Spring-heeled Jack: Difference between revisions

Spring Heeled Jack (Illustration circa 1890).

Spring Heeled Jack (also Springheel Jack, Spring-heel Jack, etc.) is a character from English folklore said to have existed during the Victorian era. The first recorded claimed sighting of Spring Heeled Jack occurred in 1837. Later alleged sightings were reported from all over England, from London up to Sheffield and Liverpool, but they were especially prevalent in suburban London and later in the Midlands, where they peaked between the 1850s and 1880s.

Many theories have been proposed to ascertain his nature and identity, none of which have been capable of clarifying the subject completely, and the phenomenon still remains unexplained.

The urban legend of Spring Heeled Jack gained immense popularity in its time due to the tales of his bizarre appearance and his capacity to perform extraordinary leaps, to the point that it became the topic of several works of fiction and much speculation about possible paranormal origins.

Description

Spring Heeled Jack was described by alleged victims as having a terrifying and frightful appearance, with diabolical physiognomy that included clawed hands and eyes that "resembled red balls of fire". One of the reports claimed that, beneath a black cloak, he wore a helmet and a tight fitting white garment like an "oilskin". Many stories also mention a "Devil-like" aspect. Spring Heeled Jack was said to be tall and thin, with the appearance of a gentleman, and capable of making great leaps. Several reports mention that he could breathe blue and white flames from his mouth and that he wore sharp metallic claws at his fingertips. At least two individuals claimed that he was able to speak in comprehensible English.

History

Early reports

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Picture from a penny dreadful of Spring Heeled Jack jumping over a gate.

Isolated accounts of a strange leaping man were in circulation as early as 1817 ¹, but the first widely recognized report occurred in September 1837 in London. A businessman returning home late one night from work told of being suddenly shocked as a mysterious figure jumped with ease over the considerably high railings of a cemetery, landing right in his path. No attack was reported, but the submitted description was disturbing: a muscular human male with devilish features including large and pointed ears and nose, and protruding, glowing eyes.

Shortly after this incident, a group of passers-by claimed that a character by the same description had leapt out of the darkness and attacked them². He allegedly grabbed a woman, who managed to get away after getting her coat ripped, followed by her companions. One of them, however, a barmaid named Polly Adams, tripped and fell behind. Hours later, the police discovered her still lying in the same spot. According to her statement, the assailant tore off the top of her blouse and, after grabbing her naked breasts, deeply scratched her belly with his claws, leaving her unconscious and bloodied but still alive.

Later, in October 1837, a girl by the name of Mary Stevens was walking to Lavender Hill, where she was working as a servant, after visiting her parents in Battersea. On her way through Clapham Common, according to her later statements, a strange figure leapt at her from a dark alley. After immobilising her with a tight grip of his arms, he began to kiss her face, while ripping her clothes and touching her flesh with his claws, which were, according to her deposition, "cold and clammy as those of a corpse". In panic, the girl screamed, making the attacker quickly flee from the scene of the assault. The commotion attracted several residents who launched an immediate search for the aggressor, but one could not be found.

The next day, the leaping character allegedly chose a very different victim near Mary Stevens' home, inaugurating a modus operandi that would become typical of future reported: he jumped in the way of a passing carriage, causing the coachman to lose control and crash, injuring him seriously. Several witnesses claimed that he escaped by jumping over a nine foot-high wall while babbling with a high-pitched and ringing laughter.

A few days later, another woman reported being attacked near the Clapham churchyard. For the first time, police investigators discovered evidence at the scene of the crime: two footprints about three inches deep, which implied that they may have been made by someone who had landed from a great height. Upon a closer inspection, some curious imprints were found within the impressions, which suggested that the attacker had been wearing some sort of gadget on his shoes, "perhaps some kind of compressed springs" in the opinion of a present police officer. In spite of its importance, the lack of forensic investigators in those days made the police forget about such evidence, and instead of making plaster casts of the impressions, they simply allowed the weather to erode them. Gradually, the news of the strange character spread, and soon the press and the public gave him a name: Spring Heeled Jack ³.

