The Mystery of Spring-Heeled Jack: From Victorian Legend to Steampunk Hero

By John Matthews

An extensive investigation of the origins and numerous sightings of the mysterious and terrifying figure known as Spring-Heeled Jack

• Shares original 19th-century newspaper accounts of Spring-Heeled Jack encounters as well as 20th and 21st-century reports

• Explains his connections to Jack the Ripper and the Slender Man

• Explores his origins in earlier mythical beings from folklore, his Steampunk popularity, and the theory that he may be an alien from a high-gravity planet

Spring-Heeled Jack--a tall, thin, bounding figure with bat-like wings, clawed hands, wheels of fire for eyes, and breath of blue flames--first leapt to public attention in Victorian London in 1838, springing over hedges and walls, from dark lanes and dank graveyards, to frighten and sometimes physically attack women. News of this strange and terrifying character quickly spread, but despite numerous sightings through 1904 he was never captured or identified.

Exploring the vast urban legend surrounding this enigmatic figure, John Matthews explains how the Victorian fascination with strange phenomena and sinister figures paired with hysterical reports enabled Spring-Heeled Jack to be conjured into existence. Sharing original 19th-century newspaper accounts of Spring-Heeled Jack sightings and encounters, he also examines recent 20th and 21st-century reports, including a 1953 UFO-related sighting from Houston, Texas, and disturbing accounts of the Slender Man, who displays notable similarities with Jack. He traces Spring-Heeled Jack’s origins to earlier mythical beings from folklore, such as fairy creatures and land spirits, and explores the theory that Jack is an alien marooned on Earth whose leaping prowess is attributed to his home planet having far stronger gravity than ours.

The author reveals how Jack the Ripper, although a different and much more violent character, chose to identify himself with the old, well-established figure of Spring-Heeled Jack. Providing an extensive look at Spring-Heeled Jack from his beginnings to the present, Matthews illustrates why the worldwide Steampunk community has so thoroughly embraced Jack.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
• Release date: Oct 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781620554975

John Matthews

John Matthews is a world-renowned authority on the Celtic wisdom tradition and the Arthurian legends. He is the author of numerous books, including The Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom. 

Book preview

THE MYSTERY OF

Spring-Heeled Jack

Probably no one in the world but John Matthews could have written this book. His scholarship is, as always, of the highest order yet joined to a deep love of stories. His unwillingness to make artificial separations between traditional folklore and popular culture allows Spring-Heeled Jack to come vigorously to life.

RACHEL POLLACK,

AUTHOR OF THE CHILD EATER AND

CO-CREATOR OF THE RAZIEL TAROT

John Matthews intrigues, disturbs, and delights us with his detailed account of the legendary Spring-Heeled Jack who, whether real or not, terrified victims amid the shadows of Victorian London and beyond. Leaping into the fears of the unwary, such figures persist in the modern imagination, and Matthews gives us much to chew on with regard to our fascination with untamed, semi-animal, evil in superhuman guise. Victorian supernaturalism, ghost stories, Jack the Ripper, the Green Man, demonic lore, and much else illuminate the shifting image of ‘Jack’ in Matthews’s crepuscular romp through the ginnels and repressions of fervid times, where unearthly clawing and ripping threatens to confront us with the archetypal fiend.

TOBIAS CHURTON, AUTHOR OF

ALEISTER CROWLEY: THE BEAST IN BERLIN

Thoroughly researched, John Matthews’s writing is effortlessly accessible for both newcomers and those familiar with London’s original bogeyman. This book could and should become one of the definitive texts about Spring-Heeled Jack in the years to come.

JACK BOWMAN, COWRITER OF

THE SPRINGHEEL SAGA AUDIO DRAMAS

For a fascinating guide to the history and mystery of England’s most famous phantom attacker, look no further than John Matthews’s remarkable book.

ROBERT VALENTINE, COWRITER OF

THE SPRINGHEEL SAGA AUDIO DRAMAS

Push me down again, Dear Childe,

I’m safely hid away.

But I’m not gone; it won’t be long

Till Jack comes out to play.

