Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 326: The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack

Episode Date: November 29, 2025

This week the boys tackle the Legend of Spring Heeled Jack! A notorious Victorian Cryptid man! CHILLUMINATI is a weekly comedy podcast hosted by Mike Martin, Jesse Cox and Alex Faciane. Hold on to your tin-foil hats and traverse the realms of the mysterious, supernatural, spooky and sometimes truly horrible - and your third eye will never be the same! Thank you to our sponsor Cash APP Download Cash App Today: [https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/eikoiw62] #CashAppPod.  Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. See terms and conditions at https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/card-agreement. Cash App Green, overdraft coverage, borrow, cash back offers and promotions provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. The Molecule Mindset - http://www.youtube.com/@themoleculemindset Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - https://www.youtube.com/@StarWarsOldCanonBookClub/ Editor: DeanCutty  Producer: Hilde @ http://www.youtube.com/@hilde_vg Show Art: Studio Melectro @ http://www.instagram.com/studio_melectro Logo Design: Shawn JPB @ https://twitter.com/JetpackBraggin

Oh, hey, how's it going? Amazing. I just finished paying off all my debt with the help of the Credit Counseling Society. Whoa, seriously? I could really use their help. It was easy. I called and spoke with a credit counselor right away. They asked me about my debt, salary, and regular expenses,

gave me a few options, and help me along the way. You had a ton of debt. And you're saying Credit Counseling Society helped with all of it? Yep. And now I can sleep better at night. When debt's got you, you've got us. Give Credit Counseling Society a call today. Visit no more debts.org.

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Chuluminati podcast. Episode 326, as always, I'm one of your host, Mike Martin, joined by my own two personal little Victorian boys. That's us. Jesse and Alex. Hey, sir, this microphone sure does hurt me throat. The first ever microphone, sir. It hurts me, sir. It does.

I don't have a microphone, sir, but two tin cans and string I have. My vision's blurring, sir. What do you mean you want me to play Spider-Man? All right. Mommy sold me for gruel. Honestly, keep that all, you know, keep that method acting in mind for the whole episode. We're going to be in that mindset, all episode, a young Victorian child's mindset, which you can find at patreon.com slash, I don't know, really know where to go from there to get to Patreon.

Young Victorian children over at patreon.com slash somebody like, you know what a lot of overlooked, absinth, addicted opium den lounging. That's really the vibe over there. Opium den.

Yeah. You know what would have kept all those brilliant minds out of the opium dens is if they had some sort of crowdfunding website. Patreon would have done it? That's right. Yeah. Patreon would have given them their own

sort of made up job that turn their interests into a job. Sure. You know, I don't know. Go there for us. Support us. Keep us out of the opium dens. And in return, you'll get all kinds of great stuff. Like we just watched Age of Disclosure, which, let me tell you something.

I'm not going to spoil it. I'm not going to spoil the film, but I already have spoiled the film. You've already heard me say, every word that's in the film. In fact, if you listen to Chulamani, you know more than what's in that film. Your brain is already so mega mind that you don't need to watch this movie.

But you can listen to us. If you want to, yeah, you can. If a bunch of you want to team up together and pay for it one time instead of what we did and pay for it three times, you can... $25 a pop. It's not, look, look, just in case we want to watch it again.

It's not worth $25. No, it was 20 to rent it. it for a day. Yeah, 20 to $25 to just own it, ultra HD. Now I own it, which is great. I can show it to my parents when they ask me about what a UFO is in the broadest possible sense. I can show them that.

It's the most like six or seven out of ten movie if it was free and three out of ten because you have to pay for it. I was what to say. The free is important. I thought we, I legit logged on to Prime thinking that it was going to be part of my subscription to Amazon Prime. No. It does not.

It costs more than two months of Amazon Prime. Luckily, that's not what today's about. No aliens today. We have a show called, wait, we have a show called Rotten Popcorn. It's on Patreon. If you go there, you can get our watch-along commentary of this entire film, which you can watch along with the film to make it something more entertaining than what it actually is, which is a big burger with nothing in between the buns.

I really liked it when Lou Elizondo was our teacher with Blackboard. I don't know why they, they, oh, it's, it's so unfortunate that that happened with Lou Elizondo before this movie came out. I would have been at least like honking its horn, you know what I mean? I would have been at least like telling people, hey, go watch this. You know what I mean? Like, if you want to know what's up, go watch this. But now I can't even do that because if you Google the guy who is the narrator of the entire movie, the first thing comes up is him like baking alien. of like a literal crop.

And being like, and being like, it's a UFO. Yeah. Come in you know. Yeah, you never know. Oh, no. That's not no. Fuck.

Oh, God. Yeah. What a disappointment in that movie was. But Brightside new Neil Breen movie on the way out. So. And get ready for more. We're all excited. We're all excited for Neil.

Okay. Yeah. I'm so glad. I'm so glad you've come around on Neil Breen. Oh, no. I haven't come around. It's terrible. But I'm excited to hurt myself.

I like hot food. I like spicy peppers. A little pinch and squeal. Yeah. And Neil Breen. And Young Victorian Show. Thank you to today's sponsor, Cash App. And I've been using Cash App for a while now.

And honestly, it's kind of been a game changer for my managing of my money. One of my favorite features is the ability to personalize my Cash App card. It's so much more fun than a boring debit card. And trust me, what I need in my life is way more fun. Like, so, so much more. I read about serial killers and stuff. And if I could add the perfect discount to my Cash App card, It would definitely be my favorite coffee shop, which is any fucking coffee shop that will give me coffee.

Cash app just released a new status program for the way people actually spend called Cash App Green. It unlocks new ways for you to pay, get rewarded, and easily grow and manage your money on your terms. Now, when you spend at least $500 a month with the Cash App Card or Cash App Pay, you earn Green Status, which unlocks benefits like up to $200 of free overdraft coverage, higher borrow limits, and custom personalized cashback offers every Friday at places that you love to shop. Turn everyday spending into status with Cash App Green. Download Cash App today or visit Cash.app. Slash app slash new to learn more about this and other great features launching now.

For a limited time, new Cash App customers can earn $10 that they use code Cash App 10 in their profile at sign up and send $5 to a friend within 14 days. Terms apply, cash up is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partners. Prepaid debit cards are issued by Sutton Bank member FDIC. Cash App Green, overdraft coverage, borrow, cash back offers and promotions are provided by Cash App, a Block Inc. brand visit cache.app slash legal slash podcast for full disclosures so what are you waiting for download cash app today and start turning your everyday spending into rewards you know what I mean yeah it's all the same it's all one thing well yeah I get you

I got you it's like to hurt myself it's like the catfish in the barrel with all the regular fish to keep I like to date people with obvious red flags yeah right I like to I like to I like to well let's let's put yeah let's put that emotional packing packaging away. And let's go into the episode today, you know? I mean, sorry. Thank you. Thank you.

