When Jenny Hamilton meets Alex Graham on holiday, he takes some compromising photographs of them together. Then, when Alex transfers to Jenny’s school, he uses the photographs to blackmail her – along with other acts of bullying at the school.
Penny Farthing lived in a caravan with her grandfather, who fell ill. A ruthless gypsy girl Eva took advantage of the situation, and was posing as a ventriloquist using Penny as a dummy.
Debbie Walters father gets commissioned to draw a picture story , “Sad Sarah” – about a girl who patiently endured ill treatment from cruel relatives rather than worry her sick mother. Unknown to Mr. Walters, Sarah can come to life and is not as nice as her story counterpart, as she keeps making trouble for Debbie.
When Sandra Harrison’s father is wrongly imprisoned for fraud, she and her mother move in with her strict grandparents in Wales. Sandra has promised to keep her father’s whereabouts secret, but Megan, a girl at school, had found out the truth and is now blackmailing Sandra.
This is a sequel to “The Honourable S.J.” Ann has started at Craddock College and is pleased at first to find that her room-mate, Sally Cairns, is a friendly well liked girl. But soon she is not so sure if she is lucky to be rooming with Sally, as her behaviour reminds her of S.J. She acts nice but some incidents make Ann think she’s not what she seems. When Ann gets the lead in a play, Sally who has been assigned as prompter seems to continuously make problems for her. She prompts her on lines she’s already said, making her flustered. Then on the first evening of the play, Ann gets locked in her room. Sally takes over the part from then on. This also gives Ann to look closely at Sally without her glasses and she notices that it isn’t just Sally’s behaviour that resembles S.J.
Sally continues to follow a similar pattern to S.J. Ann is more suspicious when a new girl Beth joins and it seems S.J has been blackmailing her. Beth leaves the school before Ann gets to question her about it. Sally then steals a bracelet and threatens Ann that she will frame her if she doesn’t give her money. All these actions make Ann start to investigate her, she looks through her address book and tries to get her to slip up about her family. When an old friend Carrie comes to stay she thinks she can confirm suspicions. But Sally blames a bunch of tricks played on Carrie as Ann’s doing and Carrie leaves angry. Ann starts questioning other people about Sally’s past and finds she’s told different stories to different people. Also some girls seem to know she isn’t as nice as she seems. So Ann knows even if she isn’t actually S.J. she is hiding something.
Soon after this Ann finds hairs left by Sally in her hairbrush have dark roots. When Sally gets her into trouble again and the Head tells her they won’t be accepting her back to college next year, Ann has enough. Ann confronts Sally and she does admit that she’s S.J. but also that things don’t change, her father is on the board of directors over Mr. Smith’s job. Ann finds out that S.J. has gotten a girl Claire blackmailed into doing her exams for her. Ann and Claire team up and instead of writing the exam Claire writes a confession for “Sally”. S.J. leaves vowing revenge on Ann.
So this was a nice spin on the usual S.J. story. There is a bit of a mystery to whether Sally and S.J. are actually the same person. It is possible that Ann could have just had the bad luck to meet two nasty characters. It also addresses the issue of how S.J. could keep getting into these schools and fool everyone again and again. Perhaps in previous schools her father had paid off people to hush up her expulsions, but clearly she pushed that too far, so now she has to have a whole new identity.
I like the updated looks and the actual passage of time. Ann has a new haircut and looks older but is still recognisable. Likewise even though there is a question of whether Sally is S.J. they do share a lot of similar expressions, while at the same time giving her a new look. Another thing I liked is the title using the question mark to picture S.J. There are some mistakes in the story though that should have been caught by an editor, although she is mostly referred to as Sally Cairns two separate instances her last name is said to be Smith and Carstairs.
In the previous post I have already talked about the characters so I’ll just add that I like that this is recognisable S.J. story but with a mystery twist. As far as I know this was the last S.J. story, even though she vowed to make Ann pay no matter how many years it took. S.J. is a memorable character and while she never seemed to change, she was always scheming and being nasty, it was good to see the people and the settings around her change.
Plot
The Honourable Sarah Jane Cheetwell, is a nasty cheater and blackmailer but she fools most people into thinking she is really nice person. Ann Smith meets S.J. while waiting for a train to her new school. She is one of the few girls to have ever received a scholarship to the Millford boarding school and a reporter is interested in doing a news paper piece on her because of this. On mentioning that Ann’s father works for Lord Cheetwell, S.J. butts in and gets her picture taken with Ann. She offers to help Ann settle in at school, but as soon as they are in the train away from the reporter and Mrs. Smith, S.J. is quick to abandon Ann. She is left standing in the corridor while S.J. and her friends take over the compartment. Ann sees S.J. cheating at a game of cards and S.J. soon threatens Ann to keep her mouth shut as she could get her family thrown out of their cottage and her father sacked. So it doesn’t take Ann long to see S.J.’s true colours
Ann’s a junior and thinks maybe she won’t have to see S.J much but unluckily for her she is assigned as S.J.’s helper (nicknamed Sprogs at the school). S.J. is everyone’s favourite prefect, one of Ann’s clasmates Bessie thinks Ann is lucky to be S.J.’s Sprog. Of course S.J. makes Ann do extra work and also uses her to take the blame for things she does. When a dodgy friend of S.J. blackmails her for money, she takes it from a charity collection and blames Ann for stealing it. Luckily for Ann the boy is caught by the gardener and he gets the money back. S.J. makes sure there’s no further questioning, she creates a distraction by fainting, giving him time to escape.