Official recognition

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A public session at the Mansion House, London (c. 1840).

A few months later, on January 9 1838, the Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Cowan, revealed at a public session held in the Mansion House an anonymous complaint that he had received several days earlier, which he had withheld in the hope of obtaining further information. The correspondent, who signed the letter "a resident of Peckham", wrote:

"It appears that some individuals (of, as the writer believes, the highest ranks of life) have laid a wager with a mischievous and foolhardy companion, that he durst not take upon himself the task of visiting many of the villages near London in three different disguises — a ghost, a bear, and a devil; and moreover, that he will not enter a gentleman's gardens for the purpose of alarming the inmates of the house. The wager has, however, been accepted, and the unmanly villain has succeeded in depriving seven ladies of their senses, two of whom are not likely to recover, but to become burdens to their families.

At one house the man rang the bell, and on the servant coming to open door, this worse than brute stood in no less dreadful figure than a spectre clad most perfectly. The consequence was that the poor girl immediately swooned, and has never from that moment been in her senses.

The affair has now been going on for some time, and, strange to say, the papers are still silent on the subject. The writer has reason to believe that they have the whole history at their finger-ends but, through interested motives, are induced to remain silent." ⁴

Though the Lord Mayor seemed fairly skeptical, a member of the audience confirmed, "servant girls about Kensington, Hammersmith and Ealing, tell dreadful stories of this ghost or devil". The matter was reported in The Times and other national papers the next day, and the day after that (January 11) the Lord Mayor showed a crowded gathering a pile of letters from various places in and around London complaining of similar "wicked pranks". The quantity of letters that poured into the Mansion House suggests that the activities of Spring Heeled Jack were common knowledge in suburban London by that time. One writer said he had ascertained that several young women in Hammersmith had been frightened into "dangerous fits", and some "severely wounded by a sort of claws the miscreant wore on his hands". Another correspondent affirmed that in Stockwell, Brixton, Camberwell and Vauxhall several people had died of fright, and others had had fits; meanwhile, another reported that the trickster had been repeatedly seen in Lewisham and Blackheath, but the police were too frightened of him to act.

The Lord Mayor himself was in two minds about the affair: he thought "the greatest exaggerations" had been made, and that it was quite impossible "that the ghost performs the feats of a devil upon earth", but on the other hand someone he trusted had told him of a servant girl at Forest Hill who had been scared into fits by a figure in a bear's skin; he was confident the person or persons involved in this "pantomime display" would be caught and punished ⁵. The police were instructed to search for the individual responsible for the attacks, and rewards were offered. Many individuals, including Admiral Edward Codrington decided to join the search, but to no avail: he was never caught. Furthermore, he seemed to have grown bolder, and his attacks multiplied.

The Scales and Alsop incidents

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Spring Heeled Jack as depicted on an early penny dreadful.

Perhaps the best known incidents involving Spring Heeled Jack were the alleged attacks on two teenage girls, Lucy Scales ⁶ and Jane Alsop. The Alsop report was widely covered by the newspapers, while a single paper covered the Scales' report, presumably because Alsop came from a comfortably well-off family whereas Scales came from a family of tradesmen. This coverage by newspapers fueled the collective hysteria surrounding the case.

It was reported that, on February 20, 18-year-old Jane Alsop opened the door of her father's house in the district of Bow to a man claiming to be a police officer, who asked her to bring a light because he and other policemen had "caught Spring Heeled Jack in the lane", but this man then attacked her, tearing at her dress and hair until other members of her family ran to help her. She told the Lambeth police investigators that "he was wearing a kind of helmet, and a tight fitting white costume like an oilskin. His face was hideous; his eyes were like balls of fire. His hands had claws of some metallic substance, and he vomited blue and white flames."

