Picture this: It’s 1838, the second year of Queen Victoria’s reign.
You’re an inspector, working for the Metropolitan Police Service, a newly-formed organization
tasked with laying down the law on the foggy streets of London.
You don’t have an easy job: The first case of successful forensic fingerprinting won’t
happen for another 54 years.
The first camera had only been invented 22 years ago, and the process of taking a picture
is too long and too complicated to catch criminals in the act.
And Dr. Edmond Locard, a French criminologist referred to by some as “The Father of Forensic
Science”, won’t even be born until 1877.
In other words, if you’re hoping to bring a criminal to justice, you better have some
reliable witnesses.
One day, as you’re patrolling the streets of Peckham – a district of South London
- a panicked man runs towards you.
He’s gibbering, petrified.
Says he’s just witnessed a horrible crime.
No, it isn’t Jack the Ripper, he won’t start committing his gruesome murders in Whitechapel
for another 50 years.
However, the criminal that the terrified witness describes to you is even stranger.
He’s got fiery eyes, a monstrous face, and long, metal claws.
He can jump to inhuman heights, and can even breathe fire.
He sometimes wears a helmet, sometimes a cloak, and sometimes even a suit of black, bulletproof
armour.
Some even said he could terrify women into “dangerous fits” without laying a finger
on them.
You could think, “Surely, this witness is either crazy, lying, or drunk.
No such man can possibly exist!”
But you don’t think that.
Instead, your blood runs cold.
You gulp, give a solemn nod, and say, “I’ll get right on it, sir.”
Because you’ve heard of this entity before.
What the witness has just described to you is a figure known as Spring-Heeled Jack, a
legendary boogeyman who terrorized the UK from 1837 to 1888.
He’s been described as a ghost, a monster, a demon, an alien, and even the first real-life
super-villain.
Sir John Cowan, the Lord Mayor of London, has publicly acknowledged the threat of this
supposedly supernatural criminal.
He received startling correspondences from the public earlier in the year.
They detailed the attacks of a man with iron claws on servant girls in Hammersmith, Kensington,
and Ealing.
Even local Blacksmiths aren’t safe from his wrath.
None of these victims have reported their attacks out of fear, but it seems more sightings
occur every single day.
Even the Duke of Wellington, a man nearing seventy, attempted to hunt the mysterious
beast on horseback – to no avail.
If Jack isn’t stopped, who knows what this sharp-clawed, fire-breathing maniac will do
next?
That’s why it’s your job to track him down, and bring his reign of terror to a long-overdue
end.
Like any good police inspector, first, you look over the major witness reports.
Hearsay about a tall, cloak-wearing man harassing women around the city has been circulating
for a while.
The monster who would soon come to be known as Spring-Heeled Jack was a popular figure
in tabloid journalism and Penny Dreadfuls for months before anyone got the Law involved.
So much so that it’s unclear whether many of the stories surrounding Jack and his exploits
are fact, myth, or outright fiction.
Burroughs and districts across London were rife with stories of a grinning devil hopping
from rooftop to rooftop, hunting for his next victim.
His victims, by the way, were almost exclusively young women.
Polly Adams, an eighteen-year-old barmaid, claimed to be attacked by an Impish creature
while crossing Blackheath in South London.
It belched fire at her, and tried to tear off her clothes with its metal claws.
A servant named Mary Stevens also reported a Spring-Heeled Jack sighting in Barnes Common.
Jack supposedly grabbed Mary, ripping into her gown and attempting to kiss her, then
fleeing without a trace.
The day after, the mischievous phantom leapt in front of a carriage, causing it to crash.
Jack supposedly escaped with a nine-foot jump into the air, laughing madly while he did
it.
But none of these attacks were ever officially recorded beyond ominous local folklore.
The first officially recorded attack was the assault of Jane Alsop, an eighteen year old
woman from London’s East End.
The incident occurred on February 20th, 1838, at around 9 P.M.
Jane was at home with her father and two sisters when she heard a loud rapping on her front
gate.
When she investigated the noise, the man at the gate – who was shrouded in shadows at
the time – claimed he was a police officer.
When Jane asked what business he had at her home, the supposed “police officer” told
her: “For God’s sake, bring me a light, for
we have caught Spring-Heeled Jack here in the lane!”
Alsop had heard all the frightening rumours, and was excited to finally see this local
legend up close.