S.J.’s goal for the year is to become school captain and she is not going to let anyone upset her plans. When out for a hike S.J. slips pulling another girl, Laura (a captain nominee), down with her. She saves herself and lets Laura fall, and as everyone is blind to S.J.’s lies, they believe that she tried to save Laura after she slipped. She isn’t happy when Laura’s boyfriend, Tony, not only gives her the cold shoulder but tries to find out what really happened on the hike. She frames him with stealing her necklace in front of the other girls but doesn’t report him. Tony still won’t back down, and S.J. continues to cause trouble for him by pretending he made her horse rear up. Of course Ann believes Tony but can’t say anything for fear of her family.
Ann is happy to see S.J. has outsmarted herself by pretending to be hurt, she won’t be able to take part in a gymkhana. Of course S.J. doesn’t give up that easy and makes a hoax phone call for Mary, her replacement, to be called away. Ann tries to fix it but in a rush Mary trips on the stairs. S.J. blames Ann for hoax in a “kindly” way, saying Ann was disappointed for S.J. and had made the hoax call but then felt guilty. One of the teachers, Miss Norton, is suspicious of this story. S.J. isn’t too happy that Miss Norton is keeping a close eye on her, so she has to get rid of her. S.J. gets her father’s influence at another school to hire her as a Headteacher. Miss Webb comes as Miss Norton’s replacement and she is perfect for S.J. as she is impressed by money and people’s titles. When S.J. gets Webb an invitation to her home she follows it by emphasising how much she wants to win a swimming competition. Miss Webb takes the hint and overlooks her turning short at one point. Ann notices it though and she implies that Bessie may have caught it with her video camera, even though she knows she only videoed the other end of the pool. This makes Miss Webb nervous and S.J. “accidently” knocks Bessie and her camera into the pool. and lets Webb knows she knows.
S.J. continues to use Miss Webb to her advantage whenever she can. She continues to scheme although she doesn’t always come up on top, she tries scamming an old woman out of a valuable paperweight paying £5 for it but then it turns out it’s worthless. Bessie also continues to be S.J.’s biggest fan and helps her campaign for school captain. Meanwhile Lord Cheetwell fires Ann’s father so S.J. loses her power over Ann and isn’t too happy that a newspaper report about the incident may jeopardise her election chance. Of course S.J. has still charmed everyone so they believe her when she says it is all a misunderstanding. She is a bit anxious about her rival Sue so in order to hurt Sue’s campaign, S.J. spray paints Sue for captain defacing property. She also intends to get Ann into trouble be blaming her. Leading everyone to Ann’s locker they see the spray-paint in Ann’s locker. But Bessie speaks up saying she saw S.J. put the can there. S.J. leaves Millford and more good news for Ann as her father has a new job with housing. It ends with Ann being glad of a fresh start and being rid of Cheetwell family forever. Little did she know!
Unfortunately for Ann she keeps running into S.J. after this, at different schools and the cycle repeats. When the Millford School is destroyed in a fire Ann is transferred to Castlefield School, only to find S.J. on top form there. S.J. manages to get rid of another old Millford student, Mary, before she sees her and blames it on Ann. As Ann has only accepted as a trial student, S.J. uses this to keep Ann’s mouth shut about Millford. . But knowing that she needs a stronger hold over her, S.J. tricks Ann into going out of bounds and takes a photo of her at a disco. Again everyone thinks she is great and only Ann knows the real S.J. There are similar plots to the first story like the matron becoming suspicious of her then suddenly getting better job else where. There is also another instance of a girl falling and hurting herself because of S.J. She is also looking to win something this time its a Popularity cup rather than captain.
On parents day S.J. makes sure Ann doesn’t invite her parents so she won’t get recognised. Although Mary has returned for the day and spots S.J and begins to think maybe she’s being blaming the wrong person. S.J still thinks Ann might make things difficult for her, so she starts getting her in trouble. When the Head tells her the trial hasn’t worked out the Smiths come to pick Ann up, They see S.J. there and at the same time Mary’s parents have rung to tell the head about S.J. So once her actions are revealed and she has to leave the school.