A second story comes from February 23. Once again a black-cloaked figure allegely knocked on the door of a house, this time in Turner Street, off Commercial Road. When a servant boy answered the call, the visitor asked to speak to the master of the house, a Mr. Ashworth. The boy turned to call his master when he noticed that the man standing at the doorway had glowing red eyes. In a state of panic, he screamed, attracting the attention of the neighbours. With an angry and frustrated groan, Spring Heeled Jack waved his clawed fist at the boy's face and darted over the nearby rooftops. At the following interrogation by the authorities, the child claimed that he had noticed what a significant piece of evidence: as Spring Heeled Jack was turning his back at him, he observed that he had a golden embroidered letter "W" on his shirt beneath the black cloak, much like a coat of arms.

The Scales report is as follows: Five days later February 28, 1838 ⁷, 18-year-old Lucy Scales and her sister were returning home after visiting their brother, a butcher who lived in a respectable part of the district of Limehouse. Lucy, slightly ahead of her sister, was half way along Green Dragon Alley when a character, which had been waiting at an angle in the passage while she approached, appeared and attacked her. The figure breathed fire into Lucy's face and then bounded away as the girl fell to the ground, seized by violent spasms which lasted for several hours. Four witnesses attested that the attacker escaped by leaping from the ground to the roof of a nearby house on a single jump. A few days later, on March 6, Lucy's and her sister made their deposition at Lambeth–street police court in company of their brother, William. ⁸.

The legend spreads

The Times reported under the heading "Outrage at Old Ford" the alleged attack on Jane Alsop. This was followed up (see Palmer's index to The Times) with the account of the trial of one Thomas Millbank, who, immediately after the reported attack on Jane Alsop, had boasted in the Morgan's Arms that he was Spring-heeled Jack. He was arrested and tried at Lambeth Street court. The arresting officer was Jonas Lea, who had earlier, as a PC, arrested William Cawder, the Red Barn murderer. Millbank had been wearing white overalls and a greatcoat, which he dropped outside the house, and the candle he dropped was also found. He escaped conviction only because Jane Alsop insisted her attacker had breathed fire, and Millbank admitted he could do no such thing. Most of the other accounts were written long after the date. Contemporary newspapers do not mention them at all.

Ad for a Spring Heeled Jack penny dreadful (1886).

After these incidents, Spring Heeled Jack became one of the most popular characters of the moment. His alleged exploits were reported in the newspapers and became the subject of several penny dreadfuls and plays performed in the cheap theatres that abounded at the time. But, as his fame was growing, reports of his appearances became less frequent, while spreading over a large area. In 1843, however, a wave of sightings swept the country again. A report from Northamptonshire, in Hampshire, described him as "the very image of the Devil himself, with horns and eyes of flame", and in East Anglia, where reports of attacks to drivers of mail coaches became common.

Although there were stories of terrified citizens and, on some occasions, injuries of various sorts, so far there were no reports that Spring Heeled Jack had ever killed a person. However, that changed in 1845. That year, the figure was allegedly seen at Jacob's Island, Bermondsey, a low class slum of decaying wooden houses and full of pestilent ditches, which had been immortalised by Charles Dickens as the lair of Fagin and his band of child thieves in Oliver Twist. He was said to have cornered a 13-year-old prostitute named Maria Davis on a narrow bridge that crossed one of the foulest ditches in the neighbourhood, called Folly Ditch, breathed fire into her face and hurled her into the stinking waters below. Police, hearing the story from alleged witnesses, dragged the ditch and recovered the girl's body. The verdict at the subsequent inquest was one of death by misadventure but the inhabitants of the area branded Spring Heeled Jack as a murderer.

The last reports

In the beginning of the 1870s, Spring Heeled Jack was reported again in several places distant from each other. In November 1872, the News of the World reported that Peckham was "in a state of commotion owing to what is known as the "Peckham Ghost", a mysterious figure, quite alarming in appearance". The editorial pointed that it was no other than "Spring Heeled Jack, who terrified a past generation". Similar stories were published in the Illustrated Police News. In April and May of 1873, there were numerous sightings of the "Park Ghost" in Sheffield, which locals came to identify as Spring Heeled Jack. These incidents culminated with thousands of people gathering each night to hunt the ghost.

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Aldershot Barracks – North Camp, Central Road as it looked in 1866.

