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MENU: Terrorizing London
• The Servant Mary Stevens
Incident •
The Lucy Scales
Incident
The Jane Alsop Incident
• The Annual Register of World Events
• Turner Street
Incident
Ashworth Attack
• The Final Springheel
Jack Attacks • Jack In 1879
• 1904 •
Other Springheeled
Jacks?
Acknowledgement
This site is based
(in-part) upon the research of:
Mr. Mike Dash of London, and others,
and contains excerpts from their work. We
are thankful for their investigations into this
most elusive creature, and the insights they
have provided. We have also integrated
numerous contemporary source documents,
including the
"Penny Dreadful" "Spring Heeled Jack - Terror Of
London".
 The first sighting
may have occurred in September of 1837 in
London, England. A businessman was returning
home from work late at night when a mysterious
figure vaulted over the railings of a nearby
cemetery. The railings were at least 10 feet
high but the creature effortlessly leaped over
the wall and landed directly in the path of the
strolling man. The creature was described as
having pointed ears, large glowing eyes, and a
large pointed nose.
A short time later,
Spring Heeled Jack was said to have attacked a
group of people - 3 women and 1 man. All ran
but Polly Adams, who was left behind.
Springheel Jack tore off the top of her blouse,
grabbed her breasts, and began clawing at her
stomach. The attack knocked Polly unconscious
where she lay until being discovered by a
policeman patrolling his beat.
The sightings of
him were taken so seriously that thousands of
volunteers organized into hunting parties, with
the sole intent of tracking him down. Witnesses
were usually left without serious detriment, but
some injuries were reported. A murder was
attributed to him once - he's supposed to have
breathed fire into the face of a 13-year-old
prostitute, and then thrown her body over a
bridge. Her body was recovered, and the locals
branded Springheel Jack a killer.
There were reports
of a high-jumping man in England as far back as
1808, but the first somewhat-concrete sighting
of him came in London in 1837. A businessman was
walking home late near a cemetery when a man
jumped with ease over the high graveyard gates.
Springheel Jack is said to have landed right in
the man's path - but didn't do anything to him.
In his report, the man said that Springheel Jack
- as he would soon be called - had a pointed
nose and ears, and large protruding red glowing
eyes.
Not long after that
sighting, Springheel Jack is reported to have
jumped in the path of a moving carriage. The
driver swerved to miss him, and was badly
injured in the ensuing crash. Jack escaped by
leaping over a nine-foot wall, cackling and
babbling in a high-pitched voice as he escaped.
Other reports show Jack as having a taste for
the ladies, ripping blouses, kissing faces, and
leaving deep scratch marks on their bodies. The
Jack reports were taken very seriously, in fact
they were even addressed directly by
Sir John Cowan,
Lord Mayor of London, he read from an anonymous
citizen's complaint:
"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 [black clad figure].
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."
In another account:
in October of 1837, Mary Stevens, a servant, was
returning to her employer's home on Lavender
Hill. While passing through Cut Throat Lane in
Clapham Common, Springheel Jack sprang from an
alley, tightly wrapped his arms around her,
kissed her on the face, and began running his
hands over her body and down her blouse. When
Mary screamed, Springheel Jack ran from the
scene. Local men were alerted by the screams
and quickly searched for the assailant without
success.
The very next day,
Springheel Jack was seen again at a location
very near Mary Stevens home. He sprang in front
of a passing carriage causing the carriage to
careen out of control and crash. Witnesses at
the scene claimed that Spring Heeled Jack
escaped by springing effortlessly over a 9 foot
wall. [Editor's note: this is strangely
similar to incidents with Mothmen chasing or
appearing next to automobiles.]
Very shortly after
the carriage incident. Spring Heeled Jack
accosted a women near Clapham Church. In this
particular incident he left physical evidence.
Investigators discovered 2 footprints 3 inches
deep. The depth of the prints seemed to suggest
some type of 'spring' mechanism in the shoes.
