In the first short story in a series, “The Man in Black” was a member of a secret society of similarly clad men. He was denounced as a traitor, shot, and left for dead. He came back, seeking vengeance on his betrayer, Number Ten. In the second installment, the renamed “The Man in the Black Cloak” was a similarly mysterious tall figure with a broad-brimmed low slouch hat, but draped in a long black cloak which (at least on one outing) concealed a “skeleton-like frame of white grisly bone”. What little can be seen of his face between cloak and hat is “a saturnine countenance, attenuated to a horrible degree – sunken cheeks, thin, protruding nose, and above all those deep-set, burning eyes.” It has a deep voice and a “deep, cavernous mouth” with “white, glistening teeth”. It seems to have the ability to leap out of a three story window fifty feet up, disappearing with only the sound of a loud clanking sound like something metallic against brick, and also to take off down a street with incredible speed and impossible silence as though “treading simply on empty air”, with the wind blowing its cloak across its frame “as though the head were supported by no body at all”. Created by Francis W. Doughty under the pseudonyms “P.T. Raymond” and “Paul Braddon”.
First Appearance “The Man in Black” in The Boys of New York: a paper for young Americans (nos. 383–391, 16 Dec. 1882–10 Feb. 1883)
First Publisher Frank Tousey
Appearance List “The Man in Black” in The Boys of New York: a paper for young Americans (nos. 383–391, 16 Dec. 1882–10 Feb. 1883), “The Ghouls of Gotham; or, The Man in the Black Cloak” in The Boys of New York Pocket Library #193 (1884, reprinted in Boys’ Star Library #158 June 21 1890), “The Man in the Black Coat; or, In Search of the John Street Jewels” in The Boys of New York: a paper for young Americans (v. XI, no. 569, July 10, 1886, reprinted in New York Detective Library #362)
Description In the first short story in a series, “The Man in Black” was a member of a secret society of similarly clad men. He was denounced as a traitor, shot, and left for dead. He came back, seeking vengeance on his betrayer, Number Ten. In the second installment, the renamed “The Man in the Black Cloak” was a similarly mysterious tall figure with a broad-brimmed low slouch hat, but draped in a long black cloak which (at least on one outing) concealed a “skeleton-like frame of white grisly bone”. What little can be seen of his face between cloak and hat is “a saturnine countenance, attenuated to a horrible degree – sunken cheeks, thin, protruding nose, and above all those deep-set, burning eyes.” It has a deep voice and a “deep, cavernous mouth” with “white, glistening teeth”. It seems to have the ability to leap out of a three story window fifty feet up, disappearing with only the sound of a loud clanking sound like something metallic against brick, and also to take off down a street with incredible speed and impossible silence as though “treading simply on empty air”, with the wind blowing its cloak across its frame “as though the head were supported by no body at all”. Created by Francis W. Doughty under the pseudonyms “P.T. Raymond” and “Paul Braddon”.