This news was followed by more reported sighting, until in August 1877; one of the most notable reports about Spring Heeled Jack came from a group of soldiers in Aldershot's barracks. This story went as follows: A sentry on duty at the North Camp peered into the darkness, his attention attracted by a peculiar figure bounding across the road towards him, making a metallic noise. The soldier issued a challenge, which went unheeded, and the figure vanished from sight for a few moments. As the soldier turned back to his post, the figure reappeared beside him and delivered several slaps to his face with "a hand as cold as that of a corpse". Attracted by the ensuing noise, several men rushed to the place, but they claimed that the character leapt several feet over their heads and landed behind them. According to their testimony, Spring Heeled Jack simply stood there, watching them and grinning, apparently waiting their reaction with glee. One of the guards shot at him, with no visible effect other than to enrage his target; some sources claim that the soldier may have fired blanks at him, merely used to make warning shots. The strange figure then charged towards them and spat blue flames at them from his mouth, making the guards desert their posts in panic and then disappearing into the surrounding darkness.

There were several more alleged attacks of Spring Heeled Jack on guards at Aldershot. All these sightings concurred in the description: tall, muscular complexion, wearing a helmet and a white tight fitting oilskin suit.

After these reports, a massive spree of Spring Heeled Jack's sightings poured in from all England. In Lincolnshire, he was allegedly seen leaping over several houses, wearing a sheep skin. An angry mob supposedly chased him and cornered him, and just like in Aldershot a while before, residents uselessly fired at him. Many witnesses claimed that the shots did hit him, sounding as they were hitting a hollow metallic object, like an "empty bucket". As usual, he was said to have made use of his leaping abilities to lose the crowd and disappear once again.

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Modern view of Saint Francis Xavier's Church, Liverpool.

By the end of the 19th century, the reported sightings of Spring Heeled Jack were moving towards western England. In September 1904, in Everton, in north Liverpool, Spring Heeled Jack allegedly appeared on the rooftop of Saint Francis Xavier's Church, in Salisbury Street. Witnesses reported that he suddenly jumped and fell to the ground, landing behind a nearby house. When they rushed to the point, so the story goes, they faced there a tall and muscular man, fully dressed in white and wearing an "egg shaped" helmet, standing there waiting. He laughed hysterically at the crowd and rushed towards them, making several women gasp in dismay. Clearing them all with a gigantic leap, he disappeared behind the neighbouring houses.

Theories

The fact that no one was ever caught and identified as Spring Heeled Jack combined with the extraordinary abilities attributed to him and the very long period of time he was reportedly at large have led to all sorts of theories to determine both his nature and identity. While several researchers seek a rational explanation to the events, other authors echo themselves in the more fantastic details of the story to propose different kinds of paranormal speculations.

Skeptical positions

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Henry de La Poer Beresford, 3rd Marquess of Waterford (1840).

Skeptical investigators have repeatedly deprecated the stories of Spring Heeled Jack.

The simplest of explanations offered is that the reports were nothing but mass hysteria that developed around various legends of a boogeyman or devil that had been around for centuries. Some skeptics maintain that it is nothing but an exaggeration of the tale of a certain mentally ill zealot who danced and leapt over rooftops claiming that the Devil was chasing him ⁹.

Other researchers believe that some individual(s) may have been behind its origins, being followed by imitators later on ¹⁰. It is worthy of note that, following his reported appearance and for the years that followed, the press, the authorities, and most of the general public considered Spring Heeled Jack to be not a supernatural creature but rather an individual (or perhaps more than one person) with a macabre sense of humour who delighted in scaring and molesting women. This idea matches the contents of the letter to the Lord Mayor, which accused a group of young aristocrats as the culprits, after an irresponsible wager. A popular rumour that was in circulation as early as 1840 pointed at an Irish nobleman, the Marquess of Waterford, as the main suspect of being behind the events. The responsibility of the Marquess has been accepted by several modern authors, who suggest that a humiliating experience with a woman and a police officer could have given him the idea of creating the character as a way of "getting even" with police and women in general ¹¹. Said authors speculate that he could have designed (with the help of friends who were experts in applied mechanics) some sort of apparatus for special spring-heeled boots, and that he may have practised fire-spitting techniques in order to increase the unnatural appearance of his character. Lastly, they point at the embroidered coat of arms with a "W" letter observed by the servant boy at the Ashworth incident, a notorious coincidence with his title's name.

