Taming the Beast: Adolescence, Empire and the Detective’s Boy Assistant

Abstract

Andrew explores the first appearances of boy detectives as assistants to adult professional detectives in the Harmsworths’ boys’ story papers of the 1890s and early 1900s. Examining the Sexton Blake and Nelson Lee series, the chapter considers how the adult master detectives’ civilisation of their boy assistants addresses and assuages anxieties about internal and external threats to the British Empire. Andrew links the representation of Nelson Lee’s street-urchin assistant, Nipper, to the emergence of the concept of adolescence and anxieties surrounding the threat of the “delinquent” adolescent and the “blind-alley” labourer. The chapter also explores how the Anglicisation of Sexton’s Blake’s Chinese boy assistant, We-wee, responds to the threat of the foreigner and, specifically, the “yellow peril” in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion.