Thomas Burke: 1886 - 1945

[dem bones]

As things stand we still have five years to go until Thomas Burke becomes Wordsworth do-able. i've not looked into this too deeply, but on the face of it Night Pieces: Eighteen Tales (Constable, 1935) is the likeliest candidate of the collections published during his lifetime although there has since been the obligatory Ash Tree collection at Ash Tree prices, The Golden Gong & Other Night-Pieces & Unpleasantries (2001), extended to include the bulk of his macabre and supernatural work and introduced by Jessica Amanda Salmonson's winningly titled The Tenderly Sadistic Vision of Thomas Burke. For the most part Burke's stories are famously set in East London's docklands, often among the Chinese communities of Limehouse and Poplar. He paints a very bleak, squalid picture of the city's rotting underbelly, "the sink of London, the last refuge of European vagrants", teeming with the impoverished, the violent, the criminal and hopelessly lost, where the best you can hope for is to get by to suffer another day's misery. Trust me, if you find yourself in a Thomas Burke horror story, you're seriously out of luck.

The Hands Of Mr. Ottermole: "That was the beginning of what became known as London's Strangling Horrors. Horrors they were called because they were something more than murders, and there was an air of black magic about them. Each murder was carried out at a time when the street where the bodies were found was empty of any perceptible or possible murderer ...."

Bare hands and a garrote replace a sharp knife, but this is Burke's thinly disguised commentary on the Ripper murders and he offers one theory as to why the murder evaded capture. Having stalked Mr. Whybrow through Mile End after dark (here renamed 'Mallon End' possibly after Jimmy Mallon, a tireless campaigner for social reform in the area), the killer murders both he and his wife in their own home and the reign of terror is underway. Unlike the Ripper, the strangler is indiscriminate; men, women, even children are all fair game for his attentions. A young journalist at the Daily Torch thinks he knows who is responsible, and confronts his suspect on a quiet street corner ...

First (?) published in The Story-Teller for February 1929, certain aspects of the story may well have influenced Robert Bloch when he came to write Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper.

The Bird: Captain Chudder gets a young Chinese drunk and whisks him aboard the S.S. Peacock to keep him entertained during the voyage. Every night Sung Dee’s shrieks for mercy are heard from the cabin but nobody thinks to intervene on account of Chudder’s white parrot. The bird acts as his master’s eyes and ears among the crew, and all are agreed that there’s something uncanny about it. Back on dry land, the ill-used boy seeks his revenge.

One of the stories that Peter Penzoldt got so upset about in his The Supernatural In Fiction on account of its “descriptions of sadism”. It’s certainly ghastly enough, but just what the Captain does to the boy is alluded to as opposed to lovingly gloated over.

Of course, if you're looking for something that little bit grimmer, try The Dumb Wife, which reads like Balzac's cheerless The Mysterious Mansion relocated to the slum quarter of East London. Born of an English mother and Chinese father, Moy Toon is soon abandoned by both and taken in by a Chinese teashop owner who provides basic provisions in return for her services as unpaid dogsbody and general factotum. So Moy somnambulates uncomplaining through her existence until she enjoys her one adventure; a brief dalliance with a drunken sailor produces a son.

Ng Yong, a prosperous laundryman, advanced in years and thinking its time he took a wife, buys Moy from the teashop owner unaware that she's damaged goods. He has very firm ideas about a womans place in a marriage and Moy would do well to remember them. But there's still the matter of her secret child, now aged six. Moy knows it's for the best if she ceases visiting him altogether (his guardians are raising him in better comfort than she's ever enjoyed), but a mothers instincts ...

Comes the day when the suspicious Ng Yong traces her to an abandoned cellar on the West India Docks. As he ascends the stairs, Moy ushers her precious boy inside an alcove with a sturdy door and huge metal lock. Ng Yong, brandishing a knife, demands to know where her lover is and what happens next is worthy of Charles Birkin at his least merciful.

Far briefer is the monologue Johnson Looked Back which begins like we're back in the way too capable hands of Mr. Ottermole but then takes an uncanny detour at the last: Johnson is pursued through the London fog by an eyeless, handless thing of "maimed ugliness." In his final moments, he recognises his pursuer as ...