ROBERT WINTHROP, JACK IN THE BOX, LONDONTOWN RHYMES FOR THE NURSERY, 1893

Acknowledgments

I have preferred to give the reports as far as possible in the words with which they were first described at the time rather than retelling them in my own. For this I am grateful to Mike Dash’s astonishing collection of newspaper reports collected in the Fortean Times; to Stephen J. Ash of The Complete Spring Heeled Jack Page; to Anne Avery who generously took time out of her busy schedule to send me more cuttings; and to the staff of the Bodleian Library in Oxford for finding obscure book references. Thanks also, as ever, to Caitlín Matthews for reading several drafts and for making some inspired suggestions, and to Jack Bowman and Robert Valentine for sending me copies of their amazing audio series on Spring-Heeled Jack. The wonderful decoration at the head of each chapter throughout is from Wireless Theatre’s The Springheel Saga, artwork by Jamie Egerton, used with gratitude and appreciation. Grateful thanks also to the amazing crew at Inner Traditions for making the journey from manuscript to book as easy as possible.

CONTENTS

Cover Image

Title Page

Epigraph

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION: The Unsolved Mystery

PART ONE: THE LEGEND

CHAPTER 1: The Birth of a Legend

THE OUTRAGE OF JANE ALSOP

THE CASE OF THE MISSING CLOAK

CHAPTER 2: The Legend Spreads

A COLLECTION OF JACKS

THE LEAPING MENACE

THE MURDEROUS FIEND

THE MURDER OF MARIA DAVIS

DELICATE LITTLE THINGS

CHAPTER 3: Jack Takes a Holiday

THE BULL-MAN OF YARMOUTH

JACK TAKES ON THE ARMY

PART TWO: THE MYTH

CHAPTER 4: The Urban Ghost

THE CAMBERWELL GHOST

JACK STEALS A WATCH

JACK GOES TO SHEFFIELD

THE WESTBURY STREET PROWLER

THE POP-UP VILLAIN

THE DEVIL IN THE BOOT

CHAPTER 5: Roots in Myth and Folklore

IN THE NAME OF JACK

JACK THE GIANT KILLER

GREEN JACK

REBELS IN GREEN

JACK VALENTINE

JACK AND THE MUMMERS

LUCIFER AND OTHER DEVILS

THE MYSTERIOUS BULL

CHAPTER 6: Who Was Jack?

THE MAD MARQUIS

THE LONDON MONSTER

CHAPTER 7: Jack’s Back: Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Appearances

THE JUMPING MEN OF SAXONY

VISITOR FROM ANOTHER WORLD

THE MAN IN WHITE

JACK LEAPS BACK

THE MOTHMAN

THE MONKEY MAN

THE SLENDER MAN

NEW SIGHTINGS

DREADFUL JACK

JACK TREADS THE BOARDS

HOLLYWOOD JACK

JACK IN PICTURES

FICTIONAL JACK

SYMBOLIC JACK

AUDIO JACK

SEASON ONE

SEASON TWO

SEASON THREE

THE END OR THE BEGINNING?

APPENDIX 1: Spring-Heeled Jack—The Terror of London

APPENDIX 2: Principal Sightings of Spring-Heeled Jack

Endnotes

Bibliography

About the Author

About Inner Traditions • Bear & Company

Books of Related Interest

Copyright & Permissions

Index

INTRODUCTION

The Unsolved Mystery

Stories of the wildest and most extravagant nature got into the newspapers and formed the staple of conversation.

NEWS OF THE WORLD, NOVEMBER 17, 1872

On October 4, 1888, police investigating the notorious Ripper murders in London received a letter. It was one of several purporting to be from the killer, but this one was different. It was signed Spring-Heeled Jack—The Whitechapel Murderer.

By 1888 fifty years had elapsed since the reported sightings of Spring-Heeled Jack, and that Jack, for the most part, did very little serious harm to anyone, unlike the Ripper, who was a merciless and horrific killer. Still, the association would not have been lost on Inspector Frederic Abbeline, the lead detective in the Ripper case, and his men. The exploits of the character known as Spring-Heeled Jack were far from forgotten in the time of the Ripper murders, and assuming the letter was not a forgery (which most researchers think unlikely), it is significant that the killer of prostitutes should choose to identify himself with the older, well-established figure of Spring-Heeled Jack.

This Jack, the subject of this book, made his first appearance in January 1838, and the last reported sighting—excluding, for the moment, modern appearances—occurred in 1904. He literally leapt to public attention, springing over hedges and walls, from dark lanes and dank graveyards to frighten and sometimes physically attack women.