Note: A spring apparatus was tested by the
Germans during the war and resulted in a 85%
failure rate (the men broke their ankles).
A few months later,
January 1838, London's Lordy Mayor Sir John
Cowan declared Spring Heeled Jack a 'public
menace'. A posse of men were formed to search
for the individual responsible for the attacks.
It was during this time that the great Duke of
Wellington, who was 70 years of age at the time,
joined the search. Some sources indicate that
the Duke may have had several close encounters
with Springheel Jack. Unfortunately, Spring
Heeled Jack was never found and in fact,
intensified his attacks during the following
months.
On February 20,
1838, 18 year old Lucy Scales and her younger sister Margaret
Scales were returning home at around 8:30 PM,
from their brother's house in the Limehouse
area. The report indicates that Springheel Jack
jumped out in front of Lucy Scales and spat blue
fire in her face. Written evidence indicate
that Lucy was 'blinded' - whether this blindness
was temporary hysterical blindness, permanent, or simply
an expression of fear (blind fear). After the attack,
witnesses claim that Springheel Jack jumped
from the ground to the roof of a house and made
his escape.
Miss Scales stated that on the evening of
Wednesday List, at about half-past eight
o'clock, as she and her sister were
returning from the house of their brother,
and while passing along Green Dragon Alley,
they observed some person standing in an
angle in the passage. She was in advance of
her sister at the time, and just as she came
up to the person, She was enveloped in a
large cloak, he spurted a quantity of blue
flame right in her face, which deprived her
of her sight, and so alarmed her, thus she
instantly dropped to the ground, and was
seized with violent fits, which continued
for several hours.
Mr. Scales said that on the evening in
question, in a few minutes after his sisters
had left the house, lie heard the loud
screams of one of them, and on running up
Green Dragon Alley he found his sister Lucy,
who had just given her statement, on the
ground in a fit, and his other sister
endeavoring to hold and support her. She was
removed home, and he then learned from his
other sister what had happened. She
described the person to be of tall, thin,
and gentlemanly appearance, enveloped in a
large cloak, and carried in front of his
person a small lamp, or bull's eye, similar
to those in the possession of the police.
The individual did not utter a word, nor did
he attempt to lay hands on them, but walked
away in an instant.
Every effort was subsequently made by the
police to discover the author of these and
similar outrages, and several persons were
taken up and underwent lengthened
examinations, but were finally set at
liberty. Nothing being elicited to fix the
offence upon them. After this time, however,
the attacks appear to have been
discontinued.
from the Annual
Register (see below)
The boldness of
Jack's attacks escalated with time.
Two days later, on
February 22, 1838, 18 year old Jane Alsop was in
her home on Bearhind Lane in the Bow district,
when she heard a wrapping on the
door. Answering the door, a black cloaked man
exclaimed "I'm a policeman. For Gods sake, bring
me a light, for we have caught Spring-heeled
Jack in the lane" (a black cloak was traditional
uniform attire for policemen of this era).
Jane, who lived with her father and two sisters,
went to fetch a light for the man. She
returned with a candle and as she was handing
the light to the man, it shone on his face and
she noticed that it was Springheel Jack himself. He
immediately spat a blue and white 'gas' into her
face. She attempted to run back into the house
but he held on tightly to the back of her hair.
One of her sisters managed to pull her out of
his grasps and drug her back into the house.
Spring Heeled Jack continued banging on the door
some time before hastily leaving. Witnesses
claim that Springheel Jack left quickly,
dropping his coat in a field by Jane's home.
Another person was seen scooping up the coat and
leaving the area leading police to believe that
Springheel Jack may have an accomplice. The Lambeth police took Jane's statement:
"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."
The following was
published in 1838, recounting two of the Spring
Heeled Jack incidents:
The following day,
yet another incident occurred on Turner Street
near Commercial Road. Once again, Spring Heeled
Jack knocked on the resident's door and when a
servant boy answered the door, Springheel Jack asked to speak to the master of the house,
Mr. Ashworth. The boy turned to call Mr.