The Lonely Inn: Two stranger's chance upon The White Cockade, a remote and supremely dismal pub hidden in the Derbyshire countryside, landlord uncommunicative, customers surly. After a time, both men are aware of the hushed whispers "that's him", and it seems these fellows recognise 'Mac' (on account of his being a Scot) and aren't the least pleased to see him. The following weekend, Mac visits The White Cockade alone. It's the last anyone ever sees of him or the pub which was burnt down 200 years ago. An old gardener and local history buff has a terrible tale to relate.

The Hollow Man: Gopak, fifteen years dead, is revived by the Leopard Men and returns from Africa to London to seek out the man who murdered him. It's not revenge he's after, he just has a notion that his one-time partner is the only man who can put him out of his misery. The murderer, known throughout only as Nameless, is the proprietor of a relatively thriving eating house, although it doesn't stay that way for long with a moribund corpse as a permanent fixture.

Maybe some more later as there are a few scattered over a number of anthologies if i can only get at them.

[jamesdoig]

Thomas Burke is terrific, but one let down is "The Horrible God" in The Evening Standard Second Book of Strange Strories. An inoffensive Londoner collector buys a strange little idol from a junk shop and is thereafter pursued by an unseen presence through the streets of London. Beautifully done, but at the end all rationalised! I hate it when that happens...

[dem bones]

Very much the same here, James. It's why I love just about everything from the 'Monk' Lewis school but can't get that worked up about The Mysteries Of Udolpho. The only exceptions are when the 'explanation' is utterly stupid, which is one reason my eyes were on stalks when Lord P.'s recently posted on his Oscar Williams find.

Thomas Burke - Limehouse Nights (Daily Express Fiction Library, n.d. [1916])

Mentioned Burke to Mrs Dem last night and she had copies of Limehouse Nights and Dark Nights hidden amongst her local history stash! Of the contents only The Bloomsbury Wonder and the much-anthologised The Bird make the Ash Tree selection, but undaunted, I had a dip into Limehouse Nights (I'm sure the English lads will appreciate the irony that the bride's undated copy was published as part of something called "the Daily Express fiction Library" as, i would hope, is their "newspaper"). Started with the uncompromisingly titled opener, The Chink And The Child and .... damn, it's a love story. But wait; it's an inter-racial love story set in and around the Ratcliffe Highway which includes scenes of child-brutality, paedophilia, prostitution, drug-taking, xenophobia, violence, murder and suicide. Not quite Mills & Boon but possibly suited to Justin's Men Of Violence, which is not bad going for a story published in 1916. Will attempt some kind of synopsis later, but it's probably my favourite of his so far. I hope it sets the pace for the rest.

[pulphack]

Recently when on a book buying jaunt with Dem I turned up Burke's 'Victorian Grotesque' and 'Dark Nights'. Not because of knowing the name from this board, but purely because they were published by Herbert Jenkins and I have a fetish for that venerable publisher that makes me look twice at any old tosh with their imprint, even by writers I have never heard of before (or so I think). I couldn't understand why Dem was so excited until he sat me down in the nearest hostelry and over a pint of ridiculously named foreign lager patiently explained to me who Burke was while resisting the temptation to slap me severely around the face for being thick (he's very good like that, as I deserved it).

Once home, I went through the threads in which he appears on here.... nope, somehow he'd still passed me by, despite being in anthologies I have sometime owned. I cannot explain this lapse, particularly in light of the fact that I have just read 'Victorian Grotesque' and slapped MYSELF around the face for not noticing him before.

It is a splendid novel with a wonderful feel for the London of the Music Hall that brings it alive. You can smell the limes, the sweat and greasepaint, and the fear of failure. Jimmy Rando's taunting by the horrible Birdie Bright - singing soubrette and sadist - along with his wife's shrewish ways and criminal ways of boosting their income lead him to digging his garden and a pit out of which he cannot climb when a plan goes wrong and both wife and soubrette die in an accident... yes, but if not for his prompting, would they have been on that spot? This haunts and obsesses him even as his talent for observation in mime and song lead to a flowering of his incipient genius... a genius spurred by the agonising self-therapy it brings.