Fig. I.1. The Whitechapel Murderer

He showed up first in the twilight world of Victorian London, only gradually moving farther out to towns such as Bradford and Sheffield. He moved through a world that, though well connected by roads and canals, was not yet fully served by the new railways; a world where the night was unillumined by gas or electricity and where messages took time to get from place to place.

The reports of the mysterious leaping man in both national and local newspapers fueled a hysterical response and lead to copycat attacks, ghostly tales, and extraordinary claims to his real identity—ramping up the paranoia and boosting Jack’s appearance from a white bear to a fire-breathing man.

Spring-Heeled Jack has attracted writers as different as Philip Pullman, Mark Hodder, and Stephen King, as well as numerous references in popular culture from graphic novels to audio plays. Despite previous books and many articles and a catalog of appearances in fiction, TV, and film, Spring-Heeled Jack, though a familiar character from the archives of the strange and unexplained, is almost completely unknown.

People who claimed to have seen Spring-Heeled Jack described him as having a terrifying appearance, with bat-like wings, clawed hands, and eyes that resembled wheels of fire. Other reports claimed that, beneath his black cloak, he wore a huge helmet and a tight-fitting white garment apparently made of oilskin. Others said he was tall and thin, with the appearance of a gentleman. Several reports mentioned that he could breathe blue flames.

In more recent times various researchers have attempted to suggest who he might really have been, including an alien visitor from another planet, but none of these theories hold up to close scrutiny. Instead, we should look for the origins of Spring-Heeled Jack among much earlier mythical figures, conjured into being though hysterical newspaper reports and the Victorian obsession with strange phenomena and sinister figures.

A vast urban legend built itself around Spring-Heeled Jack—influencing and influenced by many aspects of Victorian life for decades—especially in London. His name became equated with the bogeyman, 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 on them at night. Surprisingly, in our own times, new sightings have been reported, while the recent disturbing stories of the Slender Man can be seen to display notable similarities with those of the older Jack (see chapter 7 for more on the Slender Man).

It is these parallels, as well as the original reports, that tell us the real story of Spring-Heeled Jack. I have sought to retell it, as far as possible, in the words of the original newspaper reports and have retained the original spelling and at times aberrant punctuation of these. In accomplishing this, I have had the help of several colleagues, mentioned in the acknowledgments, but I should like to pay tribute here especially to the brilliant, pioneering work of Mike Dash, whose own book on Spring-Heeled Jack remains eagerly awaited. Without his tireless assemblage of contemporary reports, my own work would have been vastly extended.

PART ONE

THE LEGEND

CHAPTER 1

The Birth of a Legend

I came from Pandemonium,

If they lay me I’ ll go back;

Meanwhile round the town I’ ll jump,

Spring-Heeled Jack.

ANONYMOUS,

THE PENNY SATIRIST, 1838

The story begins, quietly enough, on January 9, 1838. Several column inches of the London Times newspaper for that date contained a report, along with a letter, concerning some strange events that had apparently taken place in Peckham, a quiet suburb of the metropolis.

The Times

TUESDAY, JANUARY 9, 1838

MANSION HOUSE—Yesterday the Lord Mayor said, that he had received a letter upon a subject, the odd nature of which had induced him to withhold it from the public for some days, in the expectation that some statement might be made through a source of indisputable authority relative to the matter of which it treated.

The following is the letter:

TO THE RIGHT HON. THE LORD MAYOR

My Lord,

The writer presumes that your Lordship will kindly overlook the liberty he has taken in addressing a few lines on a subject which within the last few weeks has caused much alarming sensation in the neighboring villages within three or four miles of London.

It appears that some individuals (of, as the writer believes, the higher ranks of life) have laid a wager with a mischievous and foolhardy companion (name as yet unknown), that he durst not take upon himself the task of visiting many of the villages near London in three disguises—a ghost, a bear and a devil; and, moreover, that he will not dare to enter gentlemen’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. At one house he rung the bell, and on the servant coming to open the door, this worse than brute stood in a 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, but, on seeing any man, screams out most violently: ‘Take him away!’ There are two ladies (which your lordship will regret to hear) who have husbands and children, and who are not expected to recover, but likely to become a burden on their families.

