Spring Heeled Jack (watch it)

A gladsome youth and his red-dressed date are on their way to The Big Dance. But the girl’s father has a few words of warning for the pair: Their intended path is haunted by a chilling figure of lore – the big-eyed, red-skinned, high-hopping, projectile-vomiting Spring Heeled Jack! Will the buoyant young couple’s evening be marred by the fantastical warnings of the girl’s father? Does the old man’s admonition of the legendary Spring Heeled Jack hold any truth? And is there really nothing like a good blue?

The Historical Character:

The real Spring Heeled Jack was a mysterious figure who terrorized mid-nineteenth century London and the English Midlands. The first reported sighting of Jack occurred in 1837, thought various accounts of a man matching his description had been circulating since 1817. He had a fondness for alarming and usually assaulting hapless persons, especially women, and he soon became infamous for his sordid pranks and terrors. On January 9, 1838, Sir John Cowan, the Lord Mayor of London, read publicly a letter he had received from a distinguished correspondent:

"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."

The Spring Heeled Mayhem continued for another 60 years, and the stories surrounding this mysterious figure became more and more gruesome. He is believed to have attacked more than a hundred people and killed three; the first of these (in 1845) was the murder of a 13-year old prostitute, whom Jack tossed over a bridge and into the foul waters of Folly Ditch, reportedly the foulest ditch in the slums of Bermondsey.