Being an examination of the ancestry and descendents of Henry Jekyll alias Edward Hyde, with a brief discussion of his connection and visitation to outré dimensions

By Dennis E. Power

PART SIX; THE HYDDEN PAIR

     One clue to the lycanthropic nature of Dr. Jekyll's transformation can be found in the oddest of places, in the film Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. At the end of the film the character of Tubby had been brought into police headquarters as the Hyde Park Monster. While being subdued he bit several policemen. After being bitten the police officers also  turned into Hyde type monsters. Although the film contains mostly fictional elements including the incident that made me investigate the film further, I have discovered that some of the incidents actually did happen.

    The main characters of Slim and Tubby were the pseudonyms of the two immortal bumblers who would later meet Frankenstein, Wolfman and the Invisible Man. Their guise in this year of 1883 was of two  American's attached to the London Police Force to learn law enforcement practices.

    The film opens with a Dr. Samuel Poole being stalked, clubbed and choked by the bestial appearing Mr. Hyde in a dark alley. A reporter Bruce Adams discovers the body. The papers state that another Hyde Park Murder has been committed. The next day the reporter visits Hyde Park to investigate for clues. A suffragette demonstration catches his eyes and he watches one of the suffragettes with particular interest. The Suffragette rally turns into a riot and among the police called to the scene are Slim and Tubby. Their "rough" handling of a well connected high born lady gets them arrested. In actuality the high born lady was resisting arrest and physically assaulted Slim and Tubby, whose attacks on the woman were little more than verbal threats. They shared their jail cell with Bruce Adams who questioned them about the Hyde Park murders.

    Bruce also spent time talking to the interesting suffragette who was in another cell. Her name was Vicky Edwards; she was twenty years old and a dance hall entertainer. She and the other Suffragettes were bailed out of jail by Henry Jekyll. Henry Jekyll is Vicky Edwards' guardian. Bruce Adams rides along with Vicky and Dr. Jekyll in Dr. Jekyll's carriage to Dr. Jekyll's house and then with Vicky to Vicky's theatre. Dr. Jekyll is not pleased with this development. He desired Vicky and had been waiting for her to have reached maturity and come into her inheritance before making her his wife.

    After Bruce and Vicky have departed, Dr. Jekyll enters his library and opens a secret passage behind a bookcase. This leads to a laboratory in his basement. Inside the laboratory is a wide array of chemical apparatus with ongoing experiments or chemical manufacturing. A few cages are filled with laboratory animals. Working in the lab is a brutish large man whom Jekyll calls Bately. Bately is a deaf mute. He shows Dr. Jekyll the paper with the story on Dr. Poole's death. Dr. Jekyll says that he had to kill him since Poole had mocked his theories. Jekyll then retracts the statement and says, He did not kill him. Dr. Hyde did.

    Dr. Jekyll injects himself with his serum and transforms into Mr. Hyde. He wishes to dispose of Bruce Adams and travels to the theatre where Vicky Edwards is performing.

    Tubby and Slim have the idea to capture the Hyde Park "Monster" and be reinstated on the London Police Force. Their "investigation" leads them to the theatre where Vicky Edwards is performing. They talked their way inside the theatre. Mistaking a performer wearing a Javanese mask for the monster they follow him and accidentally run into the real Mr. Hyde. Their inept attempts to capture him lead to a public confrontation. Bruce Adams joined Slim and Tubby as they chased after Mr. Hyde up the stairs to the roof. A fruitless chase across the rooftops has the men decide to split up and chase after Mr. Hyde.

    Tubby was tired of the chase and decided to go home. He entered a building through a skylight but tripped and fell; he grabbed onto some electrical wires as he fell ripping them from their mounts. Amidst dangling live wires Tubby lands next to a wax dummy of Frankenstein's Monster. The loose electrical wires touch one of the neck bolts of the Frankenstein's Monster. It becomes animated and steps forward.  In the dim light he thinks it is Hyde and runs screaming away. The building he has landed in is a wax museum that also contains exhibits of George Washington, Dracula and Buffalo Bill. (1)

    Tubby is then chased by the real Hyde but locks himself into an iron maiden to escape from Hyde. Hearing footsteps from outside the museum Hyde steps back into the shadows. Slim hears Tubby's screams for helps and breaks into the wax museum. He frees Tubby who tells him that Hyde is in the museum. Slim ordered Tubby to capture Hyde while Slim went for the police.

