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https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/b51ed27a556e8f51386ba731f205773c.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=cpeY3jBJknYAK7MCzO5rjQkkrJoUnsWphAeu1a5SSRbFfPxZS2tTGvyr4At%7E8Om2eHT7zQfgeevfVZ5B7N%7Eat2knGnm7d8mxqUxaAJ7cv21vfq9EEoFzDG5E-HGfuRHGIsXC4l0DjQE2QlunM6Sw-X34nCbsCvdc-eeCm56Zoytva%7E7hVLBRWC3vdmie3Kf9%7EuYfKjTrPe%7EEmIhx0FHT03D4UPpeeY4gGnU7DMhtxg2kUbbdOjyOpgAubY6wLtJ1syYAjDQwQgT0kI2SqutfDdZp8tK%7E7AsxkIfqJWmHDVaaUGU4ZyrAdfGeO9%7EQOIxO2S6FI85vJcMMEEbwteqFcg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
“ TRUTH SEEKER ” PAMPHLETS, No. 2.]
2nd EDITION.
CHRIST AND ALLY SLOPER
BY THE LATE SAM STANDRING.
WITH PREFATORYj NOTE BY GEORGE STANDRING.
IPRICE ONE PENNY.
�PREFATORY NOTE.
The publishers have asked me to contribute a note to this,
the second, edition of my late brother’s little pamphlet.
In “ Christ and Ally Sloper,” Sam added a very suggestive and
interesting “line” to Freethought propaganda. The pamphlet—
obviously summarized from the materials of a lecture—was in its
first edition hastily put together, and I have in this reprint
corrected some blemishes in style that he had allowed to pass.
But I have not in any way interfered with his treatment of the
subject; the alterations made are simply verbal.
In dealing with Ally Sloper in this way, Sam paid a probable
unconscious tribute to the profound influence of early mental im
pressions. When the first volume of Sloper sketches appeared—
about thirty years ago—Sam, my sister Kate, and I were about the
age when the consumption of sweet-stuff and the daily routine of
home-life become merged in the wider interests of the outside world.
The Sloper “literature”—his “Book of Beauty,”-“Sloper at the
Paris Exhibition,” etc.—were marked, learned, and inwardly digested
by us with that absorbing delight which we lose in riper years. I
have now upon my shelf Sloper’s “ Book of Beauty,”—a relic of
that far-off time; well-thumbed, toffee-marked, loose and partly in
tatters; but it is to me full of tenderest memories of bygone
days. Why did Sam, for so many years, bear in mind with an
affectionate interest the old rascal Sloper and his associates 1 Why
do I now on occasion turn over the tattered pages of the book, and
find each well-remembered stupid picture encircled in a positive
halo of sweet memories 1 To us both, Sloper recalled the days of
our childhood, the love and presence of our long-lost mother, the
simple joys of our early home-life, gone beyond recall. In this
respect, Jesus Christ and Ally Sloper stand to me in much the
same relation. I can well remember as a child reading the story
of Christ in the gospels ; and well also can I remember the feeling
of utter desolation that came over me as I read of his death upon
the cross. The resurrection I never believed in; Jesus, alive, I
loved with a childish love; but when he was crucified I felt that
he was dead once and for all, and the story of his resurrection
failed to comfort or convince me.
While priests are permitted to imbue the minds of children with
superstition the work of emancipation must ever continue to be
necessary. Let us strive to stop the evil at its source by protecting
the young from its contaminating influence !
George Standring.
�3^14-4*J6^3
CHRIST AND ALLY SLOPER.
By SAM
STANDRING.
Every Freethought lecturer finds it necessary now and again to
answer the crucial question, Did Jesus Christ ever live 1 Of course
his Christian hearers will invariably object that the question is the
merest twaddle; that there is no more doubt about Christ having
lived than there is about the lecturer’s existence; that all history
proves that Jesus of Nazareth was a very real person indeed.
What I want to do in this pamphlet is to show that a purely
fictitious character may easily become one in whom the many
believe. I have no wish whatever to draw any analogy between
Jesus and Ally Sloper beyond that of the origin and development
of the respective myths. Granted that the characters are fictitious,
their characteristics are mere details of no present concern ; but in
this case the parallel is so clear that one is tempted to run the risk
of being called “ blasphemous ” in order to prove so desirable a
point.
.
Ally Sloper has originated within the memory of all middle-aged
readers. It is but some thirty years since he first saw the light of
day. Judy was his literary mother. One fine morning a page of
that comic journal was devoted to some of the eccentric doings of
the tall thin man whose crumpled white hat with its conspicuous
broad black band, swallow-tailed coat, and the protruding gin
bottle were to mark him as a pet of Society. No one called round
�4
on the editor with a pickaxe or pistol, and so it was deemed
possible to publish another sketch in safety. This proved no more
dangerous than the other. Frequent insertions of the quaint old
man’s preposterous doings caused him to become familiar to the
readers. They not only liked him, they began to look with
eagerness for the story of his adventures. Ally was ever welcome,
and he grew in favour week by week. As time wore on, it became
desirable to add to the original stock. Sloper had a companion,
by name Iky Mo, who mainly instigated the major part of our
hero’s peccadilloes, and reaped the lion’s share of the harvest.
