old-fashioned medical
understanding of the word), or it can push fear buttons in the psyche
that maybe there is a vampire somewhere. For a newspaper, then and
indeed now, it would be too good a story to pass up.
 | |
| Was he in Glasgow in the 50s? No. |
Of course, most parents could see it
for what it was – a story that got out of control. Humans are
social animals, and we are born with the instinct to follow the crowd
no matter how mad the purpose of the crowd is. As a person grows into
an adult they usually learn to have a degree of independence, to
break away from the comfort of letting the crowd make the decisions
for you, but a child hasn't made that difficult journey yet. To say
no to your peers on this matter would require a high degree of
scepticism, to point out the multitude of flaws in the story, and to
do something that for a time at least seperates you from the crowd.
This can be very dangerous when you're a child, it could easily get
you bullied. So, just better to go along with the whole thing.
Needless to say, no vampires were
found. So, where did it come from?
There was a lot of
debate. In the bible, Daniel 7.7, talked about a monster with iron
teeth. There was also a poem taught in Glasgow schools at the time
about a monster with iron teeth.
Except, to the adults of 1950s
Glasgow, this couldn't be right. Those things had been around for
ages, and hadn't made them go hunting for vampires when they were kids. So what else
could it be?
Comic books. They were new, filled
with disturbing violence and horror, and they were foreign –
American youth culture was radically displacing British youth culture
at this time, a new sensation to the 1950s.
They were new, so new that most
parents had never read them. When parents looked at them, there would
have been a sense of alienation, of a disconnect from youth culture.
Comic books were so unlike the Beano or the Dandy, the exciting new
comics of their generation. So not only did these comic books ever so
slightly make parents feel their age, but also because they had not
immersed themselves in American comic book culture at all there was
no sophisticated understanding of the medium.
There was also a strong sense of
anti-Americanism in Britain at the time. America had been allies in
the second world war, but unlike the rest of Europe we had received
an interest-based loan to reconstruct with. Not only that, but it was
clear that Britain was on the decline and America and the USSR were
ascendent. Of course, kids were mainly oblivious to this and they
loved American pop culture. To the generation of parents back then,
however, this jarred with their sensibilities. There was almost a
crusade against the corrupting influence of American culture, and the
Gorbals vampire was the perfect scapegoat for these crusaders.
Of course, some eggheads always want
to ruin a good prejudice. Academics who had studied the things
pointed out that there was no mention of a creature matching the
descriptions of the Gorbal vampire, in any of the comic books available at the time (Which was a lot more limited than it is today). They also pointed out the bible reference, and the poem
reference, two sources that the children will almost certainly have
encountered. There was also that parents would sometimes threaten
their children with "the iron man" (the Boogeyman, in other
words) if they didn't do what they were told.
Something else that should have been
remembered is that the Necropolis contains a quarter of a million
dead people. Noise and light from the nearby ironworks at the time
cast mysterious shadows everywhere. If you live anywhere near
somewhere like that as a kid, it's going to spook you out. Children
create ghost stories all the time, so you would expect those kids to
invent a supernatural narrative that involves the graveyard in some
way.
However, reason didn't stop..well, anyone. To
blame the bible and a poem in a school-book, and geographic location,
would have felt wrong. No-one even thought yet to criticise tv - the
media hysteria over the corrupting influence of television was a
decade away, to describe 1950s British tv as toothless doesn't do the
word justice, and most of these kids wouldn't have had a television
set anyway.
The media started calling for, and it
was adopted by the political classes, young minds to stop being
"polluted" by the "terrifying and corrupt" comic
books. Censorship.
This led to the Children and Young
Persons (Harmful Publications) Act 1955 which, for the first time,
specifically banned the sale of magazines and comics portraying
"incidents of a repulsive or horrible nature" to minors.
Remember, despite the even-handed language, this was created to stop comic books. Given that this was the 50s, people were a bit more delicate.
So, comic books with titles like Tales from the Crypt and The Vault
of Horror, with the 50s schlock images that were only a couple of
steps up from a penny dreadful, were now banned (in America, something similar had been going on with congressional hearings on the matter, causing a clampdown on the industry).
In Britain, there were no actual prosecutions for
the act in that decade, or indeed until 1970. Cases were brought, but
the Attorney general refused the majority of them.
So has anything changed since then? I
would argue that they haven't. Across time, the
parental generation panics when a new medium appears that children
collectively enjoy. In the 50s, comic books. In the 60s, television
and pop music that wasn't polite to its elders. This goes back as far
as mankind: in ancient Greece, Greek plays were denounced for the
effect they were having on the young.
Looking back, these scares are
ridiculous. Most parents today would be glad if their child studied
ancient Greek plays, or listened to the pop music from their youth.
And yet, we do have similar scares today. Video games are routinely
denounced for their corrupting influence, in spite of the fact that
as video game violence has been increasing violent crime overall has
been decreasing. But video game culture is constantly renewing
itself, lots of kids (and adults, it should be pointed out) play
them, game culture is a culture that can't be viewed from the
outside, so there is plenty of scope for parents to feel alienated.
So, things haven't changed. But then,
they never will. Children will always have their own culture, and
that will always worry their parents.