    Tubby managed to lock Hyde into a jail cell that is part of the wax museum's exhibit. As he runs for the police, Hyde transforms back into Dr. Jekyll. The Inspector is enraged that Tubby locked up one of London's most prominent Physicians. Jekyll claims that he had been walking by the wax museum and accosted by Tubby.

    Although Tubby declares that Dr. Jekyll must be Mr. Hyde he is disbelieved. Dr. Jekyll refused to press charges against Tubby and actually offered Slim and Tubby a job walking him home and guarding him for the night.

    After he showed Tubby and Slim to their room for the night, Jekyll visited his lab. He told Bately that Tubby had seen him as Hyde. Bately made a throttling motion. Jekyll wanted to keep Tubby as a human experimental animal so told Bately not to kill him.

    Nervous Tubby was unable to sleep in Jekyll's house. He spent some time snooping around the house and stumbled onto the hidden passage behind the library. He discovered the lab with the odd experimental animals, weird chemicals and giant hulking lab assistant. Bately attempted to throttle Tubby. Their struggle caused some chemicals to explode. The noise brought Slim and Jekyll to the library. Tubby told Slim all about the lab. Jekyll admits to the lab but claimed that he worked alone.

    Slim, Jekyll and Tubby looked at the lab. Jekyll claimed that the odd behavior of the lab animals is due to his experiments with brain switching. (2)

    As Slim examined the lab, Jekyll excused himself and went into another room. Tubby drank what he believed was a glass of water. Meanwhile in the other room Jekyll told Bately that Slim and Tubby had to be eliminated immediately. Before Bately could act however Tubby sneaked out of the laboratory through a door leading to an alley. Slim chased after him. They decided to visit a pub to get a drink to calm their nerves. The substance that Tubby drank turned him into a giant anthropoid mouse. Slim is oblivious to the transformation until the other pub patrons panicked.

    They hurried to the police station and told the Inspector that Jekyll had turned Tubby into a mouse. The Inspector believed that they had been drunk and threw them out of the office.

    Tubby and Slim enlist the aid of Bruce Adams and Vicky Edwards to prove Jekyll is Hyde. Bruce and Vicky visited Jekyll's house with Slim and Tubby to prove to the two that Jekyll is innocent.

    Jekyll showed Bruce and Vicky the room in the basement, which had been turned into a wine cellar. Jekyll, Bruce and Vicky returned upstairs while Slim and Tubby stayed behind to find clues to the where the laboratory had disappeared. They found a bottle of wine named Moselle, which Slim thought was the stuff that had turned Tubby into a mouse. Tubby drank the bottle of wine but only transformed into an inebriated state.

    As Slim and Tubby sampled Jekyll's wines, Bruce Adams asked Jekyll for Vicky's hand in marriage. Jekyll agreed. He told Bruce that they had many arrangements to discuss. Bruce left Jekyll's home so Vicky and Jekyll could discuss the matter. Once Bruce had gone, Jekyll declared that he would not agree to this marriage, Vicky would be Jekyll's bride and no one else's. He told Vicky he would change Adams into a monster and when he killed him, the police would think that Adams had been the Hyde park killer.

    Vicky struggled with Hyde knocking the loaded syringe out of his hands. It fell and lodged in the sofa cushions. Without having taken any of his serum, Jekyll transformed into Mr. Hyde. Vicky screamed. Tubby, Bruce, Slim and Bately came running into the room. In the melee, Bately was shot and killed and Tubby fell onto the hypodermic needle. Tubby transformed into a Hyde creature unnoticed by anyone and jumped out of the window. Slim thought this was Hyde and chased after him. Jekyll went out the front door chased by Adams.

    Tubby and Hyde ran in opposite directions and were chased throughout the city. Slim eventually captured the transformed Tubby and dragged him back to the Police Inspector's office. While Tubby was being subdued he bit several police officers including the Inspector.

