Spring-Heeled Jack

Spring-Heeled Jack

This article relates to The Railway Conspiracy

Judge Dee Ren Jie, the protagonist of the Dee and Lao mystery series, frequently masquerades as Spring-heeled Jack, a legendary figure out of Victorian London. Sometimes Dee uses the costume to intimidate suspects into divulging information, but more often, he uses it to disguise his true identity while interacting with London's police force.

Tales of the figure who ultimately came to be known as Spring-heeled Jack first started appearing in and around London in 1837. In the first known report, a businessman returning home late one September evening was frightened by "a 'muscular man of devilish features' that included large, pointed ears and nose and protruding, glowing eyes." The phantom had leapt over the high railings of Barnes Cemetery with ease before landing in front of his victim; both parties fled after the encounter.

A few weeks later, a young woman out walking with friends was attacked in the same area; she reported that a "muscular man of odd appearance" accosted her, ripping her clothing and leaving scratches in her skin with his "iron-clad fingers." Another woman had a similar encounter a couple of nights later, with a creature that trapped her in his arms, kissed her, and tore at her dress with hands that were "cold and clammy as those of a corpse."

The following day, a figure matching the women's descriptions leapt out in front of a carriage, causing the vehicle to crash and injuring the coachman. Several witnesses claim to have seen the villain flee by jumping a nine-foot-high wall while emitting wild, high-pitched laughter. The remarkable vaults and weird cackling became the figure's trademark and gave rise to the name "Spring-heeled Jack."

As the number of attacks escalated, panic in the city increased to the point that the Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Cowan, addressed them at a Public House session on January 9, 1838. He said that the perpetrators were a group of wealthy young men playing pranks on the public, and he assured the citizens that the miscreants would soon be caught. (No responsible party was ever identified.)

Two widely reported cases added fuel to the fire soon after the Mayor's statement. On the night of February 20, someone claiming to be a policeman rang 18-year-old Jane Alsop's doorbell, saying they needed help. When she went out into the street with a candle, the figure began to tear at her clothes and skin with metal claws—the same treatment experienced by Jack's other victims. This time, however, he also breathed a blue flame into her face; her screams brought help and the phantom ran away. Eight days later, Lucy Scales was similarly assaulted on her way home; again, claws and a blue flame were featured in her description of the attack.

Before long, Jack seemed to be everywhere at once. Any time there was an unexplained catastrophe or whenever a person was assaulted, it was blamed on Spring-heeled Jack. Descriptions of this menace varied widely and over time his visage became more and more frightening. His skills, too, became increasingly outlandish as his legend grew. He evolved into a type of bogeyman, and London's children were warned that Spring-heeled Jack would steal into their bedrooms at night if they misbehaved.

The tales of his ever-more-fantastic abilities were helped along by the fact that he captured the imaginations of fiction writers of the day and subsequently became the subject of many "penny dreadfuls" over the next few years. In the ensuing decades Spring-heeled Jack gradually transformed from the villain of the story to an altruistic righter of wrongs—a sort of Victorian-Age Robin Hood. Eventually Jack's appearances petered out, with his last confirmed sighting in Liverpool in 1904, when "he was witnessed leaping up and down the street before jumping onto the rooftops and bounding away forever."

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Filed under Cultural Curiosities

This article relates to The Railway Conspiracy. It first ran in the April 9, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.