For fear that your Lordship might imagine that the writer exaggerates, he will refrain from mentioning other cases, if anything more melancholy than those he has already related.

This affair has now been going on for some time, and strange to say, the papers are still silent on the subject. The writer is very unwilling to be unjust to any man, but he has reason to believe that they have the history at their finger-ends, but, through interested motives, are induced to remain silent. It is, however, high time that such a detestable nuisance should be put a stop to and the writer feels sure that your Lordship, as the chief magistrate of London, will take great pleasure in exerting your power to bring the villain to justice.

Hoping you’re Lordship will pardon the liberty I had taken in writing,

I remain your Lordship’s most humble servant,

A RESIDENT OF PECKHAM

The lord mayor was clearly not impressed. The rest of the article made this clear:

THE TIMES, JANUARY 9, 1838

In his opinion . . . if any trick had been practiced by fools, he had no doubt that the vigilance of the police might be depended upon to prevent annoyance. It appeared to him that the letter, which was written in a very beautiful hand, was the production of a lady, who might have been terrified by some burglars into this method of obtaining retribution at the hands of the Lord Mayor, but as the terrible vision had not entered the city, he could not take cognizance of its iniquities. A gentleman stated to his Lordship that the servant girls about Kensington, and Hammersmith, and Ealing, told dreadful stories of a ghost, or devil, who, on one occasion, was said to have beaten a blacksmith, and torn his flesh with iron claws, and in others to tear clothes from the backs of females. Not one of the injured people had been known to tell the story; perhaps they didn’t like to tell it. The Lord Major believed that one of the ladies who had lost their seven senses was his correspondent. He hoped she would do him the favor of a call, and he would have the opportunity of getting from her such a description of the demon as would enable him to catch him, in spite of the paid press and public.

The year 1838 had been a dramatic one for Londoners. In January the Royal Exchange, center of British trade and commerce, burned to the ground; in June the young Princess Victoria ascended to the throne, ushering in the longest reign of a monarch in British history; in the winter months, during one of the coldest frosts in recorded history, the Thames froze over. Perhaps the events launched upon the country by the Times report might have passed unnoticed, but something about the story touched into more ancient, deeper fears, and in the following months an extraordinary range of reports appeared in the press. Many were, almost certainly, the invention of reporters or editors who saw the story as likely to increase their readership (which it undoubtedly did), but others, if examined carefully, show something else.

The following day, January 10, London’s Morning Chronicle ran a lengthy story debunking the Times report, referring to it as evidence of ridiculous superstition and attacking the credulity of those who placed any credence in it. The article then took a closer look, revealing that this was not in fact the first of such reports and referring to an incident that had taken place on nearby Barnes Common some four months earlier. Here, it was alleged, a large white bull had attacked several people, particularly females, many of whom had suffered most severely from the fright,¹ to the point that no respectable female had since left home after dark without a male companion.² The language used here was to occur in several of the reports that followed, each suggesting that respectable women (of course only women of another kind were expected to be out alone after dark) had been singled out for these attacks. The report added that in East Sheen, another rural suburb of London, a white bear had carried out similar pranks.

The article stated:

The Morning Chronicle

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 10, 1838

[I]n the course of a few days afterwards all Richmond teemed with tales of females being frightened to death and children torn to pieces by the supposed unearthly visitant, who was, in consequence, so closely searched after by the local police that he soon thought it prudent to quit the green lanes of that fashionable resort for the quiet and retired villages of Ham and Petersham, where in the image of an imp of the ‘Evil One’ he nightly reigned supreme, and neither man, woman, nor child durst venture beyond the threshold of their domiciles without a lantern and a thick club stick. From Petersham Kingston was the next resort of the alleged supernatural visitant; but, as at Richmond, the police of that borough soon rendered his visit most dangerous to his own safety, and he in consequence crossed the water, when Hampton Wick, Hampton Court &c., soon rung with the mighty deeds of an unearthly warrior, clad in armor of polished brass, with spring shoes, and large claw gloves, who, whenever pursued after frightening not only children but those of an older growth, scaled the walls of Bushy Park, and instantly vanished Teddington, Twickenham, Whitton, and Hounslow were next in succession the scene of stories of a similar description, and many and fearful were the tales of injuries inflicted by him in the Duke of Northumberland’s demesne of Sion Park, and other parts of the village of Isleworth. Among other things it was stated that a carpenter named Jones, residing in that village, while returning through ‘Cut-throat-lane’, on his way home, about 11 o’clock at night, was seized and most unmercifully belabored by the ghost, who was attired in polished steel armor, with red shoes, &c. Being a powerful man, Jones instantly grappled with his assailant, when two more ghosts came to the assistance of the first one, when Jones’s clothes were torn into ribbons, and ‘cast to the winds’. Heston, Drayton, Harlington, and the neighbourhood of the town of Uxbridge, were next the scenes of his tricks; when, returning by the Great Western Railway towards the metropolis, he in turn visited Hanwell, Brentford, Ealing, Acton, Hammersmith and Kensington. At Hanwell, Brentford, Ealing and Acton, he has been represented as clad in steel armor, and, in addition to frightening various persons, severely injured a blacksmith residing in the village of Ealing, who, it is stated, has ever since kept his bed in consequence of the fright he sustained. At Hammersmith an itinerant vendor of pies and muffins, it was reported, was attacked while returning home through Sounding-lane by ‘the ghost’, and his clothes torn from his back, and one female was stated to have been frightened to death at the idea of meeting him. Even the precincts of the Royal Palace of Kensington have not escaped, children having seen the unearthly being dancing by moonlight on the Palace-green, and ever and anon scaling the walls of the royal forcing gardens, in the direction of the churchyard in Church-street. In consequence of the above ridiculous stories, some parties adopted every means for obtaining information on the subject, and personally visited many of the places above mentioned. It was found that although the stories were in everybody’s mouth, no person who had actually seen him could be ascertained. An amusing circumstance, in connection with the reports, is related. A few nights since, as one of the police was on duty in Little Ealing-lane, he heard some person running at full speed toward him, and in a few minutes afterward he met the son of a respectable inhabitant of Old Brentford, who, in a state of the greatest alarm, declared he had seen ‘the ghost’. The policeman accordingly proceeded to the spot named by the booby, when he found the inspector on his white horse, awaiting the report of the sergeant of the section, totally unconscious of the alarm he had occasioned. The Hammersmith ‘Sounding-lane’ statement also turns out to be the invention of some wag; and although it has been stated by many respectable persons at Brentford that his ghostship had been a few nights since seized by a policeman at Brompton, and, after being nearly killed by the populace, conveyed for examination at Kensington, yet neither the authorities at Kensington, nor persons resident at Brompton, have heard anything respecting him beyond the above reports; and we strongly suspect that the Peckham statement will on investigation, have a similar result.

One aspect of the story that undoubtedly added fuel was the setting of these first events—rural districts that surrounded the city. Stretches of gorse-covered common land separated houses of size and importance, each standing in its own walled garden, with shuttered windows and high iron gates. These were the homes of wealthy merchant princes who had given up the custom of living over their business premises and had begun to build mansions in the bourgeois peacefulness of the suburbs.

Burglaries were not uncommon, and the fledgling police force, only then beginning to be established in the city, was hard-pressed to cope with these. Footpads (thieves) lurked in the quiet roads, and few people ventured forth at night without an armed escort.

But the stories that began to surface were different, somehow darker. According to the report in the Morning Chronicle, sightings of ghosts, an imp, and a devil were included. We can see the imagination of the populace working overtime to discover ways to explain the phenomenon of the attacks, searching amid the folklore and superstitions of the time for likely suspects.

We should also notice the word pranks. At this point the press seemed determined to suggest that the attacks were nothing more than a foolish, lighthearted game played by some despicable, well-to-do young gentlemen who had, as stated in the letter to the mayor, laid a wager with a mischievous and foolhardy companion to adopt a series of frightening disguises intended to terrify women and upset others.

Later, when the reports took on a darker tone, this idea was to be repeated a number of times and led to the identification of the prankster as a member of the landed gentry (see chapter 5).

Though the article continued to ridicule the whole story and anyone foolish enough to believe it, the same report lists a bewildering array of recent sightings in a number of other outlying London boroughs. These included Richmond, Petersham, Kingston, Hampton Wick, Hampton Court, Teddington, Twickenham, Whitton, and Hounslow, among others (see fig. 1.1). In each instance, despite investigation, no one had come forward to be identified with the various attacks, frights, and hauntings reported.