    Hyde circled back to Jekyll's house. He grabbed Vicky and carried her upstairs to one of the bedrooms. His intended rape was not consummated as Adams burst into the bedroom with a gun. Hyde  jumped out of the window. He crashes to the sidewalk three floors below and dies, transforming back into Jekyll.

    Tubby transformed back into his natural state. The Inspector decided to throw the book at the two. However the Inspector and the many police officers that Tubby had bit transformed into Hyde creatures and chased Tubby and Slim.

    This was the cinematic version of the events, so what really happened? We know that Dr. Jekyll was not exposed as Mr. Hyde until 1885 and he was not an active murderer, this would come much later as his darker side took greater control of his personality.

    The reality seems to be a bit odder and yet not as fantastic.

    1882 and 1883 were the early experiment stages of Jekyll's formula. He had created a formula that affected the areas of the brain that controlled inhibition. He has also created an early version of his transformation formula in which he was able to physically transform into Mr. Hyde, who was not yet the bestial creature depicted in stage and film. The formula only transformed Jekyll and only for short periods of time. Yet even Hyde was not a murderer at this time, it even took Hyde time to work up to murder. Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde were not the Hyde Park Murders but they were involved.

In a scenario later duplicated by Lorenzo Cameron and other like madmen, Dr. Jekyll was not an active murderer but he did orchestrate murder. In fact, Dr. Jekyll was not even involved in the murders, Mr. Hyde was. The actual Hyde Park murderer was Dr. Jekyll's hulking, mute assistant Bately. Bately was told who and when to kill by Mr. Hyde, since the good Dr. Jekyll could not bring himself to order a man to kill another man.

    Although Jekyll's initial formula only worked on himself, transforming him into his "evil" side, it did have some effect on other people as later demonstrated by James Utterson. It removed a person's inhibitions and also had the effect of heightening their potential for violence and suggestibility so that they would more inclined to carry out their more violent impulses. By playing on how these people who scoffed at Jekyll's theories were ruining the Doctor, Mr. Hyde was able to steer Bately into murdering these Doctors.

    Jekyll was the guardian of Vicky Edwards who would have turned twenty-five that year. His affair with Sarah Lanyon had ended badly in 1881 with her disappearance. His eyes turned towards his young ward Vicky Edwards. Most accounts of Jekyll's do not even mention Vicky Edwards. Victoria Edwards was the daughter of one of Dr. Jekyll's classmates from medical school. Her father became died when he caught a disease from one of his patients. Her mother became an invalid from the shock of her husband's death. In 1868 Henry Jekyll was working with mental patients and became acquainted with Mrs. Edwards. He was able to revive her health although it was never very strong. Jekyll aided her as best as he was able, feeling an attraction towards the woman. She had however vowed never to marry again. Mrs. Edwards inherited a small estate. Jekyll was named Vicky Edwards' guardian in 1871 after her mother died. Unable to take care of a young girl, Jekyll placed her in the best girl's schools.  Vicky Edwards also stated that Dr. Jekyll always gave her what she asked for, this was simple enough since the money was from Vicky Edward's estate.

     When Jekyll perceived a threat to his plans with Vicky Edwards, he transformed into Mr. Hyde and directed Bately to kill Bruce Adams at the theatre Vicky Edwards was performing. Mr. Hyde accompanied Bately to the theatre but waited outside until the deed was done. Inside the theatre the brutish looking Bately was spotted. Because his features made him seem like a monster Tubby, Slim and Bruce Adams chased him. Bately hid in the wax museum. When Tubby entered the wax museum and pulled out the wires connecting the arc lamps that illuminated the museum, the museum was plunged into almost total darkness. Tubby ran away from the moving Frankenstein's monster to run into Bately. Bately chased and struggled with Tubby in the dark museum. However when Tubby locked himself in the iron maiden, Bately escaped from the wax museum and returned to Jekyll's house.