Sorry. Get back into your improv acting. Back into your Victorian mindset. Because here, we're actually, before I even tell you what this is about. Do you need me tiny fingers to get to the bobbins and no gizmos? I put some fat betwixt me breads. All right. Now let's put bread between me breads.

Let's say, okay, instead, let's say now, it's February 19th, 1838, right? You're a little older than. than you are right now. You're eight, then you're Victorian child, rather. You're an 18 year old girl named Jane Alsop. Okay,

let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, oh, I'm Jane Osop, I am.

Oh, yeah, hold on, hold on, I got you, I got you. It's my giant oh so. Yep,

it's us. It's, 18 year out there, you see, that's the mark of a good actor is that we can change it up. Like, yeah, it's crazy how,

how talented you are. Yeah, you can't, you'll be, you'll be, you be, shocked. Did those two characters met? You'd be like, is that two different people? First of all,

hard to believe that's us talking, right? Right. First of all, hard to believe it's us talking. Second of all, no, they're not English. They're American. We were both the orphans and the girl. That was us. You're 18 years old and you live in a cottage between the villages of Bao and Oldford, which is just outside London, lonely little spot, and your nearest neighbors are far enough away that if you needed to scream for help,

they probably would not hear you. That's worth, that's worth putting on a, like a house ad. Like how far, like, in this time, so like, in the Victorian times, if I feel like how far away somebody who can help you is is probably like worth talking about up front. Yeah, you know, probably honestly. I just, we need to go back a minute. Your story's unimportant. Alex just said when looking to get at, are you implying that during this time period,

people were like, got to contact my real. I'm sorry. Bro. I have to contact me real estate agent. If all you've ever heard of Victorian Times, if all you ever heard, if all you've ever heard of Victorian Times is from this show, it's the most dangerous,

scary fucking time that there is in history. And everything that is now a fantasy was real back then. Like, do you think that today will fix that? Sure. But the application is. The thing that today's episode will change your opinion about how scary this time period was. I think that I have no real idea what this episode is about other than like a sentence

that you told me last night. So I'm just going to, I'm going to get it for you. But you're still the implication is that during this time, the real estate agents would have to be upfront about various cryptids and or distances between other homes and said cryptids and help that you could get. Just, you know, just I think Alex is saying it's a dangerous time, knowing how far away your closest neighbors in case you needed help for any reason. Like if you're important to know. If you're remote, I feel like it drives the cost down like down if you're remote in the Victorian times.

Whereas today, remoteness usually means that it's quite. Well, if you're remote usually because you have a farm and you're part of like the whole, you know, economy. Well, that's also true.

All this is proving is that none of the three of us know what the hell happened in the Victorian era. We all I know the damn thing about it. All I know, I'm never going to own a home. And I've lived in the same apartment that I've lived in ever since I left college before I graduated because it was too expensive. And I just picked off my college loan last year. Yeah. I am 37.

To a realtor. What are you talking talking about? Yeah. What are you talking about? Okay. So 1838, February, your Jane Alsop is late. It's like quarter to nine at night. But back then, it's like pitch black at that point because in 1838, street lamps are few and far between.

out here away from London. You're inside with your family, when suddenly there's this violent banging on your front gate, okay? Not a polite, like, you know, knock out your front door, just a jangling of your front gate. Someone is just hammering away at it, like they're trying to break in.

We're talking about some straight up aggression. And you open the door, you take a look at what's going on out there. And what you see is a man standing outside in the darkness. He's very clear. literally agitated and he says, here, give me your best grumpy,

old British Victorian man who's saying this to the girls, okay? For your sake, bring me a lie for we have caught Spring Hill Jack here in the line. Oh no.

That was hard for me to understand. But, you told me that to do that. Yeah, well, you know, I try. Hold on,

hold on. Hold on. You want another one? Yeah, go ahead and give me another one. All right. All right. Take two. For good sake, bring me a lord.

For there we've caught Spring Hill Jack we have here in the line. You know what? How do you think, Alex? What do you like that? I would call it Legibor. Legibor? Legibor. Legibor.

Legibor. Legibor. This guy that's grumpy and whispery and hard to hear. It looks like he's wearing a policeman's cloak. His voice is urgent. And so you do what any young, helpful woman in 1830? 38 would do. You grab a candle. You grab a candle and you bring it out to him. And the moment you hand him that candle, everything goes wrong. He throws off of his, it throws off his cloak. He

holds a candle up to his chest. And you see that he's wearing a white suit that looks like oil skin, skin tight and almost gleamed in the candlelight. He's got a massive helmet on his head and his eyes are reflecting the light like an animal's eyes go like you would with a flashlight in the woods. You see that reflection of the light in their eyes. Have you got a massive helmet on his head. You ever like a raccoon or anything like that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Even dogs and cats have it pretty much. Yeah. Then he opens his mouth and vomits forth blue and white flames directly into your face. What? Bloodborne boss. What? Bloodborne boss. No question.

However, part of you, you're not burning you. You're just frozen in fear. Your brain can't really promise what you're seeing. Not because of the flames. Well, partially psychologically because of the flames. But they're not freezing flames. Yeah. She's not having to make like a willpower save to like resistance.

a hold person spell here. Right. Whatever's before you clearly isn't human. And before you can scream, he lunges at you. His hands, they're not hands. They're actually claws, metal claws, and they grab you by the neck and your dress. He then shoves your head under his arm like he's trying to pin you in a wrestling match. And he starts tearing at your clothes with the claws ripping at your dress, tearing it to shreds.

And your sister's in the house here, you scream. One of them is too terrified to move when she actually sees him. But the older sister, Susan, if you can't tell, this is actually a legend that actually is told, runs out and manages to drag you back inside of the house. You collapse. The dress is destroyed. Your hair has been ripped out. Combs are, the combs that were in your hair are gone.

And you can barely speak because you're shaking so much. Combs were even gone. Yeah, because even, you know, little combs in your hair and stuff back in the Victorian times that make it like a little pretty and the loads are all gone. Like when a cartoon character gets like hit in the face of the hammer and all their shit flies off. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But the metal claws are just going like crazy like Edward's his hand.

So yeah. Okay. So it's not a bloodborne boss. It's like a bloodborne. and like PVP. It's like a guy. It's like a dude. Yeah.

And the thing is, he doesn't even leave after you get inside. He stands outside your door and just knocks on it loudly, violently, two or three times. And it's only when your family starts screaming for the police from the upstairs window that he finally leaves not walking or running, but leaping and scampering across the fields, like a giant bunny hop. Because today, we are talking about the legend of spring healed jack. This is a Victorian boogie.

men who terrorized England for 67 years and the fire breathing devil who could leap over nine foot tall walls. The phantom would attack young women in the darkness had vanished like smoke. The question will be left with. And hopefully answer is, was this an actual historical figure that legend had been laid mythological powers on like a bored aristocrat that was just for terrorizing women? Did you say 67? 67 years of like running.