She grabbed a lit candle from inside her home and ran outside to assist the officer.
However, as she handed him the candle, she didn’t realize just how close to her that
mythic, jumping outlaw was.
After accepting Alsop’s candle, the police officer tore off his cloak.
Alsop recalled the man’s hideous face, his strange helmet, and his tight-fitting white
Oilskin suit.
She was staring into the burning eyes of Spring-Heeled Jack himself.
According to Alsop’s testimony, before she could even scream, Jack spewed a jet of white
and blue flame.
Alsop shrieked in terror, at which point, Jack set upon her with his iron claws.
He clawed at her face, her neck, tore out chunks of her hair, and started to rip apart
her dress.
Luckily, Jane managed to free herself from Jack’s grasp, and was helped back into the
home by her father and sister’s.
Jack was relentless.
He hammered away at the door with his iron fists, until one of Jane’s sisters frightened
him off by calling a nearby police officer out of her second story bedroom window.
Jack leapt away before the police could even arrive.
Like a candle going out in the night, he was gone.
There were two investigations into the matter by the police.
One under the premise that Jack was alone, and another working under the assumption he
had an accomplice.
Two primary suspects were identified and questioned: A carpenter named Thomas Millbank – who
owned an outfit very similar to Jack’s – and a bricklayer named Payne, believed to be his
accomplice.
However, Jane insisted that neither of them matched the man who attacked her that night.
The case remains unsolved.
The next incident occurred a few days later that same month.
Lucy Scales and her sister were departing from their brother’s house, and taking the
passage home through Green Dragon Alley.
Lucy was walking slightly ahead, when she saw a tall, cloaked figure standing further
down the alley.
As Lucy approached the figure, he suddenly turned and breathed another jet of blue fire
into her face.
The sudden attack temporarily blinded Lucy, and induced a fit that led her to fall unconscious
while her attacker fled and disappeared.
Lucy’s brother heard her screams from his home, and ran to assist her.
When Lucy later reported the incident, she described her assailant as having a "tall,
thin, and gentlemanly appearance."
Several suspects were taken in, but there was never enough evidence to convict.
Once again, Jack remained uncaught.
Spring-Heeled Jack’s exploits became infamous, inspiring numerous hoaxes and copy-cat attacks
by criminals eager to imitate the iconic villain.
The landlady of the White Lion Pub had a shocking experience on the 28th of February, when a
man approached her claiming to be Jack himself.
The man, apparently deranged, then produced a club from his coat and started attacking
nearby women.
Blacksmith James Priest was arrested in Islington, after attacking several women in the style
of Spring-Heeled Jack, and sentenced to three months of hard labour for his crimes.
A man in Kilburn was fined after donning a sheet and mask in the style of Jack, and committing
a series of mischievous pranks.
These are just a handful of the hundreds of acts carried out by Jack’s imitators.
But the original Jack – or Jacks – remained at large.
Every time Jack made another cunning escape, the hysteria seemed to spread further.
Sightings had gone from a series of isolated oddities to a full-blown epidemic.
Reports of Spring-Heeled Jack’s assaults even began to expand beyond their origins
in London and its surrounding towns and villages.
In April of 1838, in the town of Southend-on-Sea, a local paper’s headline read “SPRING-HEELED
JACK AT SOUTHEND.”
A woman walking along the cliff tops had been accosted by a mysterious man, who – in true
Jack style – tore at her clothes with his claws.
On the fourteenth of that same month, a report in the Brighton Gazette claimed a Sussex gardener
named Rose Hill was attacked by a leaping, bear-like creature.
The report on this same incident from The Times contained the phrase, “Spring-heeled
Jack has, it seems, found his way down to the Sussex coast.”
The distance between Southend and Sussex is almost a hundred miles.
In a time when the first cars were still over forty years off, Spring-Heeled Jack was really
getting around.
As Jack was never apprehended, sightings began to dry up.
However, in the following years and even decades, Spring-Heeled Jack incidents seemed to reoccur
in small clusters.
In 1843, he was spotted in Northamptonshire and East Anglia.
In 1845, he was sighted harassing sex workers with his claws and trademark blue flames in
London.
In 1847, a series of attacks in Devon were attributed to Jack.
Almost thirty years later, in 1872, Spring-Heeled Jack reared his famously ugly head again in
Peckham.
Meanwhile, residents of Sheffield were contending with the “Park Ghost” – which also got
rolled in with Jack’s now-extensive mythology.