 Mr. Hyde had waited outside the theatre for Bately's return and had watched him being chased by Adams, Tubby and Slim. He followed discreetly. Hearing a commotion in the wax museum he hurried there to see if Bately had been captured. He arrived just after Slim had freed Tubby from the iron maiden and heard Tubby tell Slim that the monster was inside. After Slim left, Mr. Hyde slipped inside the nearly pitch-black museum to see if he could find Bately. He found himself accosted by Tubby. Incredibly, Tubby managed to lock Mr. Hyde into a jail cell exhibit in the wax museum. Mr. Hyde was at that time not the super strong being he would become.

  By the time that Tubby had returned with the authorities Mr. Hyde had transformed back into Dr. Jekyll who of course knew nothing of how he had gotten in the cell other than remembering Tubby pushing him in there.

    When Tubby declared that he knew that Jekyll was a monster, Jekyll realized that he would need to summon Dr. Hyde to remove this threat.

    On those occasions in the film when we see Dr. Jekyll plotting with Bately to kill someone, it is actually the Mr. Hyde personality, who at the earliest phase of their transformations, looked like a slightly younger version of Dr. Jekyll.

    The incident with Tubby transforming into a mouse is simply a case of hallucination. Mr. Hyde did indeed plan to keep Tubby as an experimental lab rat; it stands to reason that he also meant to keep Slim as well. Who would really care about the disappearance to two discredited former police officers? Dr. Jekyll slipped Tubby and Slim a powerful narcotic so that he and Bately could easily cage them. The powerful narcotic would have placed normal men into a drug induced coma, however while Tubby's and Slim's physiology was affected it did not put them to sleep but rather put them in a psychoactive state. When they wandered off and drank at a pub, the alcohol reacted with the powerful drug in their system to cause them to believe that the patrons of pub were indeed seeing Tubby as a big rat when they were probably just calling him one. They were indeed inebriated and hallucinating when they visited the police inspector.

    The sudden transformation of the laboratory into a wine cellar is easily explained. Tubby and Slim had been drugged before Tubby ever found the lab. It was quite simple for Jekyll to simple alter their route slightly so that they traveled down a nearby set of steps into a small room which was indeed a wine cellar.

    Tubby and Slim stayed behind because Jekyll had humiliated them. They retaliated by grabbing some of the more expensive wines and drinking them down.

    Bruce Adams did ask Jekyll for Vicky Edwards' hand. Jekyll agreed. When Bruce left Jekyll did indeed make a counter proposal, although it was not the demanding selfish one that Jekyll makes in the film. Vicky is flattered but turns down Jekyll's proposal. He accepts it graciously. Vicky left the library and Dr. Jekyll summoned Bately to the library. He injects Bately with some of his serum and hands Bately a filled syringe. Rage and humiliation has made Jekyll transform into the Hyde personality without recourse to the serum, possibly the first time this ever happened.

    He planned to have Bately abduct Bruce Adams and inject him with the serum. They would then induce the uninhibited and violence prone Adams to commit a murder. Adams would then be exposed as the Hyde Park Killer and discredited. Vicky would gladly marry Jekyll then.

    Vicky walked back into the library as Bately took the syringe from Jekyll. She recognized this man as the one she had seen at the theatre whom Tubby and Slim had recognized as the Hyde Park Killer. Believing that Bately was attacking Jekyll Vicky screamed and attacked him. The syringe was knocked into the sofa. Bruce Adams, Tubby and Slim came running into the room. In the melee that followed, Bruce Adams pulled a gun and fired at Bately. He missed and hit Tubby. Tubby was knocked onto the sofa by the force of the bullet that hit his stomach. The hypodermic needle hit him in the posterior and broke off.

Tubby was inebriated from all the wine had had just drunk, he had been shot in the stomach and was in severe pain, he had sat on an needle which broke off in his skin, he had also been injected with a chemical that removed his inhibitions and heightened his violent impulses. In short the chemical in his system along with the rage and pain he felt made Tubby revert to his Neolithic behavior. Screaming in his native guttural language he leapt out of the window and began attacking those not of his tribe. Slim followed after him, well aware that it was Tubby he was following but needed to catch him before the idiot made everyone aware of their Secret.

