A
mysterious figure who has terrorized
London (and some other places) since 1837. Jack usually wore
dark-colored
shiny clothing or a dark
cloak and a
horned metal
helmet. He had fiery
red eyes, could breathe jets of
flame and was observed to
leap about 15 feet -- hence the "
Spring-
Heel" part of his name. He preferred to attack
young ladies in the street.
In 1838, when the
Lord Mayor of London declared him a
public menace and the
Duke of Wellington organized groups of
hunters to
track him, Jack even used the
chaos to his advantage by
masquerading as one of the hunters to draw his
victims out of their houses. He
murdered a
prostitute in 1845 by throwing her from a
bridge in broad daylight. Jack appeared in
Peckham in 1872, in
Aldershot in 1877, and in
Liverpool in 1904. After hopping across the
Atlantic, he showed up in
Houston, Texas in 1953 and in
Falkville, Alabama in 1973. He returned to Liverpool later that decade and showed up in
Scotland in 1986.
So who was Springheeled Jack? Of course no one knows. Some
theories have centered around the
Marquis of Waterford, who in the 1830s, was well-known for his love of
practical jokes and his
misogyny; an unnamed
religious fruitcake who believed he was being chased by the
Devil;
Jack the Ripper; an
alien; a
faerie; a
robot; and even a
kangaroo dressed up as a
prank. I prefer the
explanation that I always seem to come up with for cases like this:
hoaxes, combined with good old-fashioned public
hysteria.
Research from Suppressed Transmission: The First Broadcast by Kenneth Hite, "Jack Be Nimble: Spring-Heeled Jack", pp. 70-71.