Later Ann takes a domestic job at an exclusive Switzerland school. She finds S.J. is the head girl there and responsible for domestic staff. Again most people think she is great but she has been blackmailing one girl. Gretchen took some old pies home that were going to be thrown out and now S.J. keeps her scared. S.J. has threatened to get Ann sacked and her parents would have to repay the costly airway price. But Ann isn’t so easily pushed around any more and sets out to find away to expose S.J. She also convinces Gretchen to team up with her. S.J is up to her usual tricks; sneaking out to parties, her and her cousin Rodney try to steal a necklace and she tries to steal a watch during a school trip. Ann and Gretchen manage to get the upper hand at times. Again a staff member gets suspicious of her but S.J. manages to get the matron dismissed. Eventually she is exposed yet again.
Thoughts
These were not the only S.J. stories, there was another sequel titled “Is It?” and prequels “Young S.J.” which I’ll get to another time. So as a character, she had a long run. From the structure and ending of the first story it seems that “The Honourable S.J.” should have been a one time serial but obviously it proved so popular that she became a regular character.
There have been plenty of serials with nasty characters like S.J. so I do wonder why she was chosen to become a regular. She was tag lined in later stories as “the girl you love to hate” so there must be interest in following such a character and presumably cheer at her inevitable downfall. S.J. covers every negative characteristic you can think of she’s a snob, selfish, greedy, lazy, two-faced, sly, mean and vindictive. Still she doesn’t come across as one dimensional, her motivations given her character makes sense and clearly a lot of her behaviour seems to be genetic or influenced by her father and cousin Rodney!
As for Ann I think she made for an interesting protagonist. There is an actual development of the character as she gets older. In the first story she feels quite trapped by S.J. but there was times she tried to foil her plans, as time goes on by the third story she is far more active in keeping an eye on S.J. and trying to expose her. Her character gets stronger in time, she isn’t a pushover in later stories and she is quite smart at spoiling S.J.’s plans. I always thought that Ann also had a bit of a wry sense of humour. When the other girls would go on about how great S.J. was her expression isn’t one of misery its more of pitying their naivety. Also even though S.J. made things tough for Ann and I wouldn’t call her time at school overly pleasant, she was still never completely miserable. Ann had friends, enjoyed school activities and especially got satisfaction out of seeing S.J.’s plans not going right. So it wasn’t all doom in gloom.
The second story in particular seemed to thread familiar ground, but I do think there was enough in future stories to keep it fresh. S.J. was impressive at turning situations to her advantage and like I said as time went on Ann became a more active opponent for S.J. I liked that in the third story that Ann had an ally in Gretchen. She starts off quite meek but with Ann as a friend she becomes more confident, it was nice to see Ann being able to have someone to confide in. It can be amusing watching S.J. at times, she wants all this popularity but sometimes this backfires on her like when she wants to sneak away at the ice rink but all the younger students won’t leave her alone. Also what makes S.J. interesting is she never had just one scheme going. She usually had an ultimate goal like wanting to be school captain, but all her time isn’t devoted that, she also sneaks off to parties, tries to steal things and tries to get out of any boring jobs or hard work. This keeps the story more appealing. The art is also good throughout, there’s some great detail put in and the characters do actually start to look older in later serials.
When Judy ended and became part of the new comic Mandy & Judy the first classic story they printed was The Honourable S.J. In preperation for this the last Judy issue had a prequel story. It takes place in the holidays before Ann starts the school. S.J.’ s aunt has given her a horse Brandy and she also hires a girl Rosie to help. S.J. enjoys riding but has no intention of mucking out. A film crew are using the Cheetwell’s property at the time as well and are looking for an extra to take part. The director sets up a competition to choose the best rider. S.J. threatens Rosie to help her cheat as she is a better rider. Rosie then finds out that she is no longer reliant on the Cheetwell’s job, so tells the director the truth. S.J.’s father comes home from his trip in America complaining about his employee’s daughter has won a scholarship. He doesn’t think lower classes should be allowed mix. Alhough S.J sees there could be some advantage. Presumably part of the reason for this story was to encourage readers to buy the new comic.
The next page has a list of published Hounouable S.J. stories.
