The Gorbals Vampire with the Iron Teeth
In the 1950s a vampire panic swept across the Gorbals area in Glasgow, Scotland. People were up in arms about a murderous vampire with iron teeth that was targeting children and was said to live by the cemetery.
Several groups grabbed weapons and stakes and went out on a hunt. Throughout history, it’s not unusual that panic causes groups of people to grab their pitchforks and go kill something, but in this case, these people were children.
“Everyone have their orange slices? Time to hunt a vampire!... Billy, stop picking your nose.”
The Vampire with the Iron Teeth Panic
It was September 23rd, 1954 and a group of students at a Gorbals elementary school in Glasgow had had enough. They heard the 7-foot vampire with iron teeth stalking their town had struck again; strangling, killing, and drinking the blood of another boy at the cemetery.
They warned their parents and teachers but no one wanted to believe them. They knew they had to be the heroes that the adults refused to be. Word spread quickly of the new plan, every child and every teen that would listen, all of them, would go to the Southern Necropolis Cemetery and kill this vampire for good.
The school bell rang out and within a few hours, around a hundred kids had descended onto the cemetery. Their ages ranged from 4-14 and they were armed with knives and sharpened sticks. Several kids patrolled the outside of the cemetery while others climbed the gates to get inside.
Unsurprisingly when the kids didn’t show up at home right after school and someone mentioned a group of angry kids was spotted heading to the cemetery, some parents put it together and police were informed. A constable made their way to the kids and he was immediately told about the vampire with iron teeth.
The constable tried to tell the kids there was no such thing but he was probably working for the vampire so they ignored him. More police arrived and they still couldn’t disperse the crowd of children hunting this imaginary vampire.
Depending on what article, book, or newspaper you read, the children eventually went home due to rain starting or because the police grabbed a local school headmaster and had them yell at the children. No word on the police asking the parents to get their kids though.
“Parents? These kids have parents?”
But both the rain and the headmaster thing could be true since the kids showed back up the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. Each time the numbers dwindled since kids do lose interest quickly especially if they were hunting a deadly vampire with iron teeth.
By Monday it seemed the panic and hysteria over an imaginary vampire was over and everyone could move past this little ridiculous incident… except for those pearl-clutching politicians…
The Bigger Ridiculous Panic
The problem with this little ridiculous incident was that it was picked up by the press and not just the local press but the worldwide press. Articles about children hunting vampires appeared in the Boston Globe, The Ottawa Citizen, and The Omaha World-Herald just to name a few. So it was only a matter of time before people started questioning, “where did those kooky kids get that idea?”
Well, it took just two days before city officials, politicians, and education authorities, figured it out… American Horror Comics. Some education authorities also blamed a recent showing of a horror movie in the city but, let’s ignore that since everyone else did when it came time to play the blame game.
In an interview, city education officer Michael Scanlan even went as far as to say “It is up to the government to ban these comics… we can’t do anything about it.” No word on what his thoughts were about the parents of the children doing something about it though.
“Parents? Those kids have parents?”
To be fair American Horror Comics was a pretty big industry around that time, accounting for about a quarter of all comics being printed in the United States in 1953. Is it possible that one of the kids got their hands on a horror comic? Sure.
Does it also look bad that there was literally an issue of Dark Mysteries entitled “The Vampire with the Iron Teeth” printed in 1953? Yes, but I don’t think it mattered because several pearl-clutching groups were just waiting for this to happen.
The Comics Code Authority
In September 1954, the same month as the vampire hunts in Gorbals, the Comics Magazine Association of America implemented the strict Comics Code Authority in order to self-regulate. This quickly put most of the horror comics, especially the more “troubling” ones that included monsters like vampires, zombies, and werewolves, out of publication.
It turned out that the United States was facing its own moral panic over horror comics and comics in general led by psychiatrist Fredric Wertham and his book Seduction of the Innocent. In the book, Wertham blamed comics for various crimes like burglary, assault, and murder. Just to emphasize the kind of batshit ideas Wertham was pushing when it came to comics, he stated that comics were more dangerous to children than Hitler.
Don’t read or you’ll start World War III
Despite that ridiculous idea, a Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in the United States ate it all up and comics were a new evil, just like television and video games would be decades later. Like with television and video games, the Senate threatened government regulation against comics if they didn’t self-regulate.
Related Article: How Mortal Kombat Helped Create the ESRB
Of course, as you might have guessed, Wertham lied about a lot of stuff. When his notes and sources for Seduction of the Innocent were unsealed in 2010, University of Illinois information science professor Carol Tilly investigated his claims. In 2012 she published her study and found;
“... Wertham manipulated, overstated, compromised, and fabricated evidence—especially that evidence he attributed to personal clinical research with young people—for rhetorical gain.”
And that was her opening paragraph. Of course, it took decades to figure out Wertham was lying but this shows that the 1950s was just ripe for moral panic on comics, and possibly the United States' own panic helped fuel Glasgow’s.
Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act 1955
Back in Glasgow, Parliament member Alice Cullen led the charge and quickly placed the blame on the American horror comics. It didn’t matter that many were about to be out of print as long as the politicians had someone to blame and Alice Cullen set her pearl-clutching sights on comics.
She’s literally wearing pearls
Alice’s crusade led to others feeling the same moral panic that she was feeling and eventually led to the United Kingdom’s parliament enacting the “Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act of 1955”.
This act made it a crime to print, publish, sell, or hire someone to create a work mainly told in pictures (comics) portraying the commission of crimes, acts of violence or cruelty, or incidents of a repulsive or horrible nature. So essentially banning horror comics or anything seen as having the ability to corrupt the minds of children.
Surprisingly this law is still in effect today although it has been amended to be less strict. So in the end some kids fell into a hysteria over a fake vampire sighting that led adults to have a moral panic over comics, yet no one ever figured out what really caused this panic in the first place.
Theories on What Caused The Vampire Panic in The First Place
First, as I mentioned before, there was a comic issue entitled “The Vampire with the Iron Teeth” printed in 1953. It is completely possible that one kid saw this or read it somewhere and started telling all his friends about it.
This then spread to other kids who added their own little flavor to the legend. Soon the vampire with iron teeth was real, was seven feet tall, and had killed two kids. Someone should probably figure out which child added the “strangling, killing, and drinking blood of two kids” part though.
Terrifying…
Another possible source for the hysteria was a poem or nursery rhyme that was often told to kids in Scotland about a vampire with iron teeth. This rhyme came from a somewhat famous Scottish poem entitled “Jenny Wi’ the Airn Teeth” by Alexander Anderson.
In the poem, the vampire named Jenny, with iron teeth (obviously) comes around and kidnaps kids who don’t go to bed or who are faking being asleep. Here are the first two stanzas, the rest is in the sources section below.
Terrifying… I think…?
So was it a vampire nursery rhyme, a comic book, or something completely different that started this panic? Maybe that horror movie that was shown in the city was a vampire movie or maybe some kid made the whole thing up.
Honestly, I think that it was a little mixture of everything, but a piece of me wants to believe that somewhere out there, there really is a vampire with iron teeth.
Quick Facts
Fredric Wertham started the “Batman and Robin being gay partners” thing and implied it was a bad thing or a mental disorder that could infect children
Fredric Wertham also claimed Wonder Woman’s strength and independence made her a lesbian, again he implied it was a bad thing
Sources
Featured Image - Copyright Bradley Michael and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
