Home cooking before Mr Punch beats his wife and the policeman to death (I always felt rather sorry for the crocodile). What an odd children seaside entertainment that was. Does it still exist?

www.kingofhits.co.uk/component/option,co...d,64/?g2_itemId=5231

Was it really a kiddies entertainment JK?. I often wonder.


As Peter Linebaugh puts it in his fascinating book " The London Hanged- Crime And Civil Society In The Eighteenth Century"

"‘Punch and Judy’ ‘expressed
class rage against family, police, courtiers, physicians and householders’, but
at the same time, ‘Punch, in murdering friend and foe alike, suggests to us that
the London working class was doing Jack Ketch’s job for him’. The
show is a miniature representation of violent crime and violent punishment
that acknowledges their interconnection; embodying at once a working-class
cynicism about Law and an authoritarian insistence on social control."

Jack Ketch being.. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ketch

www.amazon.co.uk/London-Hanged-Society-E...entury/dp/1859845762

I'm surprised it's still around. You'd think health and safety or the PC police would have ended it by now.

Two articles, eight years apart, about the same Punch and Judy puppeteer make the future of P&J sound grim:
Last Punch and Judy 'professor' is left stranded
One of Britain’s final Punch and Judy shows set to close as puppeteer is sick of kids throwing rocks at him

Jo some institutions have banned it and some libraries don't have adaptions of it.

My only gripe is I haven't seen a good Lunch and Judy in years. Either they don't use the squeaky voice or its toned down too much.

I loved it as a kid and never turned me in to a wife beater or a law breaker. Being with an ex partner that has beaten me and financially manipulative. That's something that police don't care about. Either man up (which will then be a lawsuit) or go find somewhere else to live (women have refuge houses).