Girls comics were full of bullying, blackmail and nasty girls. As evidenced in this interesting article: http://www.booksmonthly.co.uk/bully.html. So I thought I’d take a look at some of these, starting with two similar stories:
Hateful Harriet
Plot
Peg Roberts has to keep Harriet Marlowe out of trouble in school, or else her widowed mother will be fired by middle manager, Mr. Carrick. Harriet has been expelled from many schools, and is sent to live with the Roberts as well. At the same time as this, Peg is competing for a drama scholarship, which also relies on her getting a good character reference from her teachers. Of course Harriet causes Peg all sorts of trouble, and has the teachers fooled that she is a sweet girl. Mrs. Roberts can’t do anything to help as she is also at the beck and call of Harriet. Finally Harriet gets caught out and expelled and Mr. Carrick fires Mrs. Roberts. Luckily for her she gets a job in a travel agents. Harriet is to be sent to school in Switzerland, though she doesn’t seem happy about it. On the day of Peg’s big interview for her scholarship, Harriet is in an accident with a bridge collapse. After Peg misses her interview to save her life, Harriet turns over new leaf and helps Peg get a second chance with the scholarship. She in turn is given a second chance with the school and is allowed to come back.
“Be Nice to Nancy!”
Plot
Yvonne Baxter has to be nice to Nancy Norden (Nikki in the reprint), or she fears her father will lose his job. Nancy is openly nasty and a bully and is not popular at school. This of course causes many troubles for Yvonne as she keeps covering for her. She loses friends and gets in trouble in school. When she tries to explain how nasty Nancy is to her parents, they don’t listen. Only her best friend Maggie knows what’s going on. Eventually Mr. Norden catches Nancy out and he apologises to Yvonne. He was hoping that she would be a good influence on Nancy. He is going to send her to a special school instead and of course Mr. Baxter isn’t going to be fired.
Thoughts
A girl forced to be friends with a nasty girl for fear of a parent’s job is a common theme. There were ,any variations of this theme such as the family’s reputation, rather than a job, being in jeopardy. The link at the start of this post discusses a lot of the different types of bullying that went on in these stories.
Both Hateful Harriet and Be Nice to Nancy have an overall similar storyline. Even their looks correspond with the long blonde hair for the antagonist and the shorter dark hair of the protagonist. Both Harriet and Nancy get up to similar trouble and share a lot of the same personality traits. At the same time Peg and Yvonne both feel helpless and dislike having to cover for the other girls. There are differences though, in how the stories develop and conclude. In the case of Hateful Harriet, Mrs. Brown knows what Harriet is like but not only can she not help Peg she also has to give into Harriet’s demands. (Incidentally this story would not work today, as Mrs. Roberts boss could be charged with wrongful dismissal, at first he wants to fire her because of her age and only keeps her on as long as she keeps his boss’s daughter out of trouble).
Yvonne on the other hand tries to tell her parents what Nancy is like but they don’t listen. Her father in particular keeps the pressure on her to be friendly with Nancy. While Nancy does use this to her advantage, Yvonne seems to feel the most pressure from her father and Mr. Norden rather than Nancy herself. Harriet likes to constantly remind the Roberts that they have to keep her happy.
Harriet does get redeemed in the end but Nancy hasn’t learned her lesson. This contrast could be to do with the way their fathers deal with their daughters. While Nancy’s father is actively trying to help her out (though he may be going about it the wrong way!). Harriet’s father doesn’t appear at all, instead his orders are passed through lower manager Mr. Carrick. Clearly Harriet is not used to people being kind to her for no reason, she seems to be following her father’s behaviour of using power and threats to get what she wants. She is used to being shipped around and her behaviour becomes more understandable when it seems she hasn’t had a very caring home life. When Peg shows her friendship, even after Mrs. Roberts gets a new job and then saves her life, Harriet turns her life around and starts to appreciate her friendship.
Nancy is a less sympathetic character. Mr. Norden does try to help his daughter but he goes about it the wrong way. He puts the pressure on Yvonne to be friends with her thinking that if she is not with a bad crowd then she will be a better person and stay out of trouble. He dosen’t realise that she needs more help than that and that it is unfair to expect Yvonne to be responsible for keeping his daughter on the right path. At least Nancy does get the chance to go to a school that will help her, but she doesn’t have the excuses of Harriet for her bad behaviour.
Hateful Harriet is a bit more dated, and Peg is such a good person that she goes to support Harriet in a play that she should have been lead in (this is after Mrs. Roberts gets her new job). It’s a bit unbelievable that a girl could be this nice! Harriet’s change of heart may be a bit sudden but after a near death experience not unlikely. Be Nice to Nancy is a story that is remembered pretty well so it must have stuck in people’s mind. It is more realistic in it’s portrayal of characters and everything isn’t all wrapped up neatly in the end. Still most importantly the protagonist gets a happy ending, free of Nancy!
It’s interesting to see how a similar theme can develop differently, and of course very telling is the different time periods as they were first published nearly 2 decades apart.
Thirteen year old Shirley Lawson had the same rare blood type as Julia Milson Smith, the spoiled daughter of millionnaire industrialist, Gilbert Milson Smith. Shirley was forced to stay close to Julia as a shadow in case she ever needed a blood transfusion. Mr Milson Smith had given Julia’s widowed mother a job and her family a home, so Shirley knew that if she tried to leave her family would be turned out.