So that's like Zorro type shit. Was he like, that's like a legacy hero. Like a, yeah. Was he a mass delusion that like somehow left real victims in his wake? Or was he an actual superhuman entity that caused problems? Before we drive into the details, just shout out to the two main sources that I use for this episode. The article Springheeled Jack to Victorian Bugaboo from Suburban Ghost by Mike Dash in 40 in Studies from 1996. And then the book, The Legend of Springheeled Jack, Victorian.

in urban folklore and popular culture by Carl Bell. That book in particular is really, he really dives into the history of where Springheel Jack even comes from. And a lot like how we talked about the Jersey Devil is how I'm very much approaching this episode as well. And back when we did the jerseys out of devil, I remember there was a couple of Reddit post talking about. There's like some art out there, the Jersey Devil and Springheel Jack fighting.

And I remember it was like a sick, really sick poster art. It was nice. All right. So before we dive into the meeting this thing, obviously what we need to do. to talk about, as we usually do, is how terrible London was in 1837. Because the problem with every Victorian era movie or TV show you've ever seen is you see the nice side of it all. They show you those gaslit streets with fog swirling around, uh, proper ladies and gentlemen

dressed in the nines and maybe like a Dicksonian like street urchin, like Oliver running around asking for, please, sir, more food, you know, the stuff that you were doing early. I know the vibes. Yeah. But the reality was a nightmare. The air stank to high heaven. Like, that's the first thing you have to understand about Victorian London. It smelled like coal smoke mixed with horse manure, mixed with human shit.

Because like, weren't there like lamps that were like coming out of the sewers that was just like burning off like fart gas from like shit and piss and fart and dead shit? I don't know. We'll get, we'll talk about like what that was like a myth. Like a small note you would find in an Eldritory game when you went to a town. that was called like in smithberg yeah and they was like they called fart lamps me lord they burn off the farts of the old ones down beneath the city they do i think it's just our people they are my lord where's my family i went crazy i'm hallucinating that's every horror video game yeah yeah but this also you found by my like a little recording somewhere yeah this is like the 18

30s, we're still at a time of night soil collectors, which were people that would go house to house, gathering buckets of shit to sell to the farmers. And the Tames was like a flowing toilet that occasionally caught fire from all the industrial chemicals that were being dumped into it at this point in time. Like kind of metal. There was no kind of metal. The regulations. No, I don't think there's any like fragments of metal. Like fast forward to the day, dude's throwing. magnets into the Thames pulling out.

Okay. Pull it up shit. Shred it out shit. Yeah. And when you walk down the street at night, you could hear your own footsteps echoing on cobblestone, which would then eventually be drowned out by the hissing of the gas lamps when there even were gas lamps around. Again, you really only got a lot of those in the inner London area.

Hear me. Hear me out. As lamps. Because they're constantly letting. Because it's far gas from underneath the city. I love that. Perfect. Ass lamps.

But like the sound of them hissing. Do you guys have, you've had a gas lamp around before. I used to have them a lot when I went out. Yeah, like the constant hissing noise, except it's multiple lamps all making that noise all the time around you if you're like, have the lamps at all around. And it meant that even when you couldn't see anything in the darkness,

you could still hear that something was burning nearby, consuming fuel. There's a weird time. London 1837 was an industrial hellscape that was growing faster than the infrastructure could actually handle. The population at the time was exploding. Over two million people were cramming. into a city that had medieval foundation still.

And like I said, the Thames was an open sewer. Collar outbreaks were regular occurrences. And the streets at night were genuinely dangerous in ways that are really hard for us to comprehend today. Like we talk about how dangerous the streets are in crime rates. But at this, like, it's really hard to fucking wrap your head around how dangerous that time period was at night, especially for women. Like, by and large.

I'll give you a fact to it. Every single one of the women. someone heard him, okay, but did not come because they were used to it. Just think about that. Yeah. Like it wasn't weird to hear somebody screaming for help in the middle of the night ever because it was always happening. Right. At some point, your brain takes trauma and it's like, this is normal now.

And like you just, it becomes part of the background noise. And the lighting why I'm talking about is because it's kind of crucial to understanding why Spring Hill Jack could operate the way he did. Gas street lamps were only 30 years old by the time this is taking place. 1807 is when they were introduced. And then each lamp put out less than a modern 25 watt bulb. And they were spaced 65 meters apart, which is about a little over 200 feet between each lamp.

So you'd have these little pools of like weak yellowish light and then massive stretches of darkness in between even in the city. Right. And in the suburbs, place, like Barnes or Bow or Oldford, the areas where Jack operated supposedly, the lighting was even worse or straight up non-existent. You're talking about dark, narrow lanes bounded by high hedges, loads of unpaved roads that would eventually turn into mud when it rained, and isolated cottages with no neighbors in shouting distance, something that realtors should tell people before they buy their

homes. Now, add to the fact that the metropolitan police had only been founded in September of 1829. The cops were eight years old. That's it. The cops were barely a thing. Isn't it crazy to think about city cop vibes? Like brand new baby city cops figuring out how to do it. Yeah, doing their best. This is eight years before Spring Hill Jack shows up. And the force was barely functional. Drunkenness was rampant among new recruits of the 2000. 800 officers serving in May of 1830, only 562 were still on the force four years later. That's an, that's 80%ish turnover rate of, of cops coming in and then being filtered straight out. And like, you might have this romantic idea or the viewers might have this romantic idea that these cops were like looking like Sherlock Holmes.

These fuckers were not Sherlock Holmes. They didn't even have a detective branch until sometime in the 1840s. They look like the dudes, they look like, you know, those like, you know, those like. big blue coach the big buckle. Yep. Yeah. That's exactly like the kind of vibes you're getting. They're still like trying to figure shit out. And anybody's getting hired and everybody needs a job.