Ally did the wickedness and got the kicks; when ha’pence came
in, Iky Mo held the bag for them. By this means Ally Sloper
soon found himself honoured as the best-kicked man in Europe.
After some seventeen years of prosperity in Judy, Ally Sloper
began to launch out on his own account. Marie Duval’s excellent
sketches settled his physiognomy; and he who once had been but
the actor of cruel jokes had now become the centre, the hero of
of every adventure. His Summer Number detached him from his
mother; and a Calendar, if I remember rightly, still further
weaned him from the Old Lady of Fleet Street. More than aught
else, the collections of his sayings and doings in the wonderfully
racy “Book of Beauty” gave Sloper an independence he had long
deserved.
Now commences the second portion of “The Eminent’s” work
and fame. Hitherto there had been no material change in him.
As Ross and Marie Duval had initiated him so he remained.
A
few apocryphal data of his boyhood’s days had been made mani
fest to the public; but we knew little of him as a family man.
Beyond a glimpse or two in his “ Guide to the Paris Exhibition,”
the public scarcely knew, even, that he had a better half. With
the advent of “ Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday ” all this was changed.
Sloper assumed a variety of different characters. At the Derby
Day or University Boat Race he was indispensable. At dinner
with the Queen, or inspecting a review of troops, or playing tricks
upon the crowds who sought refreshment at the sea-side, Ally
Sloper was equally at home. His gin-blossom nose was there,
though the hat, coat, and boots gave way to clothing in keeping
with the scene. His wife now became more and more apparent.
The sons of his bosom, and Tootsie, the sweet daughter of his
heart, grew up round him like the olive branches of Holy Scripture.
�Besides these, the Hon. Billy, the Dook Snook, Tottie Goodenough,
and the other ladies of the “Friv.,” Bill Higgins, and some others,
about twenty in all, formed the group of which Ally was necessarily
the centre. Week by week their doings are all faithfully recorded.
To thousands of persons they are undoubtedly real characters,
whose images are to be seen in toy-shop windows; who appear
from time to time on the public stage, and ride about at country
fairs. What fancy dress ball or ventriloquial exhibition would
be complete without the presence of “ The Friend of Man ” ? Nay,
the thing has gone even farther than that. In Shoe Lane, London,
one sees the large front window of the “Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday”
offices filled as a museum with old hats, combs, brushes, shoes, and
hundreds of other relics alleged to have belonged to Sloper and his
family and friends ; whilst in certain shops you see framed and
glazed diplomas granted by “ The Eminent ” to particular trades
men, and in the stage papers a portion of the actors and actresses
rejoice in the use of certain initials, F.O.S. to wit, which signify
that they are friends of Sloper’s.
Now when we remember that a period of less than thirty years
has sufficed to bring this character into notoriety such as we have
witnessed, and to give it a popularity which does not appear to be
decaying, it is not difficult to conceive how many of the myths of
history have thus arisen and developed. The only thing is that in
this case we are all able to pull the curtain aside and see the origin
for ourselves; whereas in others, their origin is lost in the mists
of antiquity, and we are compelled to accept, with or without a
grain of salt, what ancient men have said about them.
As I have selected Christ for my parallel case, let us now
examine the points of likeness in the two histories. The earliest
records of Jesus are no wilder in their improbability than the
story of Ally Sloper. Run through the apocryphal gospels, those
earliest narratives of Christ’s boyhood days, and you find him
turning children into kids because they hide themselves and refuse
to play with him; or, being run against by another lad and
knocked over, exclaiming, “As thou hast made me to fall, so shalt
thou fall and not rise,” immediately causing him to fall down and
die. Or, again, when he would show himself superior to the other
children, he would make sparrows of the mud in which they were
all playing and then cause his own to fly away, leaving theirs in
their primitive condition. Innumerable stories of this sort cluster
J
�6
around the early days of Jesus. We don’t believe them now, but
they were piously believed in by the Christians of the earliest
centuries of our era. Some day, when Ally Sloper shall be
numbered amongst the gods of the heathen, a pious writer may
select from his various records the less self-evident untruths, get
them canonized by the Church of his day, and set down the other
absurdities as “apocryphal.”
Men ask, “How is it Christ is accepted if he never lived ? Have
we not the gospels which proclaim his works ? Have not contemp
oraries added their words to those of the sacred writers 1 ” All
this may be admitted, if we are to accept as true all that has ever
been written; but in the case of Christ we must remember that
there is no more contemporary evidence of the reality of Christ's
person than there is of the reality of Ally Sloper’s. The one is
certainly fictitious, and there is every reason for believing that the
other is fictitious also. When men like Archdeacon Farrar give
away the only possible confirmation, that of Josephus, as an
interpolation and forgery, smaller Church-folk need not be over
nice in rejecting it as well.
