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THE TERM “URBAN LEGEND” dates only from 1981, when an American English profesor, Jan Harold Brunvand, coined it in his book about modern folklore. But the phenomenon itself goes back much farther. One of the earliest examples is set in London, and held the public’s attention midway between the crime sprees perpetrated by the so-called London Monster (page 14), and the brutal murders attributed to Jack the Ripper.
The historical records in both of these criminal cases leave many unanswered questions, providing for endless speculation by amateur and would-be detectives—but the basic facts of the cases are undeniably historical. What, though, are we to make of the even stranger crime spree launched, supposedly, in September 1837 by a bizarre perpetrator who came to be known as “Spring Heeled Jack?” Whereas hisrorians investigating the Monster and Ripper cases are still asking, “who was he?” the more appropriate question in connection with Spring Heeled Jack would be “what was he?”
According to those who claimed to have seen him, he was a tall man—standing as much as 10 feet high—who had long pointed ears, glowing orange eyes, and claws, and who could spit blue fire. He wore a black helmet and cape, and a tunic emblazoned with the letter “W.” And he could reputedly leap easily over 10-foot-high walls after attacking his victims, 9s if he h3d spring-loaded footwear. Hence his popular nickname.
A modern criminal profiler could make a career out of such a fellow. Indeed, Jack’s own career, if you believe all the stories, spanned some 40 years and took hirn as far afield as New York City. There were even reports of sightings as late as 1970: truly a career criminal.
You’d think that such a slippery antagonist would have sparked a massive manhunt by London’s law enforcement agencies. This does not appear to have been the case, although the Lord Mayor declared him a public menace. Why did Spring Heeled Jack not create the same uproar as The London Monster and Jack the Ripper?
He wore a black helmet and cape, and a tunic emblazoned with the letter “W.”
The most obvious explanation is that there was a very good reason why Jack so strongly resembles a comic-book supervillain. The 1830s were the hey-day of the “penny dreadfuls,” a form of 19th-century periodical of roughly the same literary merit as modern comics. Spring Heeled Jack was a regular figure in these magazines, which surely inspired some taU tales, even if the fictional character had originally been inspired, in turn, by actual crime reports. Over time, the fictional character and the real attacker would have become confused and merged into one, creating (in effect, if not yet in name) an urban legend about a supernatural night stalker even more elusive and mysterious than the earlier Monster or the later Ripper.
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