And like there's really not a lot of pay. And it's very violent and dangerous. And a lot of working class Londoners at this time did just didn't trust the cops. The Bow Street runners had handled actual criminal investigations and many people saw the new metropolitan police as just another form of government control. So if something strange happened to you in the dark, there was a very very. very real chance that either the police wouldn't believe you, wouldn't be able to help you, or wouldn't even bother reporting it because what's the point? Right. Like this is the war, like,

again, hard to wrap your mind. It's not saying that our world is anywhere near utopia, but, man, this was a time of just lawlessness. And if you were a young servant girl walking home at night, you're done. We were on your own. Like, your employer wasn't going to walk you home. The police weren't going to patrol your route. If something happened to you in those dark lanes, is the assumption would be that you'd have been a quote unquote hysterical woman or somehow quote and quote asking for it. Victorian society had a very convenient way of blaming women for the violence done to them, which, you know, again, thank God we don't, that doesn't happen anymore. The people spring heel jack targeted understood this perfectly, young working class women,

servants mostly, who had to walk home through those dark lanes after working in the houses of wealthier families. Their testimony was considered less reliable by authorities, but their safety and so their safety just wasn't a priority. They were perfect victims. And there was a precedent for exactly this kind of panic. Between 1803 and 1804, Hammersmith had been terrorized by the quote and quote Hammersmith ghost. Someone dressed in white who lurked in the churchyard and scared people. It got so bad that a local man named Francis Smith. What did he do? we didn't go I didn't go super deep in anyway and this is just a little like a taste of like what the mentality was back then it even got so bad in that time that a local man named francis smith shot

and killed someone that he thought was the ghost which i love that the thought was it's a ghost let me shoot it that might you which dude honestly i'm with him though i get it i at least here's what i say i empathize that dude's stupid but i empathize yeah well turn out it wasn't a ghost but an innocent bricklayer named Thomas Millwood who was just wearing white clothes on his way home from work. And Smith was convicted of murder

though he was later pardoned for the crime. Right. Because technically he just thought it was a ghost. Technically he became a ghost. So yeah. So like a guy in white clothes scared some people. Yeah. And vigilantes formed and they were not dead. So technically he shot a ghost. I'm just saying. Yeah.

We're all technically ghosts. Yeah. We're all technically. You're not wrong. So when the rumors about Springheeled Jack started circulating somewhere in late 1837, Londoners had every reason to be terrified because the city was dark, the police were useless, and there was historical precedent for phantom attackers being real enough for them to be worried about them being killed. Now, the first documented sighting of Springheel Jack attacks began in September of 1837 in Barnes, which was then a village southwest of London. He wasn't called Spring Heald Jack at this time.

The early reports described him as, quote, a ghost imp or devil in the shape of a large white bull or sometimes even as a bear. Like the legend even doesn't even start up with him as a man. It's like a weird ghost animal. Are bears English? Maybe. Yes. Are there bears? Like, I guess what I'm asking is like, you know how like they'd like stuff animals and they'd look like shit in Victorian times?

Like these like duffy ass lines and shit? Like when people were. saying bears. I wonder if they were thinking of some type of bear. I think they were thinking of some kind of bear. I'm just looking at like there were native bears in the UK, but it was a long time ago. Yeah, exactly. I, yeah, I feel like it's kind of, I feel like it's kind of funny that they would say it's a bear. Yeah. I, but yeah, I imagine they probably, I mean, there's modern day like, you know, communication and like, you know, there's another country that they, they know of bears at this point. Oh, yeah. Wow. This is super interesting. So bears in the UK were,

basically the brown bear and stuff was likely killed off in the UK in the early middle ages. There were no bears in the UK during the Victorian era. So it's probably from Europe or Americas or just, yeah. Ghost of a bear. So, you know, maybe that's what they were thinking. Because I imagine they have history. Like maybe they wrote about it or something. In my mind, I'm just thinking like maybe they think like any furry man shaped thing is a bear.

You know what I mean? Like I know what a bear looks like. times they have like a lot of art and stuff about bears in the area. Yeah, but they look like, I mean, you know, I don't know, they look like that bear that hangs out in front of fucking mechanics. You know, I'm telling you know that one. You got like the grateful dead bear. It's just like this like weird bear.

And if you know, you know, if you know, you know, if you know, if you're out there, you know. Now, this being like the first kind of documented of what would eventually turn into spring which is going to move forward, uh, would become spring heel jackets. There might be some people out there who were thinking because it was my thought, too, of I thought the first sighting was someone by the name of Polly Adams who got attacked at the Green Man Hotel in October of 1837. The story is supposedly Jack allegedly ripped off her dress, scratched her stomach. But this supposedly almost certainly did not happen because this comes from a 1977 book by Peter Haining called the legend and bizarre crimes of Springfield Jack. And when researchers tried to track down Haining sources, he claimed he'd, quote, lent all his research material to a scriptwriter and it was subsequently lost.

How fucking convenient. Like this rumor that became like the first sighting of Spring Hill Jack came from an author who's just a completely unsubstantiated thing. Yeah. And this is all thanks to historian Mike Dash, who spent weeks going through every available newspaper from the period and found absolutely no contemporary account of a Polly Adams encounter. It's crazy because I imagine this as like a mania type sighting Spring Hill Jack. I never really looked into it that deep. We'll get into like why, but yeah, but like, that's interesting. Yeah, we'll get into.

Yeah, it's, it's fat. But like the Polly Adams is not real folklore. It's fake folklore. And it's important to flag the stuff as we go because there are several Spring Hill Jack stories that got added to the legend decades later that simply have no historical bias to them whatsoever. But here, back to the Barnes and 18, 17. 1837, the attacks that we can verify involved a figure described in multiple forms. Like I said, sometimes as a muscular, uh, this also sometimes as a muscular man with devilous features,

large pointed ears and nose and glowing eyes. Sometimes as a figure in armor with red shoes. What do you mean devilish features? I imagine like sharp chin like a like a chin. Like you think the classic artistic devil like that kind of like the round bottom of the chin beard that comes off that. Yeah, like a little point at the end. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Like, yeah. Yeah, you dress like a, like a, like he has elvish ears. If you go, if you go look at artistic pictures of Springheel Jack, he very much has that kind of what I would almost describe as like the modern day devil kind of look to him in a way. One businessman claimed he saw. I think a baseball star. Press. One business being claimed he saw this thing leap over the high railings of barn cemetery, which if true would be an impressive his health feat of athleticism. but not necessarily supernatural because they're not like absurdly unjumpably high.

Over the next few months, the sightings would spread. Two dozen villages south and west of London started reporting similar encounters. In cutthroat lane, Islesworth, and yes, that's the actual name because I guess Victoria's to- Hmm? Meet me down on cutthroat lane. No, I don't know what that's for, is that for the reference? I just mean like on the sign when you walk down the street.

That's the actual name because I guess they just didn't fucking around with naming things weird, creepy places. Jesse, why do you look? Why is your mouth just a gape? Sorry, I, you were so completely right. Springlejack looks like if you and your mind were to imagine even the, uh, the, the devil guy from, uh, Powerpuff girls, like all those. Yes, yes. That is what he looks like in my mind. I capital H.I am him from Powerpuff girls.

Yes, like literally looks like what you would imagine. This probably is the origin of the stereotypical devil. At least how we see it today. Devilish features. It wasn't just, yeah, it's like literally like he just looks like the devil. Like it's comical how absolutely like the pointed ears and like the very like straight tiny node that like points out. They're like long chin that has the little.