Fig. 1.1. The London boroughs between 1837 and 1838 when the highest incidence of Spring-Heeled Jack sightings took place (Map by Wil Kinghan after Richard Furlong)

A particular detail is worth noting here. In one of the reports, the attacker is described as an unearthly warrior, clad in armor of polished brass, with spring shoes and large claw gloves. This is the first mention of the particular costume adopted by the ghost; in a matter of weeks, this attire would provide him with the name by which he has been known ever since—Spring-Heeled Jack.

Next day, January 11, 1838, a response to the original report was published in the Times. Once again the reporter’s tone is jokey and frivolous, but the letters from a variety of people—some named, others anonymous—suggested that the original account was very far from being a solitary incident and that some took these seriously.

The Times

JANUARY 11, 1838

MANSION HOUSE—The Lord Mayor received the following communications in the course of yesterday . . . relative to the individual who is said to be occupied in winning a wager by appearing in various terrific characters at night in the villages around the metropolis.

My Lord Mayor—The public are much indebted to your Lordship for bringing forward the letter, as stated in yesterday’s Mansion House report. Although there is yet no authenticity attached to that part of the letter in which it is stated that lamentable accidents have arisen from this wicked prank, . . . that it has been played [out] lately to a considerable extent in the neighbouring villages I can assure your Lordship to be a fact.

In the neighbourhood of Hornsey, where I have a residence, some scoundrel has been alarming the neighborhood in these disguises, and I heard yesterday . . . [that] the same thing has been played off near Kingston, and from a respectable neighbor in Cheapside that Hertfordshire has been similarly visited.

It is stated that some individual (‘gentleman’ he has been designated) drives about with a livery servant in a cab, and, throwing off a cloak, appears in these frightful forms, and is to win a wager by the joke—if it be a joke, one that is very likely to produce the catastrophe [of the kind] detailed in the letter, but which, till the writer comes forward and acknowledges it, cannot be considered as fact.

I should rather [be] inclined to think it was some determined thief who visits houses in the absence of the heads of families and who by this method of at once paralyzing the energies of the servants to obtain and escape with his booty on easy terms.

I shall shortly remove my family from my town residence to that stated, where if I catch Mr. Ghost on any part of my premises I shall administer that to his substantial parts that if he ever [re]appears it shall be only his aerial essence, or as a ghost in fact.

Other heads of families in my neighbourhood having expressed the same determination, I trust this ghost will soon be laid; meantime publicity to the matter would do good, and attract the notice of the authorities [around] the city.

I have the honour to be, my Lord,

Your Lordship’s most obedient humble servant,

BOW LANE, JAN 10, THOMAS LOTT

Again we have suggestions that these sightings are nothing more than a series of pranks, carried out either by a single person or a gang bent upon winning a wager. To this is added the notion of a burglar intent upon stealing from well-to-do householders.

A second letter included in this collection of responses is from a man who withholds his name but states that he is a magistrate and a barrister, writing from an address in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields—still the heart of London’s legal profession. He seems to be trying to impress upon the mayor that for this reason he is less likely to be misled by the sensational nature of the reports. He also declares his intention of investigating further in the event that the police fail to uncover the miscreants who are undoubtedly working real mischief, though under a childish and grotesque guise.³

Following this preamble the writer gets to the point.

THE TIMES, JANUARY 11, 1838

Some weeks ago, an old female domestic, who lived in my service many years, and who now resides in respectable circumstances, as the wife of a decent tradesman at Hammersmith, called on me, and in the course of conversation informed me that the females of Hammersmith and its vicinity feared to walk abroad after nightfall in consequence of the molestations of a ghost or monster to which they were exposed.

At first I, with your Lordship, thought this visitation in the 19th century, so near the metropolis, and with such a well-organized police as we have now, too absurd for belief; but on further enquiry I ascertained that several young women had been readily frightened into fits—dangerous fits, and some of them had been severely wounded by a sort of claws the miscreant wore on his hands. I expressed my surprise the attention of the police had not been called to the nuisance. My informant assured me that repeatedly their vigilance had been aroused on the subject, but the fellow or fellows have been adroit enough to avoid capture. I have such reliance on the witness I allude too, that I have no doubt she reports facts.