    Bately took off in a panicked state, pursued by Adams. His brutish appearance, violent mannerisms and growling attempts to speak made it very plausible to the public that he was the Hyde Park Monster. Bately eluded all attempts to capture him and made his way to Jekyll's house for sanctuary. Dr. Jekyll however knew that Bately's use had come to an end. Since the poor brute could not speak and because he had indeed committed the Hyde Park murders, Jekyll had no compunctions against turning him in. He ordered Bately to surrender to the police.

    Bately instead grabbed Vicky Edwards and carried her upstairs. Jekyll followed as the panicked Bately held Vicky hostage as he stood next to a window while trying to think of a way out of this situation. Bruce Adams arrival on the scene distracted Bately and gave Jekyll an opportunity to grab Vicky Edwards from Bately's grasp. The sudden movement threw Bately off balance and he tumbled out of the window to his death.

    The film's references to Mr. Hyde are premature, as Edward Hyde did not exist as of yet. Jekyll may have taken the name from his involvement in the Hyde Park Murders, which he felt, guilty about and so ascribed to his darker self the name Hyde.

    Vicky Edwards did indeed marry Bruce Adams and Dr. Jekyll used his bitter regret to further refine his researches.

    The scene where Tubby bit the police officers did indeed happen. However they did not turn into Hyde creatures. This scene was put in at "Short Round One's" insistence. They were tweaking Jekyll, letting him know that they knew what he was and that he was probably still alive. ()

    After Tubby recovered from his "fit" Tubby and Slim spent a month or so in prison. After which they returned to America that had been their adoptive homeland for the last four hundred years.

NOTES

1.Let's examine some of the historical problems that this visit to the Wax Museum seems to bring up. First the electrical wires. Although the first electrical power plant in London began operating in 1882 most of the city was not plugged into the electrical grid for years. However electrical arc lighting had been used by businesses and certain sections of the city since the 1870's it was likely that these arc lights are the electrical wires Tubby had disconnected. Dracula was of course not written until 1897 and the character Vlad Tepes was obscure it is possible that he might have had a spot in a Wax Museum's chamber of horrors. Another possibility was the Dracula exhibit was actually a representation of Varney the Vampire who had been published prior to 1882. Buffalo Bill Cody was a well known name and figure even prior to his creation of  the Wild West Show in 1883, so it is also not an anachronism for him to be there either. The Frankenstein's Monster is a bit problematic, since it appears to have been a actual Monster brought to life, if only for a second by the electrical short. This does not appear to be one of the many monsters detailed in the Children of the Night article by Charles Loridans. This incident could be entirely imaginary or this may provide a partial answer to the question as to whether  Sir Patrick Clarke Wildman was successful in recreating Viktor Frankenstein's experiments or not. Hendrik Van Helsing's book Hollow Places was published in 1885 so we know that Wildman carried out his experiments earlier than that.

2. The brain switching reference was fictitious and was an allusion to House of Frankenstein in which Boris Karloff's character Dr. Neimann carried out such experiments. More than like the aggressive behavior of the animals was because Jekyll's earliest versions of the serum stimulated the violence impulse.

3. Actually at the time of the release of this film, Dr. Jekyll was undergoing intensive therapy at Garaden Institute under Dr. Harold Shea. Jekyll's personality was submerged under a persona called Alvin Samuels. See Hyde and Hair Part Three: Hydden Self.

SOURCES

Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Universal Studios, 1953
Brown, Mark House of Frankenstein, 1999
Eckert, Win Amazing Lanes 2000
Loridans, Charles Children of the Night: A Monstrous Timeline, 2000
Stevenson, Robert Louis The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Scholastic Press, 1963

Created April 30, 2002

All rights reserved. The text and design of this page are ©  2001 by the author, Dennis E. Power. No copying or reproduction of this article or any portions thereof in any form whatsoever is permitted without prior written permission and consent of the author.

HYDDEN TIME
A TIMELINE OF EVENTS IN THE HYDE AND HAIR ARTICLES

PART ONE: THE HYDDEN LINEAGE

PART TWO: HYDDEN HERITAGE

PART THREE: HYDDEN SELF

PART FOUR: HYDE AND HEIRS

PART FIVE: LOST IN THE REALMS OF MADNESS

PART  SIX: HYDDEN PAIR

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