The whole thing's there. This is crazy. Even the outfit. I love this. This is wild. Over the next few months, the sightings would spread. Two dozen villages south and west of London started reporting similar encounters. In Cutthroat Lane and Isleworth, a carpenter named Jones was attacked by what he described

as a figure dressed in armor. He fought back and two more figures joined in. Jones was badly beaten and his clothes were torn to shreds. The pattern was starting to set up. Someone or multiple someone was targeting people. people in the dark, isolated areas, and the attacks were coordinated enough that they were spreading across different villages and they were escalating. And clearly, whatever this is, whether it's like a group of people, whatever, it's more

than one person that's doing this. But they start labeling it as a single individual. Now, by early January in 1838, the situation had gotten bad enough that someone decided to describe, someone decided to write to the Lord Mayor of London. that someone was anonymous, claimed to be a resident of Peckham, and their letter is one of the most important primary sources we have for this whole story. The Lord Mayor at the time was Sir John Cohen, who was a wealthy Chandler, which is basically a candle merchant, who'd been made a baronet by Queen Victoria just two months earlier. And on January 9, 1838, he held a public session at the mansion house, which was a pretty big deal. And this was not the kind of thing Lord Mayors did for random urban legends.

And Alex, I'm going to have you read this letter. It's kind of long, but for the sake of its source, I think it's just worth having it read full. 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 wrung the bell, and on the servant coming to open the door, this worse than brute stood in a no less dreadful figure than a specter 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, likely to become a burden on their families. And I want to pack this briefly because the letter's kind of doing something a little interesting. The anonymous writer basically is claiming that Springheel Jack isn't a ghost or a devil or anything supernatural.

He believes he's like a wealthy aristocrat who made a bet with his equally wealthy friends. And he thinks that the wager is that he can't successfully terrorize the suburbs of London while dressed up in different costumes and that the stakes, well, we'll get to the stakes in a second. Well, no, you know what, fuck it. Let's go actually over it right now because the number is insane. The supposed wager made is 5,000 pounds. And in 1838, that is the equivalent of.

roughly 600,000 U.S. dollars today. We'll get over the details is where we learned about that number in a little bit. But these people allegedly were betting over half a million dollars on whether their rich buddy could terrorize working class women effectively enough to drive them permanently insane. Like, that's the bet. And here's what, like, crazy. The letter writer specifies that the victims are servants and wives, women who have jobs,

women who have families depending on them. The bet isn't just, quote, can you scare someone? It's can you destroy someone's ability to function and earn a living? It's violence with economic consequences built in that this letter is kind of talking about. Is this, this is a real confirmed letter and not just like a thing people thought was happening? According to the source, Mike, Mike Dross, or what was those last name of shit? I wrote up here. Yeah.

But again, but it's also important, like we don't, the writer, self is anonymous. So there's no way to know that this is not coming from maybe one of the nobles or even from the mayor himself. We do not know where this letter comes from. Like, is this a we have like a documented source or this is a thing. Oh, yes. Happened. No, this is a documented letter. This is an actual letter. Like this is a letter that was, that we have. The thing is also is like the letter itself is making claims about rich nobles. But without any evidence, it's almost like it's kind of pitching what he thinks is the idea because he doesn't believe it's a go. because it sounds like something depraved that they would do, right? Yeah, exactly, exactly.

I was just trying to figure out if this was I, let's say Joe Blow, am informing you about what's happening or dearest comrades, let us defeat these working class. Like it's, I didn't know which of the two it was. It's very much, it brings true a lot for some of today's conspiracy theories, right? Because whether or not the specific wager actually existed, The fact that someone was writing the letter and it could be plausible enough in their eyes that the higher up Victorian nobility would do this to poor people is speaking of like the suffering that these people are going through and what they expect out of those who sit higher station above them. And the letter specifically mentioned is quote, individuals of the higher ranks of life.

This is a class warfare kind of rhetoric. The writer is saying that rich people are literally using poor people as entertainment, that they're so bored and so insulated from. consequences that they've gambled on whether one of their friends can traumatize working class women badly enough to drive them insane. Thank God there's nothing like that happening anymore. All done. Never. We're better. We're more enlightened people now. We're free. Right. We're free. And according to the letter, it's also working. Seven women have lost their minds. At least two are not expected to recover. They'll become, quote, a burden on their families, which in 1838 means they'll end up in an asylum or on the streets because there is no social safety net for these people. The Lord Mayor read this

letter to a packed room on January 11th, he showed the crowd, quote, a pile of letters from various places in and around London complaining about similar attacks. One writer reported that several young women in Hammersmith had been frightened into, quote, dangerous fits. And some were, quote, severely wounded by a sort of claws the miscreant wore on their hands, torn dresses and scratches. A committee was then formed to investigate this. And they were told that the Springheeled Jack gang at the time. They're labeling it as a gang of people because now we are talking about multiple people was made up of rascals connected with high families and that bets totaling 5,000 pounds were at stake. 5,000 pounds, again, we said it's like $600,000. The Lord Mayor tried to downplay the whole

thing. He was skeptical, again, fair, but he couldn't just ignore it because the public was beginning to panic. The newspapers were beginning to pick up the story and that's when everything kind of exploded because once the press got involved, as we've seen time and time and time again on the show, uh, and especially once they gave it the spring heel Jack name, a legend building around him was an inevitable. It's crazy that Jack went from localized.

It's crazy that they just called him Jack again. I know Jack again. It's almost like the go to name for anonymous back then where John is like kind of our go to today. But even then it's like you don't go like evil John and then we have like dead. John. He's the next guy. And then we have like murderer John out in the streets. It's, you know, now that, but now that the media picked it up and put it in the newspapers, that of course, the legend just started building. And the sightings went from localized

incidents to citywide hysteria. And that story we talked about early on, uh, with, Jane Alsop, that would take place about 40 days after the Lord Mayor's public session talking about all of this. And that was in February 19th, 1838. Now we go to February 19th, 1838, beer binder, a bear binder lane rather, bear beer binder would be cooler between, that's all between Bo and old Ford. Yeah, yeah, bear citing lane. We've already covered the basics of what happened to Jane Alsop, but now let's get into some of the details because Jane gave testimony to magistrate Mr. Hodwick at Lambeth Street Police Office. And it was published in the Times on February 22nd, 1838. This is the,

the single most detailed eyewitness account we have of supposedly springheeled jack and it's worth going through this carefully because there's a lot that doesn't match the supernatural legend. We're going to have Jesse take this one. This is Jane's own words, but it's lengthy. So make sure you do your voice a favor before you dive into anything. Great. I won't do one. At about a quarter to nine o'clock, she heard a violent ringing at the gate at the front of the

house and on going to the door to see what was the matter, she saw a man standing outside, of whom she inquired what was the matter, and requested he would not ring so loud. Stop being loud. What do you want? Yeah. The person instantly replied that he was a policeman and said, for God's sake, bring me a light. We have caught Spring Hill Jack here in the lane. She returned into the house and brought a candle and handed it to the person who appeared enveloped in a long cloak and whom she had first really believed to be a policeman. The instant she had done so, however, he threw off his outer garment and applying the lighted candle to his breast, presented the most hideous and frightful appearance, and vomited forth a quantity of blue and white flames from his mouth. and his eyes resembled red balls of fire.

