The Legend Of Spring Heeled Jack
The other infamous ‘Jack’ of Victorian England is even more mired in urban legend than his more famous namesake, Jack The Ripper. A suburban demon who, depending on which stories you choose to read, could leap high into the air with a single bound, breathe fire, had sharp metallic claws and terrorized everywhere from London’s emerging suburbs to the dockside streets of Liverpool. Sometimes described as a black cloaked gentlemen who sported a helmet and tight fitting garments (like a Victorian Batman!) others described him as a demonic “devil – like” creature with glowing eyes; Spring Heeled Jack was a gas-lit arch villain who could strike anywhere, no one was safe, not even the military! Due to appear on the big screen alongside Sherlock Holmes in Guy Richie’s latest big budget blockbuster it seems fitting to look a bit further into the legend of this oft forgot Victorian bogeyman.
The first reported appearance of the as yet un-named ‘Jack’ took place in one of London’s many suburbs and told of a creature with pointed ears and bulbous glowing eyes who terrified a businessman returning home from work late one night in 1837. As the man passed a local cemetery, a muscular figure with hideous features suddenly jumped over the high railings which enclosed the graveyard with one mighty leap. Unhurt but shaken the man continued his journey home. The next person to encounter Spring Heeled Jack would not be so lucky.
Later that same year a young girl named Mary Stevens was making her way home to Lavender Hill in South West London, having visited her family in Battersea. According to Mary’s statement as she crossed Clapham Common a strange figure leapt at her from a dark alleyway and gripped her tightly in his arms and began kissing her face and ripping at her clothes with long ‘claws’ and touching poor her flesh with hands “cold and clammy as those of a corpse”. Understandably the terrified girl began to scream, startling her attacker who fled back into the darkness. A crowd gathered, alerted by Mary’s screams and launched a search for her assailant but found no one.
Nothing particularly out of the ordinary so far, sadly experiences like that of Mary’s can easily be explained without resorting to the paranormal or demonic. Sexual assaults against young girls are unfortunately not unheard of on Clapham Common and the man’s claws and corpse like hands could easily be attributed to an unkempt down and out, likewise the description of the “creature” encountered by the businessman. However, as is all too often the case, from Mary’s unpleasant (but sadly not unusual) experience and the businessman’s late night encounter the seeds of myth were sown. The very next day after Mary’s encounter on the Common ‘Jack’ made yet another appearance near her home in Lavender Hill, his target this time could not have been more different than a lone girl walking home across dark parkland. As a carriage made its way through the dimly lit streets a strange figure jumped from the shadows and into its path causing the driver to lose control of the panicked horses and crash severely injuring himself in the process. Many of the witnesses claimed that the figure that had caused the crash then fled the scene, leaping a nine foot high fence, letting out a high pitched and screeching cackle as it went. Inevitably the press of the day got hold of these stories; the perpetrator of the events of that October was soon dubbed ‘Spring Heeled Jack’.
Jack’s story was to develop further when in January of 1838 the Lord Mayor of London revealed, in public session an anonymous letter he had received that read . . .
“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.”
As could be expected the mayor took a skeptical view of this letter, however a member of the session’s audience added that . . .
“Servant girls about Kensington, Hammersmith and Ealing, tell dreadful stories of this Ghost or devil.”
The matter was reported in The Times on 9th January and the other national papers had got hold of the story by the 10th. On the 11th the mayor presented a crowded room at Mansion House with even more letters from all over London telling of yet more serving girls being terrorized by similar “wicked pranks”. These included reports of several young girls from Hammersmith who had been terrified into “dangerous fits” and others who had even been “severely wounded by a sort of claws the miscreant wore on his hands”. There were stories of how victims in Stockwell, Brixton, Camberwell and Vauxhall had been so terrified that they too had suffered fits, some even dying of fright, meanwhile the gas-lit streets of Lewisham and Blackheath were likewise being plagued by this demonic trickster. It seemed that the Lord Mayor of London had a serious problem on his hands; with this ghoul stalking the streets it seemed that suburban London were no longer safe. Although considering the events to be subject to “the greatest exaggerations” a trusted friend had relayed the tale of a young woman from Forest Hill who had been “scared to the point of suffering fits” by a late night assailant clad in a bear’s skin. Clearly something had to be done and the mayor not only instructed the police to search out and apprehend the culprit but also offered a public reward for his capture.
Jack’s most famous attacks were to take place just over a month after the mayor’s sessions at Mansion House. Two attacks, committed within just a few days of each other were to seal Spring Heeled Jack’s infamy and the subsequent police reports were the first time that some of Jack’s most defining features were put into print. On the night of 19th February 1838 a young girl named Jane Alsop answered the door of her Father’s house to be greeted by a young man claiming to be a police officer. The man told the girl to bring a light, exclaiming “we have caught Spring-heeled Jack here in the lane!” As Jane returned with a candle she noticed that the man was dressed in a long black cloak, which as she handed him the candle he threw off and “presented a most hideous and frightful appearance”, spewing forth blue and white flames from his mouth and glowering at her with eyes that were “red balls of fire.” As if this wasn’t bizarre enough this demonic creature was also apparently sporting a helmet of some description and very tight fitting clothing that appeared to be made of oilskin. Without uttering another word the man then grabbed young Jane Alsop and started tearing at her clothes with claws that the poor girl was convinced were “of some metallic substance.” With a terrified scream Jane managed to free herself from the man and ran for the safety of her father’s house but before she could make it Jack had caught her, tearing at the flesh on her arms and neck with his claws. Jane’s cries alerted one of her sisters to her plight and the girl came running to her sister’s aid; with this the creature fled back into the night.