Now the mysterious attacker is called specifically a ghost or a monster, though again we have reference to his clawed hands. In fact it is really very unlikely that he was either of these things—though monster is not an unreasonable epithet and may refer to an older attacker dubbed the London Monster (see below). The ghost idea is easily excluded since the attacker is far too physical (ghosts do not normally scratch people or rip their clothing) and moves around—contrary to the way ghosts normally haunt a single place to which they are somehow bound.

What we also see here is that the report is based more solidly on evidence and upon the statement of a respectable source—an elderly servant clearly not given to inventing or dramatizing events.

Two other letters, dated January 9 and addressed to the lord mayor’s clerk, variously named as Hobler or Holder, were of a more dramatic nature.

Fig. 1.2. The London Monster

THE TIMES, JANUARY 11, 1838

There have been rumors, in St John’s Wood and its neighbourhood, for the last fortnight, of the appearance of the monster alluded to. . . . The bet is, however, understood to be one of an even more grave nature than that stated, and, if it be true, amounts to murder. As far as the writer has been informed, the bet is that the monster shall kill six women in some given time. . . . It is asserted that he has been seen in St John’s Wood clad in mail, and as a bear.

Suddenly the story has become darker. Now the man (or men) in question (no one seems certain of the numbers at this stage) has taken a bet that he (or they) will kill six women. In addition we are now told that at least one person is dressed as a bear!

With a similar air of certainty, another correspondent adds:

THE TIMES, JANUARY 11, 1838

On reading the letter in the papers of this day received by your Lordship, I can see that you are not inclined to give credence to the account furnished by your correspondence.

The villain mentioned . . . as appearing in the guise of a ghost, bear, or devil, has been within the last week or two repeatedly seen at Lewisham and Blackheath. So much, indeed, has he frightened the inhabitants of those peaceful districts that women and children durst not stir out of their houses after dark.

There ought to be a stop put to this; but the police, I am afraid, are frightened of him also.

For the first time we learn that the police are disinclined to take action and may even be afraid of the creature. Despite this, the mayor seems to have remained unconvinced and continued to play down the whole affair. He gave, via his clerk, a statement to the effect that

it was evident that considerable terror had been excited by the appearance of some man or men, in the outlets of the metropolis, in disguise, and that a great deal of mischief might arise from the Pantomimic display at night in a retired and peaceful neighbourhood. But he thought from the first that the greatest exaggerations must have been made, and he believed it to be quite impossible that there could be any foundation for the report that the ghost had performed defeats of a devil on earth. He also withheld his credence from the statement that so many ladies [had] been frightened to death, although he had been given to understand, from an authority he could not question, that one of the female servants of a gentlemen who resides near his house at Forest Hill, was a short time since terrified and into fits by the sudden appearance of a figure clad in a bear’s skin.

The Morning Chronicle

JANUARY 11, 1838

The bearskin, on being drawn aside exhibited a human body in a suit of mail, and with a long horn, the emblem of the King of Hell himself. Mr. Holder [the mayor’s clerk] said he believed that there were stories about this ghost all around the metropolis, and that the matter would in all probability one day end in a good ducking. If anything serious had resulted from the tricks which were said to have been already played, the police no doubt, would have been apprised of it, and the newspaper, out of which it was almost impossible to keep anything likely to attract curiosity, would have been

Reviews for The Mystery of Spring-Heeled Jack

[veronica.sparrow · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Spring-Heeled Jack has been around in one form or another for a very long time. He first showed up in the Victorian era and has now emerged once again in our present day. The book is obviously well researched with painstaking detail especially with not only old newspaper reports from the Victorian era but also noting a comparison with Jack the Ripper, our current day Slenderman, and even Batman. I have to admit I found the Victorian sightings a bit tedious after awhile and I had to keep putting the book down during that first part of the book. It was written in a paragraph style and I think I would have had an easier time had it been organized a bit differently (encounters noted by consecutive dates and/or by hyphens or dashes). I finally did manage to get through it and found the rest of the book very interesting and hard to put down. All in all, it is a very extensively researched novel and a good place to start for anyone who wants to understand the phenomenon of Spring-Heeled Jack.I received a copy of this book from the publishers for free in exchange for an honest review.