So what we know from that, by the way. Jesus fucking Christ is that the temperature of his fire breath is hotter than that of the temperature of his eyeballs. Correct, actually. You're correct. That's true. Right. Which makes sense because you got to see. Right. Well, because the fire comes from the from the gut. And then it goes up and out the mouth. And so the heat and the eyeballs is going to be less because it's, you're, it's breathing fire. You think his eyes dim? You think his eyes dim when he's breathing fire? Yeah. Because they, otherwise. was we blue.

Like, if it turns out the blue, it becomes, like, that's just science, dude. That's just science. To stand by mode for a second. Right. Yeah. From the hasty glance, which her fright enabled her to get of his person, she observed that he wore a large helmet. And his dress, which appeared to fit him very tight, seemed to her to resemble white

oils, white oil skin. Oil skin is a type of waterproofing on clothing back in there. Like more sailors would wear that kind of. like stuff. In my mind, I think I know what that looks like. I'm pretty sure I've probably seen that in the movie. It almost looks like they're probably wet, but never dripping wet. Yeah, yeah. Without uttering a sentence, he darted her and catching her partly by her dress and the back part of her neck placed her head under one of his arms and commenced tearing her gown with his claws, which she was certain were some metallic substance. So while she never says

like claw hands and stuff like that, it was a metallic, maybe just could have been a knife, which is more likely. From that alone, like the spur of the metal claws is born. You know, this is like, obviously, it's not a supernatural demon. I mean, the fire breath, to me, trauma, like, scared. Maybe like the, while he was breathing, he could see like the, his own breath and the cold or something. And it looked like fire breath. I don't know what that could have been.

But the attacker is clearly pretending to be a cop, very kind of classic serial killer, like perpetual criminal activity. He claims to be a policeman who. who's captured Springheeled Jack, which is already a panic in the city at this point. And by February 19th, the name Spring Hill Jack has been in the newspapers for over a month.

Everybody now knows who he is. Everyone is terrified of him. So when a policeman shows up at your door and saying they've caught the guy, your first instinct is probably relief. Like, oh, good, they got him. He's not here anymore. I have to worry about it.

And then he asked for a light, but he doesn't have his own light source, which should have been a red flag. Yeah, I was about to say, this is how you know times have changed. and as a society, we've become more suspicious. Because the first thing I thought of was man shows up at my house, says he's a cop, and he needs my help.

I'd be like, bro, you shouldn't. Yeah, you shouldn't need my help. I'm a citizen. You do your thing. One of the theories are that actually, what I find fascinating about this is that, and there's no way to prove this is real or not, but that he did spit flame. But the reasoning he did because he was asking for a candle and that when the candle brought, he had a fluid in his mouth, that he could spit.

shoot out of flame to distract her. That's pretty interesting. And then grab her. Yeah. Yeah. Scare the shit of her by blowing like the hairspray trick. Yeah. Literally.

Yeah. Using the hair spray trick essentially. Yeah. To completely like stunner. Um, but like because once he had the candle, he throws off his cloak. He brings it close. She said it brings it to his chest.

So she brings it close to his face. And then she describes what she sees, which is that slick suit. And then the fire happens. Like another thing to talk about is like what Jane's description is actually very specific in what sticks for. Spring heel jack from here out. White oil skin suit, tight fitting, large helmet.

Again, that's also not something you really kind of throw together. What she's seeing is like of an actual person. Seems very planned. The helmet to cover the face. The oil slick may be to prevent him from catching fire from like him blowing his own fire. Maybe it's not actual oil, but some sort of moisture to keep him from catching fire.

Again, oil skin in 1838 was used for waterproof clothing. sailors wore it, people who worked outdoors wore it. It ended up being like it was apparently a stiff, shiny, and in candlelight. It would have a supernatural gleam to it like he's wearing light itself, like dancing off of him. The helmet suggests either actual armor, which I imagine wasn't super hard to come across at that time still, or something more theatrical stage armor maybe. They kind of used in plays about medieval nights. And the metal claws Jane was so certain about were probably either a knife.

Maybe he had like metal-tipped gloves at best, like with little pricks of metal, but I still think probably a knife. To me, this screams man planning to commit crime on woman that he knows is home alone right now. Because it's like old-timey, I'm going to hide my identity stuff. It's also crazy like intruder type's behavior that is insane. Yeah, exactly. Like the attack itself, he grabs her, puts her in a headlock, starts tearing at her clothes. It's like the Batman effect where it's going to, like, affect your perception of the person.

Yeah. And when you read her actual testimony as opposed to the actual legend, there is no actual word about him leaping across the field. Jane's father noted actually in his own testimony that he just scampered across the field. There was no leaping, jumping, like giant nine foot gaps or anything like not, not bounding over buildings. That was added afterward. Admittedly, though, the leaping seldom.

it much more than he scampered away. Yeah, he's clampered away like Super Mario on a fence. Yeah, the scamper, there's almost something a little like, you can hear that that Scooby-Doo sound effect like when they try to like run really fast. That's how I imagine his scamper. And when he ran away, remember, the only reason he ran away is because they actually started shouting for their actual cops from the window, even if nobody was around to actually hear it.

But he got the attacker when he ran away, he left his cloak. He never came back for it. Jane's father said there must have been an accomplice because the person who attacked Jane ran away across the fields without touching his disguise. But for some reason that Jane's father made that believe that meant there was another one around. I don't know why he believed that. Nine days later, on February 28th, 1838, 18-year-old Lucy Scales and her sister are walking home through the Green Dragon Alley in Limehouse after visiting their brother William, who was a butcher at the time. Alex, I'm going to have you take this encounter here. It's a shorter one.