Indeed, the Marquess was frequently in the news in the late 1830s for drunken brawling, brutal jokes and vandalism, and was said to do anything for a bet; his irregular behaviour and his contempt for women earned him the moniker "the Mad Marquis'', and it is also known that he was present in the London area by the time the first incidents took place. Unfortunately, The Waterford Chronicle was able to report his presence at the St Valentine's Day Ball at Waterford Castle, which means that he has a cast-iron alibi for the attacks on Jane Allsop and Lucy Scales, which are at the centre of Jack's authenicated history. But he was, nevertheless, pointed as the perpetrator by the Rev. E. C. Brewer in 1880, who attested that the Marquess "used to amuse himself by springing on travellers unawares, to frighten them, and from time to time others have followed his silly example" ¹². In 1842, the Marquess of Waterford married and settled in Curraghmore House, Ireland, and reportedly led an exemplary life, until he died in a horse riding accident in 1859. Meanwhile, Spring Heeled Jack remained active for decades after, which leads the aforementioned modern researchers to the same conclusion as Brewer's: the Marquess may well have been responsible for the first attacks, while it was up to other pranksters who occasionally imitated him to continue the task.

Skeptical investigators are unanimous in asserting that the story of Spring Heeled Jack was exaggerated and altered through mass hysteria, a process in which many sociological issues may have contributed. These include unsupported rumours, superstition, oral tradition, sensationalistic publications, and a folklore rich in tales of fairies and strange roguish creatures. Gossip of alleged leaping and fire-spitting powers, his alleged extraordinary features and his reputed skill in avoiding all attempts of apprehension captured the mind of the superstitious public. This became especially true with the passing of time, which gave the impression that Spring Heeled Jack had suffered no effects from aging. As a result, a whole urban legend had been built around the character, being reflected by contemporary publications, which in turn fueled this popular perception in a vicious circle ¹³.

Paranormal conjectures

A wide variety of explanations have been proposed by authors who support the paranormal origin of Spring Heeled Jack. Due to the inherent nature of the phenomenon, such theories are speculative and bereft of any proof. The following are just a few:

• A common hypothesis proposes Spring Heeled Jack as an extraterrestrial entity, somehow stranded on Earth. Supporters of this theory believe this would explain his non-human appearance and features, (e.g., retro-reflective red eyes, or phosphorous breath), his jumping ability (by suggesting that he may have been native of a planet with greater gravitational pull, like astronauts experienced on the Moon), strange behaviour (which could have been altered through Solipsism Syndrome or as a result of breathing the gases present at the Earth's atmosphere), and his longevity.¹⁴

• A visitor from another dimension, who could have entered into this plane through a wormhole or dimensional gate.¹⁵

• A demon, accidentally or purposefully summoned into this world by practitioners of the occult (a theory that has been incorporated into the RPG "Feng Shui") ¹⁶, or who made himself manifest simply to create spiritual turmoil.¹⁷

The supporters of the paranormal explanations usually refer as proof of their claims that no human could have ever used a gadget to leap the way Spring Heeled Jack was said to, by pointing that in the 20th century, the German Army experimented on the subject with disastrous effects. Allegedly, such experiments gave an estimated 85% rate of failure, with broken legs and ankles on the testers. They conclude that there was no possibility for an individual to succeed where an official warfare project failed, especially considering that the former had preceded it by many decades.¹⁸ It might be worth noting that there currently is a comparable device being marketed ¹⁹, but this gadget requires modern, state-of-the-art carbon fibre springs.

Spring Heeled Jack in popular culture

Spring Heeled Jack on a penny dreadful cover page (c. 1904).

