Camp Life for Boys by Gordon Stables MD, RN.

Part 1...The Great Button Age

 I do most firmly believe that there is a bit of the Crusoe in every really manly boy who lives and breathes. And quite right too. All our boasted civilisation, while elevating the minds of mankind, tends to render the body puny and effete. Most of our very cleverest of inventions aim at doing away with bodily labour and muscular exertion of every sort; and if science – electric and otherwise – continues to advance with the same rapid strides it is now doing, in the course of say, two hundred years the only thing men will be fit for will be to touch a button. Then will come the age of buttons or The Great Button Age. Human beings – bald and toothless, you know, with immense great chumps of heads on them and no bodies to speak of – will hardly care to move off the lounge. When they want breakfast they will touch a button, and presently it will come through the wall or up through the floor, or somewhere. When they want the things cleared away they will touch another button, and, hey! presto! The things will disappear.

When they want to go out they will touch a button, and the softly-cushioned electric carriage will come to the door of its own accord.

If one wants music in one’s room, he will merely have to switch it on by touching a button. Nobody will bother going to the concert-room, or any place else. He will be able to switch on a song, or chorus, and by darkening the room – another button – be able to see as well as hear...

(extract from Boy's Own Paper article Camp Life For Boys (September 3, 1892)

Correspondence: Debts, the Queen and Crape

An interesting reply here revealing that the Boy's Own Paper would receive several varied enquiries from curious boys.

W.C.N. – 1.No man’s debts are paid by his staying away from a town, and no man with any sense of honour would think of doing such a thing. 2.The name of Her Majesty was the same after her marriage as it was before, as the slightest knowledge of history would have told you. 3.We really cannot decide questions as to the amount of crape you should wear for your grandmother.(SATURDAY, JULY 23, 1887)

Naturalist's Shop, Plymouth: Correspondence

RATS (Large Rat). – What an awfully (!) long letter. Boys would greatly consult their own interest by studying brevity and coming to the point at once, and not writing in pencil. Write to Sumner, 135 Oxford Street. We are astonished there is no naturalist’s shop in Plymouth.(SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1892)

A short history (continued)

Popularity
Selling at just a penny, and "selling like hot-cakes" the BOP was trumping its less respected rivals, but what made it so popular? With an original intention to contain strong moral and religious guidance, one would hardly expect such a powerful impact on young people. A major player in the success of the paper was its "acting editor," George Andrew Hutchison (1841-1913) who when appointed stated that it would do well as long as it "appealed to boys and not their grandmothers." Although eschewing the "pernicious literature" of the penny dreadful and answering to a deeply Christian commitee, Hutchison managed to publish many pieces of outrageous and sensational fiction. For example, the two part adventure Nearly Eaten appeared in March, 1884, a tale of a kindly professor replete with butterfly net escaping from a tribe of cannibalistic Voodoo lovers.

Endurance
The BOP went from strength to strength through the Victorian and Edwardian period up to the First World War (1914-18) and had an offspring in the shape of Girl's Own Paper. The initial BOP had advertising on its outer covers and page one as well as containing a masthead, designed by Edward Whymper, featured the main fiction serial and an illustration. Every year an annual compilation of all 52 weeklies could be purchased with the addition of several beautiful colour plates. Many children created the annuals themselves, buying large binders from the publishers and still having the opportunity to buy the additional plates. Seasonal special editions were released in the Summer and at Christmas all maintaining the winning formula of fiction, non-fiction,competitions and correspondence. In the 20th century the BOP started to have full page illustrated front covers reflecting interests, values and the British Empire.