Just over a week later on 28th February, 18 year old Lucy Scales and her sister were making their way home from Limehouse in the London borough Tower Hamlets. As the girls were passing along Green Dragon Alley they noticed a man standing in their path. Lucy, who was walking in front of her sister, approached the cloaked figure and he spewed “a quantity of blue flame” directly at her face, blinding her. The shock of this strange attack caused her to instantly collapse into a violent fit that apparently lasted for several hours. The girl’s brother, who they had been visiting, later said that he had heard a girl’s scream shortly after his sisters had left his house in Limehouse, and running down the alley he had found Lucy lying on the ground in the throes of a fit while the other sister tried to bring her to her feet. After the family had got the stricken Lucy home her sister explained what had happened, describing Lucy’s assailant as a tall, thin gentleman dressed in a long black cloak holding a small lamp similar to those used by the police, he did not speak, or attempt to touch the girls in anyway, the man just simply turned and walked swiftly away. Despite a police search and several arrests, all of whom were set free, no culprit was ever found.
A few months after this the papers announced the first of Jack’s excursions outside the capital. On 14th April The Brighton Gazette reported a gardener in Rosehill, Sussex had been scared witless by some unknown creature leaping from the bushes. The Times wrote “Spring-heeled Jack has, it seems, found his way to the Sussex coast” despite the fact that the Rosehill “apparition” bore little or no resemblance to the Spring Heeled Jack of London. The Brighton Gazette reported that on 13th April a strange creature appeared to the gardener “in the shape of a bear or some other four-footed animal.” Having attracted attention by growling, the creature then clambered up the garden wall. Once reaching the top the creature took to running along the wall’s length, still on all fours. After jumping down and chasing the terrified gardener for some time the creature clambered back up the wall and made good its escape. A very different ‘M.O.’ than the “wicked pranks” suffered by the girls of London’s suburbs, but a story is a story.
The press, as you can no doubt imagine, loved the stories of Spring Heeled Jack just as they would lap up the tales of his more violent name sake some 50 years later. At the time of Jane Alsop’s attack The Times ran the headline “The Late Outrage At Old Ford” which was followed by an account of the trial at Lambath Street Court of Thomas Milbank who in the days immediately following Jane’s attack had been reported boasting around the local pubs and bars that he was Spring Heeled Jack. At the time of the attack Milbank had been seen wearing white overalls and a black greatcoat which had been discarded outside the Alsop house, Jane’s candle had also been found with Milbank’s coat. However, at the end of the trial Milbank was let off all charges due to Jane’s insistence that her assailant had breathed fire and as Milbank could quite clearly do no such thing it was impossible that he could be the culprit! With the reports of this farcical trail Spring Heeled Jack cemented his place in the nation’s imagination; Penny Dreadfuls were published telling tales of his crimes, plays were written, songs were sung and for a while even the devil in the most grotesque children’s entertainment of the Victorian world ‘The Punch & Judy Show’ was renamed in his honor.
But Jack’s career was far from over. By the 1870’s there were reports appearing in The News Of The World about how the residents of Peckham were “in a state of commotion owing to what is known as the “Peckham Ghost”, a mysterious figure, quite alarming in appearance”. In its editorial the paper even went so far as to claim that The Peckham Ghost was none other than “Spring Heeled Jack, who terrified a past generation” returning to play his dastardly games on the people of London once more. This was no one-off incident. Reports of Jack’s return were common place, with sightings of ‘The Park Ghost in Sheffield’ during 1873 being attributed to Spring Heeled Jack. One of the most bizarre sightings took place at Aldershot barracks in 1877. A group of soldiers claimed that a sentry peered into the darkness when his attention was taken by a strange figure leaping towards him, making a metallic noise with every bound. The soldier issued the usual challenge only to greeted with silence; the figure had vanished. As the young man turned back towards his post the strange figure appeared beside him and slapped him several times around the face with “a hand as cold as that of a corpse”. The noise of the scuffle attracted the attention of several of the barracks’ garrison who rushed to see what was happening. As the men charged the figure they claimed that he leapt high into the air and landed behind them. One of the men fired off a shot but the bullet seemed to have no visible effect other than to anger the creature, who then vanished. In 1922 Lord Ernest Hamilton published his memoirs in which he claimed that this event in fact took place in the winter of 1879 while his regiment was stationed at Aldershot and that similar events had taken place a year earlier at their barracks in Colchester. Lord Hamilton adds that the panic became so great after the Aldershot incident that his men were ordered to shoot “the night terror” on sight at which point the sightings ceased. Hamilton states that he believed the sightings were a prank by the men and that a Lieutenant Alfrey was the most likely culprit. From this point onwards sightings of Spring Heeled Jack become less and less frequent, with notable exceptions in Everton where he was seen on the rooftop of St. Francis Xavier Church in 1888 and again in nearby William Henry Street in 1904.
From then on there were occasional sightings of Jack-like characters throughout the 20th century (and in various parts of the world) with the most recent being in 1986 when a man dressed in a “black ski suit with an elongated chin” reportedly leapt inhumanly across a road in Herefordshire and slapped a travelling salesman around the face.
With these few exceptions Spring Heeled Jack has faded further and further from the public consciousness thanks, no doubt, to the far more terrifying and bloody tales of Jack The Ripper who is, after all, the ultimate Victorian villain. Compared to the blood and guts of the Jack The Ripper case, Spring Heeled Jack seems almost quaint in comparison, a mere nuisance. As the 20th century dawned and with the storm clouds of world war gathering on the horizon maybe these fantastical tales of a fire breathing demon with bulging eyes stalking young girls lost their allure.
From a series of bizarre assaults on young women in London and urban bogeyman to a Hollywood movie character, it seems that the story of Spring Heeled Jack is one that will endure, and with Jack’s current movie appearance maybe we will see a spate of copycat pranks? But for the sake of young women and jumpy army recruits everywhere let’s hope not!