Of course it ends in death and disaster for Jimmy - who is really an innocent in all of it, but caught in a web of chance and fate he neither understands nor controls. Hideous, inevitable throws of the dice lead him to only one conclusion, even as they have guided those around him.

The characters - all of them - breathe on the page with just a few words, and the dialogue and voices are wonderful and evocative.

So, looking forward to 'Dark Nights', then...

[dem bones]

Thomas Burke is among those once hugely popular authors whose novels have largely been forgotten, but his name lives on in horror & supernatural circles thanks to such enduring classics as The Hollow Man, The Bird, The Dumb Wife and The Hands Of Mr. Ottermole, which, in truth, is the only reason I became aware of him. As luck would have it, managed to land of a copy of Victorian Grotesque only very recently, so will bump it up the to read pile. Sounds like it contains all the TB hallmarks - poverty, crime, violence, despair - in all the right places. If you've not already done so, would suggest you try The Chink And The Child as featured on our inaugural Advent Calendar.

Thak you for a truly wonderful day out Mr. Hack. Actually, it was me who came closest to getting a slap, or, more likely, trowel in the face, that day when I inadvertently trampled through a patch of freshly laid cement outside the pub while misdirecting a party of tourists. Teach me to be public spirited.

[pulphack]

It was indeed a splendid day, and once again you were Dem the book fairy - I found a JB Morton novel when I've never even seen one before, and for the second year running I found a Ben Travers novel. I hadn't seen any for over 20 years prior to this; last year's jaunt also turned up a Morton 'Beachcomber' collection, and the last one I'd found before that was at least 17 years before. This year I also found a Michael Bentine novel that a week before I'd remembered reading about and thought 'I must try and track that down'...

As for the cement incident, all I can say to that is that I was in the pub with a pint and saw nothing, guv. See, never be nice to tourists!

[dem bones]

May 25, 2015 7:32:47 GMT pulphack said:

It was indeed a splendid day, and once again you were Dem the book fairy - I found a JB Morton novel when I've never even seen one before, and for the second year running I found a Ben Travers novel. I hadn't seen any for over 20 years prior to this; last year's jaunt also turned up a Morton 'Beachcomber' collection, and the last one I'd found before that was at least 17 years before. This year I also found a Michael Bentine novel that a week before I'd remembered reading about and thought 'I must try and track that down'...

"Book fairy ?!!" Well, I guess its an improvement on the glowing testimonies of my adoring fanbase in "v**pire" la la land. It cuts both ways, Mr. Hack. Peter Haining's The Classic Era of American Pulp Magazines, Martin Roberts & John B. Ford's ace Assembly Of Rogues anthology with tragically misspelt title on cover, Horowitz's More Bloody Horowitz, um, Dan Farson's Curse, all of them treasured souvenirs of our Charing X Road - Spitalfields excursions. Long may the patron saint of bookaholics continue to smile upon us!

September 22nd 2015 sees the 70th anniversary of Thomas Burke's death - does that mean his work falls into the public domain? Might be a good time to renew our acquaintance with the good people at Wordsworth ....

[pulphack]

I thought you'd like being the book fairy... As it happens, I like the idea of a book fairy if he looked like Mike Reid, with a pint in his hand and a cigar, muttering out of the corner of his mouth 'Down there, son, third shelf, seven along. Have a look, you might find something to your advantage, know what I mean?'

Anyway, back on track - assuming Burke's heirs didn't form a company to handle his estate, or that he had not already done this, then yes, I can't see any reason why he shouldn't become public domain by the end of September. It's also worth noting that once a company ceases to trade or does not file accounts for a certain period so that it is assumed as ceased to trade and struck off companies house, then that would put anyone's estate or work into public domain after the seventy years. For instance, some of Edgar Wallace's work was owned by Edhar Wallace Ltd, run for years by his daughter penny. However, that company ceased trading several years before she died, and is now dormant which puts all his work into the public domain.

