Devlin the Barber - 1888

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Littell's Living Age (Boston), Volume 181, June 8, 1889, Page 582

Mr. Norris's Novels

About a year ago the boardings and other advertisement spaces of London were disfigured by a horrible picture of a young girl falling in blood under an assassin's knife. This was an incident in a story called "Devlin the Barber," a disagreeable but certainly ingenious tale, which we would by no means treat so unfairly as to class it with the "Hansom Cab."

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The Sun (New York), September 01, 1888, Page 5, Column 5

THE GREAT LONDON SENSATION.

Mysterious Murder of a Young Lady In Victoria Park.

All London has been shocked by the many frightful
murders which hsve recently occurred, and particularly
with tbat of Elisabeth Melladew, in Victoria Park,
which has caused an unprecedented sensation. Strange
it is that such a beautiful and well known young lady
could be so mercilessly murdered In cold blood in such
a public plsce. The New York SUNDAY MERCURY,
with its customary enterprise, has, through its London
correspondent, been the means of unravelling the mystery
of her fate, and at great expense has persuaded the
famous novelist B. L. FARJEON, to embody the facts in
a new serial, "Devlin, the Barber," which will begin in
the issue for TOMORROW, Sept 2, 1888. Don't fail to
read this startling revelation.

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A Casebook dissertation which mentions Devlin:

A CUT-THROAT BUSINESS, link
by Andy Aliffe

Devlin the Barber (London: Ward and Downey, 1888), Google Books, Archive.org
by Benjamin Leopold Farjeon


The victim in Devlin isn't much like the JtR victims, but in this passage the landlady Mrs. Lemon (nee Peel) describes a former lodger:

Page 56

"Our second lodger was a printer, who worked all night and slept all day. I could have stood him if it hadn't turned out that he'd run away from his wife,who found out where he was living, and give us no peace. She was a dreadful creature, and I never saw her sober. She smelt of gin that strong that you knew a mile off when she was coming. 'That's why I left her, Mrs. Lemon,' the poor man said to me; 'she's been the ruin of me. Three homes has she sold up, and she's that disgraced me that it makes me wild to hear the sound of her voice. The law won't help me, and what am I to do?' I made him a cup of tea, and said I was very sorry for him, but that she wasn't my wife, and that I'd take it kind of him if he'd find some other lodgings. All he said was, 'Very well, Mrs. Lemon, I can't blame you; but don't be surprised if you read in the papers one day that I am brought up for being the death of her, or that I've made a hole in the water. If she goes on much longer, one of them things is sure to happen.' He went away sorrowful, and paid me honourable to the last farthing.["]

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[TradeName]

Despite its grim premise, Devlin often has a disconcertingly light tone, as in this passage in which Mrs. Lemon describes her addiction to serialized newspaper stories:

Page 78

The penny newspaper we take in always has a story in it that goes on from week to week, and always ending at such a aggravating part that I can hardly wait to git the next number. I fly for it the first thing Sunday morning, before I read anything else. Lemon goes for the police-courts, and takes the story afterwards.

[TradeName]

Bio Sketch of Farjeon

Dictionary of National Biography: Second Supplement (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1912), Volume 2, Pages 5-6

FARJEON, BENJAMIN LEOPOLD (1838-1903), novelist, second son of Jacob Farjeon (d. 1865), a Jewish merchant, by his wife Dinah Levy of Deal, was born in London on 12 May 1838. Educated at a private Jewish school until he was fourteen, he entered the office of the 'Nonconformist' newspaper. At the end of three years, unwillingness to conform to the Jewish faith caused a disagreement with his parents. At seventeen ho embarked for Australia, travelling steerage; during the voyage he produced some numbers of a ship newspaper, 'The Ocean Record,' and was transferred by the captain to the saloon. From the goldfields of Victoria he went to New Zealand, on hearing of rich finds there. Soon abandoning the quest of gold, he settled at Dunedin as a journalist. He assisted (Sir) Julius Vogel [q. v. Suppl. I] in the management of the 'Otago Daily Times,' the first daily paper established in the colony, which Vogel founded in 1861. Farjeon became joint editor and part-proprietor; but journalism did not satisfy his ambition, and he wrote a novel, 'Christopher Cogleton,' for the weekly 'Otago Witness,' in which Vogel was also interested, a play 'A Life's Revenge,' and several burlesques in which the leading parts were taken by Julia Matthews, who subsequently won a reputation in London. In 1866 he published at Dunedin a successful tale of Australian life, 'Grif,' and a Christmas story, 'Shadows on the Snows,' which he dedicated to Charles Dickens.

Encouraged by an appreciative letter from Dickens, Farjeon in 1868 returned to England. He travelled by way of New York, where he declined the offer by Gordon Bennett of an engagement on the 'New York Herald'; and settled in chambers in the Adelphi. During the next thirty-five years he devoted himself to novel-writing with unceasing toil. The success of 'Grif,' which was republished in London (1870; new edit. 1885), was maintained in a series of sentimental Christmas stories. 'Blade o'Grass' (1874; new edit. 1899), 'Golden Grain' (1874), 'Bread and Cheese and Kisses' (1874; new edit. 1901), and in many conventional three-volume novels mainly treating of humble life— such as 'Joshua Marvel' (1871), 'London's Heart' (1873), and 'The Duchess of Rosemary Lane' (1876). As a disciple of Dickens, Farjeon won passing popularity, but he turned later to the sensational mystery in which Wilkie Collins excelled, and there his ingenuity was more effective. 'Great Porter Square' (1884) and 'The Mystery of M. Felix' (1890) are favourable examples of his work in this kind. His best novel is the melodramatic 'Devlin the Barber ' (1888; new edit. 1901). A play by Farjeon, 'Home, Sweet Home,' was produced by Henry Neville at the Olympic Theatre in 1876, and in 1891 George Conquest put on at the Surrey Theatre Farjeon's dramatised version of his novel 'Grif,' which had already undergone unauthorised dramatisation. Li 1873 he sat with Charles Reade and others on a committee formed by John Hollingshead [q. v. Suppl. II] to amend the law so as to prevent the dramatisation of novels without their writers' assent (hollingsHead, My I.ifetime, ii. 54).

In October 1877 he gave readings in America from one of bis early successes, 'Blade o' Grass.'

Farjeon died at his house in Belsize Park, Hampstead, on 23 July 1903, and his remains were cremated and interred at Brookwood. He married on 6 June 1877 Margaret, daughter of the American actor, Joseph Jefferson; she survived him with four sons and one daughter. A head in pastels, by Farjeon's nephew, Emanuel Farjeon, a miniature-painter well known in the United States, belongs to the widow.

[The Times, 24 July 1903 ; Edmund Downey, Twenty Years Ago, 1905. p. 246; Tinsley, Random Recollections of an Old Publisher, 1900, ii. 309; private information.] L. M.