The vast urban legend built around Spring Heeled Jack influenced many aspects of Victorian life, especially in contemporary popular culture. The Oxford English Dictionary recounts that, in late Victorian times, his name had become a general term for a street criminal who leapt upon people to rob or frighten them, and then relied on his speed in running to make his escape. It cites a Cheshire source from 1887 as an example, where maids who had just been paid their yearly wage were said to be afraid to go out carrying much money, since "there are so many of these spring-heeled Jacks about" ²⁰ . For decades, especially in London, his name was equated with bogeymen, as a means of scaring children into behaving by telling them that if they were not good, Spring Heeled Jack would leap up and peer in at them through their bedroom windows, by night.

However, it was in the field of fictional entertainment where the legend of Spring Heeled Jack exerted the most extensive influence, due to his allegedly extraordinary nature. Almost from the moment the first incidents gained public knowledge, he turned into a successful fictional character, becoming the protagonist of many penny dreadfuls from 1840 to 1904. Several plays where he assumed the main role were staged as well.

The most notable fictional Spring Heeled Jacks of the 19th and early 20th centuries were:

• A play by John Thomas Haines, in 1840, Spring-Heeled Jack, the Terror of London, which shows him as a brigand who attacks women because his own sweetheart betrayed him.
• Later that decade, Spring Heeled Jack's first penny dreadful appearance came in the anonymously written Spring-Heeled Jack, The Terror of London, which appeared in weekly episodes.
• W. G. Willis' 1849 play, The Curse of the Wraydons, where Spring Heeled Jack is a traitor who spies for Napoleon Bonaparte, and stages murderous stunts as a cover.
• A 1863 play, Spring-Heel'd Jack: or, The Felon's Wrongs, written by Frederick Hazleton.
• Spring-heel'd Jack: The Terror of London, a penny dreadful published by the Newsagents’ Publishing Company c. 1864-1867.
• Spring-heel'd Jack: The Terror of London, a 48-part penny weekly serial published c. 1878-1879 in The Boys' Standard, written either by veteran dreadful author George Sala or by Alfred Burrage in his pseudonym of Charlton Lea.
• Spring-Heel Jack; or, The Masked Mystery of the Tower, appearing in Beadle's New York Dime Library #332, 4 March 1885, and written by Col. Thomas Monstery.
• a 1889-1890 48-part serial published by Charles Fox and written by Alfred Burrage in his pseudonym of Charlton Lea.
• a 1904 version by Alfred Burrage. ²¹
• a remake of The Curse of the Wraydons, written in 1928 by surrealist Swiss author Maurice Sandoz, which served as base for a movie that bears the same name in 1946. ²²

The early works invariably presented Spring Heeled Jack as an arch-villain, but remarkably, his figure experienced a metamorphosis throughout the years, and his role was completely swapped to a superhero. The first penny dreadful to introduce such a change was the 1860s edition, and this variation was adopted by all the publications that followed, reaching its highest development in Burrage's 1904 version.

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Spring Heeled Jack, depicted on a modern comic (2003).

In these stories (which take place in 1805, after Napoleon Bonaparte has conquered Europe), Spring Heeled Jack is Bertram Wraydon, a young and handsome lieutenant of the British Army, heir to £10,000 a year, who is unfairly framed for treason by his evil half brother Hubert Sedgefield. After escaping from his prison, Wraydon returns seeking revenge on the villains, assuming a secret identity and an odd-looking costume with mane and talons, fighting against evil and helping the innocent. He has a secret lair, where he has hidden what he managed to save of his inheritance, selflessly using it to fund his heroic activities. These include the design of a spring mechanism that allows him to leap over thirty feet, and a device to breathe flames at evildoers. He even has a trademark which he leaves at the scene of his actions; a letter "S" that he carves with his rapier after his mission is accomplished.

Although lacking durable literary value, the Spring Heeled Jack series exerted an important influence as a predecessor of modern day pulp magazine and comic superheroes, taking into consideration that they were written twenty years before the first Zorro adventure and more than half a century before other fictional characters like Batman or the Lone Ranger were created. Such lasting influence and its consequent cultural importance were, for most part of the 20th century, practically forgotten.

However, a renewed interest in the legend of Spring H