Slippers, canes and hospitalisations: adult to child violence in 1970s UK comics

ABSTRACT

UK comics in the 1970s had an ambiguous relationship with violence. Whilst portrayals of children who committed violent acts were deemed dangerous and provocative, adult to child violence was permissible. Using a range of comics and stories from the time period but focusing particularly on Dennis the Menace, the star of the popular pre-teen humour title, the Beano, this article argues that the social acceptability of parental physical chastisement in particular rendered any potential harm to the child invisible. The wider context in which physical abuse was being conceptualised in the UK at this time is presented, and how what happened in comics was in stark contrast to real events such as the terrible murder of seven-year-old Maria Colwell in 1973. Maria’s death led to changes in the law and provoked the artist Sonia Lawson to produce a striking and distressing cartoon reflecting the incident. Whilst physical chastisement remained part of the Beano well into the late 1980s, nevertheless it is argued that the Beano’s decision to eradicate smacking in its pages pre-empted wider cultural views.

KEYWORDS:

• Dennis the Menace
• smacking
• child protection
• physical abuse
• Maria Colwell
• Sonia Lawson

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Beano is one of only a few titles, such as 2000AD and Commando, as well as the recently revived Monster Fun, still on sale in the UK both now and in the 1970s.

2. See Thompson (2020) for discussion on this.

3. Which is exactly who he is: see Rundle (2015).

4. International Publishing Company: a comic and magazine publisher who were the main rivals of DC Thomson in the 1970s UK comics market.

5. Cover dates do not denote the date the comic was published or made available but rather the date the newsagent could remove it from the stands and return to the publisher (Freeman 2021b). For weekly comics in the UK, the comic itself was probably available in shops one week earlier than the indicated cover date.

6. For further analysis, see Barker (1990).

7. Lefty’s own response is ‘Good old Angie’ (Barker 1990)

8. In the issues just prior to Action’s withdrawal, there appears to be a deliberate intention to qualify this incident. In the issue cover dated 9 October, Lefty is nearly struck with a bottle thrown from the crowd and goes to hurl it back, when one of his team mates stops him, saying they are meant to set an example. Lefty goes on to agree that these sorts of things should be left to the authorities to sort out (see Barker 1989).

9. At time of writing, the Beano’s own website states that the comic is pitched at children aged six to 12.

10. And in contrast to the older content in American comics at the same time with their focus on superheroes and crime fighters.

11. Still a live piece of legislation at the time of writing.

12. Greenwood reports that Mary Whitehouse, a reactive cultural watchdog who formed the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, threatened to use the 1955 Act to take action against Action.

13. In the 1981 annual, this reduced to just three occasions. If the fears of children reflected wider social anxieties, there may be a link between a rise in physical chastisement and fears about the permissive society growing in the late 1960s. For both these annuals, the stories largely would have been constructed from reprints that had appeared in the Topper in the preceding years (with probably a gap of five years or so between publication). As such, physical chastisement would certainly not have seemed unusual in the late 60s/early 70s, but even by the mid/late 70s, there is notably more caution shown by creators and editorial regarding slipper whacking. In the 64 stories, reprinted from the early 1960s, in the 1969 Beryl the Peril annual, physical chastisement is slightly less pronounced. Here, eight end in spankings from Beryl’s dad and one a caning from her teacher.

14. In this study, the ‘violent’ comic chosen for analysis was the Marvel comic, Daredevil, with 53% of the comic’s panels rated to be violent in nature.

15. Initially founded in 1884 as the London Society for Protection of Cruelty to Children and becoming the NSPCC in 1889.

16. King (2015) reports that courts did sometimes take punitive action in cases in the mid-20^th century when chastisement by fathers was perceived to tip into cruelty: it was not entirely ignored or condoned.

17. Thompson’s findings were based on a sample of 84% of the Beano comics published between January 1971 and January 1979.

18. A notorious case in the UK, where the girl in question was tortured and murdered by her carers.

19. Reid’s work has been described (positively) as ‘coarse, off-colour … , knowing, satirical hilarity’ (Parkinson 2018, 7) and as full of ‘dazzling inventiveness and energy’ (Moore 2017, 6).

20. Gershoff also concluded in their meta-analysis of studies mainly from the 1990s that parental physical chastisement was probably present in most homes at that time and so must not have had an overly negative effect on most children.

21. Gershoff notes that this may have be due to mothers being primary carers and spending more time with children. King counters that fathers then became more distant figures and associated with the ‘last resort’ for punishment. The chapter that discusses this in King’s book is entitled ‘Wait til your father gets home’ evoking how fathers could be perceived as figures to fear in the family household.

22. In No1768, cover dated 5 June 1976, included in the celebration package for 80 years of the Beano (Beano Studios 2018), there are 31 male protagonists (counting the Bash Street Kids and Pup Parade) and five female protagonists. This, despite the Beano being marketed at both boys and girls.

23. In terms of the homeland of the Beano, the equivalent Scottish legislation would not be enacted until 1995.