Miss Scales stated that on the evening of Wednesday last 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 at an angle in the passage. She was in advance of her sister at the time, and just as she came up to the person who was enveloped in a large cloak, he spurred it a quantity of blue flame right in her face, which deprived her of her sight and so alarmed her that she instantly dropped to the ground

and was seized with violent fits which continued for several hours. Which again, that if that sprang of blue flame, I just can't help but let go of the idea. It's their distraction technique. They have some sort of fluid in their mouth. And that's their whole shit as they approach somebody and like stun them or blind them with the fire so they can do what they want. Lucy's sister described the attacker as tall, thin, and gentlemanly appearance. He was carrying what looked like a police bull's eye lamp.

one of those like directional lanterns with a shuttered opening. And here, like, the person didn't speak to her at all. He didn't try to grab her either. He didn't attempt to tear her clothes. He just appeared in the alley, waited for to get close, spit blue flame in her face to blind her and then walked away. Not leapt away. Just walked away. And the sister was very clear about the fact that he walked away and didn't leap or run.

So now we have two attacks, nine days apart. And they're similar but not identical. Both involve blue flame. both involve a figure and a cloak. Both happen in dark, narrow passages, but the MO seems a different. Jane Alsop was grabbed and assaulted while Lucy's scales was blinded and left there.

Jane's attacker tried to force his way back into the house while Lucy's attacker just disappeared. So either it's the same person refining their approach in typical serial killer fashion, as we've discussed many times on this, or we are looking at different people copycatting each other and doing it for different reasons.

So if we talk about how you actually breathe fire, this is a trick that carnivaler performers and street entertainers have been doing for centuries back then. And Detective James Lee, which we'll get to a little bit more about him in a minute, investigated exactly this question after Jane Allsop's attack. He went to London Hospital and the staff there demonstrated the trick for him. And according to the report, they did it by quote, by blowing through a tube in which spirits of wine, sulfur and another ingredient were deposited and again. ignited. So they have a tube that they shot it through and into like probably the candle. And then spirits of wine, basically what they're describing is ethanol, alcohol. It burns with a blue flame that's relatively smokeless. You don't need much of it. And it doesn't burn that hot compared to other fuels,

which is why fire breathers don't immediately incinerate their mouths when they do it for their trick. A theater proprietor named Mr. Farrell also went on and testified about this. He said that dropping certain strong acids onto a sponge charged with spear. of wine would produce the kind of blue flames that Jane and Lucy described. The technique is pretty straightforward if you know what you're doing. You take a mouthful of this ethanol and you spray it into a fine mist either toward the flame source or using a tube that's connected to whatever you're using to blow it through there. The mist ignites in mid air creates a dramatic looking fireball,

but the key is keeping the fuel as a mist and not a liquid because if you spray liquid directly into a flame, you basically create a blowback. a backflow that burns to you. So you have to miss it. So it doesn't blow back on you. And is it dangerous? Oh yeah. Fire breathers today still suffer burns,

especially when they're like learning the thing for the first time. But it's still not like supernatural. It's just chemistry technique and practice to master this. And if you, if these are rich assholes who have plenty of time, I'm sure they have plenty of time to practice it. And remember Springheeled Jack specifically asked Jane Alsup for a candle. He needed an ignition source.

A real demon wouldn't need to borrow fire from its fucking victim to blow like fire in its face. He was actually a devil. The police to their credit actually made an arrest pretty quickly. They grabbed a local carpenter named Thomas Milbank. Milbank had been boasting in the Morgan's Arms pub that he was spring-heeled jack. He was wearing white overalls and a great coat that matched descriptions. And most damningly, the cloak and candle that Jane had given to her attacker were found near the Allsau Pass. house. The detective who made the arrest was, yeah. The detective who made the arrest was James Lee,

who was actually pretty famous at the time. He'd captured William Carter, who was the Red Barn Murderer, which maybe one day we'll talk about. So this wasn't like some random beat cop. He was a cop who actually, in the eight years of like cops exist, well, nine at this point. He had a bit of a reputation for getting work done. And they had a witness too. A guy named James Smith, of course, testified that he'd overheard Milbank's companion say, quote, It was rascally. I would not have done. I would not have had it done upon my account.

And when Smith later ran into Milbank, the carpenter said to him, what have you to say to Spring Jack? Basically, what they're saying is like, you've got the costume, you've got the boasting, you've got witnesses. It's an open and shut case. It's you, bro. Yeah. And except Thomas Milbank was acquitted. And the reason why, it tells you everything kind of need to know about Springfield. The legend of Springheeled Jack had already overtaken the reality of what was actually going on.

because Jane Alsap insisted, I mean, insisted that her attacker had breathed actual breaths of fire, that that was the defining characteristic, the blue flames, the vomited fire, the demonic appearance, and Thomas Milbank, when questioned, admitted that he could not breathe fire. It's true, he couldn't actually breathe fire. He had no idea how to do it. So you think she just didn't want it to be him? I think she truly thought it was a demonic force, and she couldn't be convinced it was a, a man. Because, because, but not, not because of propriety, not because she didn't want to seem

dumb. You think she genuinely thought it was fire? I think she genuinely believed it was a demon. And like I said, the legend at this point had completely dominated the narrative of who Springheeled Jack was. There was no wiggle room outside of the, the supernatural narrative as to what might be going on here. That is crazy, dude.

He says he, Milbank also says he was blackout drunk on the night of the attack. And the scale sisters had had said their attacker was. clearly sober. So he was let go. The fire breathing element, the thing that was probably just a carnival trick, the thing that could be explained by basic chemistry, that same element protected what likely who was actually the perpetrator. Because by the time Millbank went to trial, Springfield Jack wasn't just a guy in a costume

anymore. He had become the supernatural entity that could breathe fire, could jump over tall buildings. And if you couldn't breathe fire, well, then you could not possibly be Spring Hill Jack. And that's why it's like it's important to know the legend had become more important to the crime at this point. Like the actual perpetrator,

they might have gotten right away. Like immediately. And but he could have walked, but he might have walked free because the mythology had already won. And it's 1830s. The willingness to believe in the supernatural was much more prevalent back then. We had men really crossed over.

Like we're approaching the era of spiritualism and like that kind of like backward, back blow on that kind of thing. But still, Um, now what we need to do, though, is talk about Henry de la Poya Bresford, uh, the third Marquise of Waterford, because he's the prime historical suspect. And also because he's one of the most spectacularly terrible human beings of the fucking Victorian era. Okay. I was I read about this guy.

The Marquess, I think he's a Marquess, Marquise. It's our, I'll show you. How do you say this? I probably should have looked up how you said it instead of just having my brain say it when I'm reading it. Could be Marquess. Marquess is I copy pasted. I think it's Marquess. Yeah, it could be Marquis.

The Marquis was born in 1811, which made him about 26 years old during the Spring Hill Jack Panic. He inherited his title and a massive fortune at age 15 when his father died. And he spent the next 33 years using that fortune to terrorize anyone within arms fucking reach. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes him like this. And Jesse, I'm just going to have you read this directly. His favorite companions were young sporting men, prize fighters and prostitutes.