[dem bones]

Thanks Andy. Have tipped the nod to Derek at Wordsworth, so fingers crossed ....

Reckon Alice Cooper would make for an ideal book fairy. Always strikes me as a pleasant fellow, loves his horror fiction, and we could swap fashion tips. Also, he could croon Billion Dollar Babies when you pull a good one from the shelf or scowl Poison if its a duffer. He'd be in spirit form, obviously, so sporadic trips to pub/ off licence would present no problem for him.

[pulphack]

Dark Nights is a fascinating collection - Burke has a wonderful poetic eye for atmosphere and place, and a wit and humour regarding character that make even the most grim or macabre of circumstances cause for a wry smile, even if only at fate.

I suspect part of the reason he's not as well remembered as he deserves is because, as a short story writer primarily there was no real bestseller novel to hang him on when it comes to publishers repackaging and reissuing his work. And where others have lived on through anthologies, it seems on a few of his stories fit any kind of genre boundary with any degree of comfort. They shift across these notions with scant disregard for anything other then actually telling the story at hand. Which is splendid and as it should be, but gives the editor of a typical themed anthology a bit of a headache.

I'm so glad to have discovered him and been tipped the wink by book familiar (better?) Dem. If pushed to place Burke anywhere at all (which I'm not but I will anyway) I'd place him between Edgar Wallace and Arthur Machen, odd as that may appear at first glance. Many of the stories have the feel of Wallace's Educated Evans and Orator stories, where the criminal element is a by-the-way to a quick study of character and humour, while there is a lurking atmosphere of something odd lurking at the edges of the everyday that reminds me of Machen. The London thing has something to do with it, as by chance one of my first Machen reads was The London Adventure or The Art Of Wandering, his memoir-cum-London-guide, and the tone of the stories featuring Hugo Floom - who looks and acts much like Machen in that book - bring it irresistibly to mind. The Limehouse stories remind me of Ernest Bramah's Kwai Lung transposed to London, while Young Fred is very much Educated Evans as a lad.

If he can be said to fit in anywhere, it's somewhere around that latter kind of anecdotal short story, which is rarely anthologised these days: most editors would pick Bramah's Max Carrados and Wallace's JG Reeder as they fit squarely into a golden age crime fiction model, almost to the point where you'd never know they wrote anything else. Burke had no such figure that's handy for the modern shelving systems of Waterstones, unfortunately.

[dem bones]

Lovely review, that, Mr. Hack! Am so glad you've enjoyed his work, and you've still some great titles to look out for.

Sadly, doesn't look as if Wordsworth will be publishing a Burke 'Mystery & Supernatural' edition in the immediate future (see update), so we'll have to keep browsing those market stalls and second-hand bookshops. There seem to be a few very reasonably priced modern editions of Limehouse Nights out there in Am*z*nland, though as to the quality of the proof-reading, you take your chances.

In his The Guide To Supernatural Fiction, the American editor and bibliographer E. F. Bleiler writes of Dark Nights's lead novella, The Bloomsbury Wonder: "Much more interesting than the feeble stories about Chinatown or the over-rated The Hands Of Mr. Ottermole" (he always slates stuff I like) which had me wondering if Burke's London-centric stories sometimes suffered from travel sickness? But Bleiler goes on to laud the relatively well known collection of weird, ghost and horror tales, Night Pieces - "excellent stories" - and if there is one Burke book comfortably conforms to a genre boundary, it's likely this one (don't have a copy, but it includes the much-anthologised The Hollow Man, The Lonely Inn), and Johnson Looked Back).

Sadly, good old "regeneration" applied the death knell to Burke's Limehouse in the late 'eighties. Was down that way at the weekend and predictably it's now the same soulless Legoland as everywhere else (see also the creeping gentrification of Hackney, Shoreditch, Wapping; Only last week, The Evening Standard hyped properties in Brick Lane as an opportunity to live in a "fashionably edgy" area which would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic, let alone patently untrue - unless "edgy" refers to a handful of teen ISIS-wannabes when they've drank one Red Bull too many).