Two of the most insane - and downright comical - reports of Spring-Heeled Jack escapades
both occurred in 1877.
A military outpost in Aldershot, Surrey, supposedly failed to fend-off assaults from Jack over
the course of several months.
Jack would apparently bound up to sentry towers with his freakish jumping skills and slap
soldiers in the face, before fleeing into the night.
The problem progressed to a point where soldiers guarding the North Camp were ordered to shoot
him on sight, but their bullets were reported to have no effect.
This is consistent with the other report from that year, where Jack – once again, in the
form of a bear – took out his rage on the city of Lincoln.
Citizens shot at him as he bounded over Newport Arch, a Roman monument in the city, but their
bullets caused no harm.
As an astute investigator, you’re probably wondering: With a rap sheet this extensive,
there must be some evidence and theories about the nature of Spring-Heeled Jack.
How could someone possibly be so prolific, so infamous, and yet, so obscure?
While no one individual was ever caught and tried for the collected crimes of Spring-Heeled
Jack, there was a figure in popular culture at the time who was considered a prime suspect:
Irish nobleman Henry de la Poer, the 3rd Marquis of Waterford.
Poer was known by some as The Mad Marquis, for his love of booze and predilection towards
insane pranks.
The Mad Marquis, Spring-Heeled Jack or otherwise, was a fascinatingly bizarre figure in his
own right.
Some even attribute the origin of the phrase “Paint the town red” to him, in honor
of a wild drinking session in the town of Melton Mowbray.
During their night of drunken debauchery, the Marquis and his friends committed vandalism
across the town, including smearing doors, buildings, and a statue with red paint.
But it wasn’t just the Marquis’ love of pranks that tied him to Spring Heeled-Jack.
In 1880, author E. Cobham Brewer wrote of the Marquis: “he used to amuse himself by
springing on travellers unawares, to frighten them, and from time to time others have followed
his silly example.”
The Marquis also resided in London during the infamous attacks on Jane Alsop and Lucy
Scales, further tying him to the crimes.
Reports of Jack assaults also notably reduced in London after the Marquis took his leave
in 1842.
However, the reports of Spring-Heeled Jack sightings continued across the country throughout
this period, even after 1859 – the date of the Marquis’ death.
While it’s certainly romantic to entertain the idea that a roguish aristocrat donned
a disguise and became London’s most legendary monster, there’s little beyond weak, circumstantial
evidence to back this up.
The Spring-Heeled Jack case, while sprawling, terminates in a series of frustrating dead
ends.
Did Jack, like the phantom or demon or monster he was always thought to be, slip in and out
without a trace?
The perfect criminal committing the perfect crime?
Well, not quite.
As mentioned earlier, the line between fact and fiction in the case of Spring-Heeled Jack
is as thin as one of his razor-sharp, iron claws.
Before the assaults of Jane Alsop and Lucy Scales – the only two ever officially reported
to the police – Jack was a local legend.
He haunted the public consciousness more than the public streets.
While all signs point to those two assaults being legitimate (if exaggerated a little
in the retellings) when closely analysed, few of the other reports hold up.
Over different retellings, Jack’s powers and appearances change drastically – he’s
an imp, he’s a tall, rakish gentleman, he’s a demon, a bear, and in one case, a sinister
white cow.
He pops up, often simultaneously, in locations across the country.
Even assaults and strange happenings that have little to do with Spring-Heeled Jack
were rolled into his growing legend, spreading what was most likely a national case of mass
hysteria.
Everyone from minor pranksters to sexual predators contributed to the dark myth of Spring-Heeled
Jack.
This was only made worse by the relentless sensationalism of Penny Dreadfuls and tabloid
newspapers, looking to profit off the Jack craze.
Spring-Heeled Jack was more of a brand than a true menace to Victorian society.
And it was this sense of increasing exaggeration that lead to ridiculous, far-fetched stories
like the assaults on the Aldershot military base and the city of Lincoln.
As this investigation draws to a close, we have one more question to ask ourselves: Was
Spring-Heeled Jack – as in, the being with a hideous face, iron claws, freakish jumping
ability, and fiery breath – ever real?
No, probably not.
But for a few decades at the start of the Victorian era, the wild imaginations of the
people of England made him real.
And he’ll probably cross your mind again, next time you walk down a dark alley and see
a man in the distance, wearing a long, black coat…
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