The Ally Sloper myth has lived and grown because the humor
of his imaginary doings tickled the people of his day. The ignorant,
who are always amongst the religious enthusiasts, seem already to
accept him as a human being. Some will gravely tell you that at
Fair time they have seen him drive through the town with his lass
Tootsie. His character is so little overdrawn that those who
delight in tales of booze and feats of drunkenness regard him as a
“jolly good fellow.”
Christ came into popularity in another
fashion, but on similar lines. He was made the vehicle for
preaching submission to an overweighted and oppressed people.
All that was feminine and passive in human nature he was made
to glorify, and the sentimental followed his doctrines, whilst their
rulers saw how great a help such a religion would be to them in
diverting the minds of their conquered people from their sufferings,
—so great, indeed, that they eventually professed to embrace
the new religion, changing the direction of the worship to suit the
ends they had in view.
The sword and stake assisted to remove
any opposition to the new “faith.” To make Jesus the more
acceptable he was given a title which men could make into a pun,
for “ Christus,” anointed, was often written by the ancients as
“ Chrestos,” the Greek for a good fellow. To some, then, he
�7
became the Messiah of the Scriptures, whilst to others he was the
embodiment of a good sort of man; and all were equally well
pleased.
The more men examine into the early history of Christ, the less
they seem willing to believe it. It is the unenquiring who adhere
to it so tenaciously. Even many who now believe, laugh at the
“ true relics ” of the cross, the crown of thorns, the Virgin Mary’s
dress, and so on, of which the Christian Cathedrals have so many.
Protestants, like Sloperians, have wearied of the original Christ.
Sloper left his tricks and entered the arena of modern life; Christ
is no longer the Saviour of the World, the hero of the Atonement,
or an emptied God; he is now the King of Labor, the Socialist, the
Anarchist, the Leader of Armies, or anything else that suits the
palate of the hour. The Christ of our boyhood’s theology can be
but ill-recognised in the Jesus of the modern up-to-date preacher.
It only remains for the Editor of Ally Sloper to found a school,
public hall, or other useful institution, and to start a counterpart
movement to that set on foot by the earlier Christians to popularise
their new deity. Those who appeal so much and so often to the
name of Christ in connection with benevolent institutions may
yet live to see the name of Sloper over the portals of their like.
Be that as it may, it is difficult to see much essential difference
between the origin and development of the so-called “ histories ” of
those celebrated figure-heads, Christ and Sloper.
The Truth Seeker Pamphlets may be
had from
R. Forder, 28, Stonecutter Street, London, E.C.
A. & H. Bbadlaugh Bonner, 1 & 2, Tooks Court, Cursitor Street,
London, E.C.
“ Truth Seeker ” Company, 36, Villiers Street, Bradford.
Or all Newsagents to
order.
Printed and published by the “ Truth Seeker” Company, Bradford.
�THE
Truth Seeker.
Edited by JOHN GRANGE.
A Monthly Journal devoted to-Mental Freedom and Progress
SHOULD BE READ BY ALL FREETHINKERS.
PUBLISHED ON THE FIRST OF EACH MONTH.
LONDON:—R. FORDER, 28, Stonecutter Street, E.C.
BRADFORD:—J. W. GOTT, 36, Villiers Street.
“TRUTH SEEKER” PAMPHLETS.
Be
de
No. 1—Genesis and Science, by Stanley Jones
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No. 2—Christ and Ally Sloper, by Sam Standring
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No. 3—Secularism, by John Grange.......................................................... 0 1
No. i—The Decay of Belief, by C. Cohen
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No. 5—His Satanic Majesty, by S. H. Alison ..
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No. 6—Biography of A. B. Moss, by Wm. Heaford................................... 0 1
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Christ and Ally Sloper
Description
An account of the resource
Edition: 2nd ed.
Place of publication: [Bradford]
Collation: 7 p. : ill. (front. port.) ; 21 cm.
Series title: Truth Seeker Pamphlets
Series number: No. 2
Notes: Full-length portrait [of the author?] on front cover. Date of publication from KVK (OCLC WorldCat). Alexander "Ally" Sloper is the eponymous fictional character of the comic strip Ally Sloper. He is one of the earliest comic strip characters and he is regarded as the first recurring character in comics. List of Truth Seeker pamphlets on back page. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Creator
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Standring, Sam
Standring, George
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[The "Truth Seeker" Company]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1895]
Identifier
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N623
Subject
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Jesus Christ
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Christ and Ally Sloper), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Ally Sloper (Fictional Character)
Freethought
Jesus Christ
NSS