Photo: Kyrsten

The late, great Michel Parry investigates Burke-Rohmer country in the late nineties. Somehow you can just tell this man was destined for Vault!

[pulphack]

That photo - Blake & Mortimer, a pair of London adventurers created and chronicled by Belgians who've never lived here; somehow choosing them for the mural tells me everything that's wrong with a post-60's generation's view of the city... though it is appropriate for the Belgian by accident/London by design gentleman beneath it!

[dem bones]

It never stops. This just reprinted by the excellent Valancourt.

Thomas Burke - Night-Pieces (Valancourt, 2016: originally Constable, 1935)

Hookway Cowles

Miracle in Suburbia
Yesterday Street
Funspot
Uncle Exekiel's Long Sight
The Horrible God
Father and Son
Johnson Looked Back
Two Gentlemen
The Black Courtyard
The Gracious Ghosts
Jack Wapping
One Hundred Pounds
The Man Who Lost His Head
Murder Under the Crooked Spire
The Lonely Inn
The Watcher
Events at Wayless-Wagtail
The Hollow Man

Blurb:
Perhaps no writer of the early 20th century had a better knowledge of London than Thomas Burke (1886-1945), and his collection Night-Pieces (1935) contains eighteen of his most haunting tales of that immense city’s dark back alleys, shadowy courts, and mysterious houses. In Burke’s London, anything might happen. You might turn round a corner and find yourself back in your childhood. A casual drink with a stranger might end with you—quite literally—losing your head. That pale, slightly sinister-looking man sitting across the restaurant might be a murdered corpse, returned from the dead. And those footsteps you hear following you as you walk along a foggy street, faintly lit by gaslight . . . well, let’s just say you had better not look behind you . . .
​
A groundbreaking and undeservedly neglected volume, Night-Pieces contains a wide variety of weird and outré tales, ranging from stories of crime and murder to tales of ghosts, zombies, and the supernatural. This is the first reprint of Burke’s collection since its original publication and reproduces the jacket art of the first British edition.

[David A. Riley]

Jan 8, 2016 22:46:05 GMT dem bones said:

It never stops. This just reprinted by the excellent Valancourt.

Thomas Burke - Night-Pieces (Valancourt, 2016: originally Constable, 1935)

Miracle in Suburbia
Yesterday Street
Funspot
Uncle Exekiel's Long Sight
The Horrible God
Father and Son
Johnson Looked Back
Two Gentlemen
The Black Courtyard
The Gracious Ghosts
Jack Wapping
One Hundred Pounds
The Man Who Lost His Head
Murder Under the Crooked Spire
The Lonely Inn
The Watcher
Events at Wayless-Wagtail
The Hollow Man

Blurb:
Perhaps no writer of the early 20th century had a better knowledge of London than Thomas Burke (1886-1945), and his collection Night-Pieces (1935) contains eighteen of his most haunting tales of that immense city’s dark back alleys, shadowy courts, and mysterious houses. In Burke’s London, anything might happen. You might turn round a corner and find yourself back in your childhood. A casual drink with a stranger might end with you—quite literally—losing your head. That pale, slightly sinister-looking man sitting across the restaurant might be a murdered corpse, returned from the dead. And those footsteps you hear following you as you walk along a foggy street, faintly lit by gaslight . . . well, let’s just say you had better not look behind you . . .
​
A groundbreaking and undeservedly neglected volume, Night-Pieces contains a wide variety of weird and outré tales, ranging from stories of crime and murder to tales of ghosts, zombies, and the supernatural. This is the first reprint of Burke’s collection since its original publication and reproduces the jacket art of the first British edition.

Valancourt Books are awesome. I have just finished reading their edition of The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral, which was incredibly good. A true classic. This new collection looks great again - with perhaps one of the best covers I've seen in a long while.

[Jojo Lapin X]

Jan 9, 2016 13:53:36 GMT David A. Riley said:

perhaps one of the best covers I've seen in a long while.

Indeed. It is like actual art or something.