Ashworth when he noticed, out of the corner of
his eye, that the visitor was none other than
Springheel Jack. With glowing orange eyes
and clawed hands, Springheel Jack waved his
fist at the boy and leapt completely over the
houses on Commercial Road. The lad was able to
supply an additional piece of evidence - under
his cloak, the lad noticed that Springheel Jack had an embroidered letter 'W' on his
shirt. Similar to a coat of arms, the Gold 'W'
seemed to indicate someone of royalty.
It was the Ashworth
attack and the servant boy's subsequent
description of the attackers monogram that led
police to suspect Henry, the Marquis of
Waterford. The Marquis was an Irish nobleman
known for his sometimes cruel and unusual sense
of humor. Police surmised that the Marquis
accomplished his leaping feats via springs
hidden in his shoes. This theory was later
abandoned when the Marquis died tragically in
1859 (he was thrown from his horse) while the
attacks continued for some time afterwards.
After the Ashworth
incident, attacks continued during the next year
(1839). They stopped for a short while and then
continued again in 1843. In 1845, the only
known incident involving a fatality, occurred on
a bridge in New York, far across the ocean from
the London attacks. In broad daylight,
Springheel Jack jumped towards a young prostitute,
grabbed her by the shoulders, and spat fire into
her face. The stunned girl was then thrown into
a sewer below where she tragically drowned.
Things grew quiet
for several years before flaring up again during
1877 back in London. In Caistor, Newfolk, there
were several reports of Springheel Jack
traveling across the town by jumping from
rooftop to rooftop.
In August of 1877,
Spring Heeled Jack appeared before a group of
soldiers in Aldershot's North army camp. A
Private John Regan was standing sentry at the
camp when he heard the noise of someone dragging
something metallic down the road. He went to
investigate and finding nothing unusual turned
to return to his post. When he did,
Springheel Jack leapt at him and spat blue flames
from his mouth into the boy's face. Other
sentries heard the commotion and hurriedly ran
to his aid. Witnesses claim that
Springheel Jack jumped over the men, clearing them by 10
feet or more. The sentry fired at the intruder
and claimed that bullets did not affect him
(note that some reports indicate that these
sentry men were not allowed live ammunition -
'blanks' only were used to warn off
evil-doers). The sentry described the attacker
as tall and thin wearing a helmet and oilskin
suit.
Aldershot Barracks
One month later, in
Lincolnshire, Springheel Jack was seen
hurdling over several houses. As in the Aldershot episode, residents fired at him with
shotguns to no avail. These witnesses claimed
that the shots did hit Springheel Jack and
sounded like they were hitting some sort of
metallic object.
Another occurrence
was reported in January of 1879 where Springheel
Jack once again startled a carriage and
horse team. The driver was crossing a bridge in
Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Court, when
Spring Heeled Jack, clothed in black and
flashing menacing orange eyes, jumped onto one
of the horses backs.
In September 1904,
South of Liverpool in England, Springheel Jack appeared on the roof of a church. He was
spotted hanging on the steeple of St. Francis
Xaviers on Salisbury Street. Onlookers claimed
he suddenly dropped from the steeple and fell to
the ground. Thinking that he had committed
suicide, they rushed to the point where he had
landed (behind some houses) only to find a
helmeted man, clothed in white, standing there
waiting. He scuttled towards the crowd, raised
his arms, and took to the air over William Henry
Street.
The final recorded
event occurred in 1920 at the Central Railway
Station in London. A man in a white cloak was
seen jumping back and forth from rooftop to the
street below.
Was there more than
one Springheeled Jack? The likely answer
was yes. Just as in our era, copy cats
surely existed in Victorian England as well.
As mentioned in:
Highways & Byways in Sussex, by E.V. Lucas 1904: "Pig-faced ladies (once so common) seem to have gone out, just as the day of Spring-heeled Jack is over. Sussex once had her Spring-heeled Jacks, too, in some profusion."
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