Powerfully built rich and with an uncontrolled sense of humor, it amused him to challenge passers-by to fight him, to break windows to upset literally apple carts. When, as frequently occurred as activities landed him in court, he laughed at and paid the durisory fees. Derisory fees, yeah. which were designed to control the excess of the working class, not those of apparently limitless wealth, wealthy aristocracy.

This guy is, what's his face? That dude on social media who goes walking through the street and he bumps into people on purpose and he has a bodyguard beat him up. Oh, yep, and he has a bodyguard like that guy who just got thrown in jail. That dude, that's this guy.

It's this guy. Yeah, yeah. It's crazy how there's still these people around. Yeah, there was social media. He'd be on it and universally hated. He actually lucked out because there wasn't social media. And somehow loved and somehow loved because he's hated.

Yeah, dude. And also, just a little of the Britishism, it amused him to upset Apple Carts. Like just that little description. I don't know. It made me laugh. Like they're trying to be polite about it or some shit. So let's give you some more ideas or more examples of Marquess's idea of fun. He once kidnapped a cab driver at gunpoint and forced him to drive through London while the

Marquess fired pistols in the air just because for entertainment. he would challenge random working class men to fight him men who couldn't possibly win because he was an aristocrat who trained in boxing and they'd starve if they'd injured him then he when he won he'd laugh about it he kept a pack of dogs that he'd set loose on people not for hunting just to scare them and his hobby his literal recreational activity was upsetting apple cards like that was his when they say that that was his favorite fucking thing to do he would find a cartful of apples and just run over to it and flip it over, destroying someone's entire day's work, ruin their entire inventory, and probably, I imagine, leave them unable to feed their families for the week because of that. And he like, this, this man had an annual income of 60,000 pounds over $7 million in modern terms, and he just spent it on destroying fruit and terrorizing people. Honestly, there's a lot of rich people right now who this is the exact something. Let's not even pretend.

That has never changed. that I have enough money to do anything. I've done everything. So all that's left is to be a complete asshole. One point he got him and his like cronies to dangle a cop over a well just because it was funny. The most comic book villain shit in the world. When he was finally fined for the Melton Mowbray incident, 100 pounds was all he was

fined. The equivalent of about $12,000 today. And that was a coordinated assault, vandalism, destruction of property, attacking multiple police officers, breaking someone out of jail and terrorizing an entire town. He paid 100 pounds for that. He paid it the same day without blinking, literally just like walked out. The Hobart Town Crier, this is an Australian newspaper, wrote in October of 1838 that his name in many quarters is regarded with as much terror as that of Springfield Jack himself. But the incident that really demonstrates what kind of person this guy was is the painting the town red incident.

And yes, this is where that phrase actually comes from. On April 6th, 1837, five months before the first Spring Hill jack sightings, the Marquess and several of his aristocratic friends got drunk after the races at Croxton Park. They rode into the town of Melton Mowbray and decided to redecorate. They painted the white swan in sign red. They grabbed a watchman, held him down and painted his face red. They attacked a tollkeeper, nailed up his toll house, and then painted it red. They destroyed property throughout the town, painting it red.

When the police tried to stop them, they beat multiple officers, painting some of their faces. You guessed it, Red. One of the Marquess's friends was arrested, so they broke three locks, beat two more constables, threatened, threatened murder to free him. This was the event that painting the town Red comes from. A coordinated violence, a gang of wealthy men, using their physical strength and immunity from consequence to inflict terror on a working class town for entertainment. The Marquess was fine again 100 pounds for this.

$12,000 in today's money was what he was charged for this shit. His annual income again was over $7 million dollars in modern times. The fine was quite literally pocket change. The judge knew it. The Marquess knew it. And he walked out allegedly laughing. He was described by the Belfast newsletter as, quote, probably the strongest man in the kingdom and his activity was equal to his vigor.

So we're talking about someone who was both powerful, agile, and ungodly rich for the time. Like, that's where we're at. So the evidence linking him to Spring Hill Jack includes the fact that he was in London during the 1837 attacks. The contemporary newspapers directly accused him. Witnesses reported seeing a gold filigree W on the attacker's costume. And Reverend E. Cobham Brewer in 1880 directly accused Waterford of, quote, springing on travelers unawares to amuse himself. Like it maybe, it maybe was this guy.

Like it maybe was this wealthy asshole whose whole life was so like driven to just torturing people. But there are obviously also problems with this theory. First, the Waterford Chronicle reported that the Marquess attended the St. Valentine's Day Ball at Waterford Castle. on February 14th, 1838, he'd have had to race back to London, which was about 300 miles away in five days to then attack Jane Allstop on the 19th. Not impossible, but it'd be a very tight schedule.

Second, the way more important thing, the Marquess of Waterford died on March 29th, 1859. He fell off his horse during a hunt at Corbilly in Ireland, cracked his skull dead at 48 years old. And the Spring Hill Jack sightings would then continue for another 45 years after his death. So either the Marquess wasn't Spring Hill Jack or he was only the first Spring Hill Jack and the legend had become so potent that copycat attackers kept it alive long after the original was dead in the ground. Then before we get into the later sightings, I'd want to address the murder that allegedly happened in 1845 because it's probably the darkest story in Spring Hill Jack's. And it's almost certainly complete fiction and another one of those that perpetuated his legend so strongly.

The story goes, a 13 year old prostitute named Maria Davis was walking along the banks of the Follies Ditch in Jacobs Island. And I just don't like saying a 13 year old prostitute. It just sucks. That's just what it was like back in the day. Jacobs Island was one of the worst slums in London. The Morning Chronicle called it the very capital of cholera. And Charles Dickens set parts of Oliver Twist there. Yeah, the very capital of cholera.

capital of cholera. Beautiful line. It was a nightmare of open sewers and rotting buildings. And according to the legend, Spring Hill Jack appeared, grabbed Maria, threw her onto the, through her into the ditch, which was basically an open sewer. And he stood there and watched her drown in the fill. It would mark a major escalation in Jack's behavior from assault to murder. This was like the first murder legend.

But there's no, absolutely no contemporary evidence that this ever happened. And like the other one, this is another Peter Haining invention from the 1977 book. Historian Mike Dash went looking for again, any sort of newspaper report. That's so fucking bold of a thing to throw in. Yeah, shoutouts to the people who did the actual work. Again, Mike Dash did an amazing amount of work on this. He went looking for newspaper reports, any police record, any coroner's inquest from 1845 mentioning Maria Davis or a spring heel jack murder.

And there was nothing. Zero. The story doesn't appear until the late 1970s when the book comes out. Now, does that mean no one died because of Spring Hill Jack? No, Lucy scales collapsed and went into fits. The anonymous Peckham letter claimed women had been driven insane and would become a burden to their families. In Victorian England, that kind of psychological trauma could absolutely lead to institutionalization, which is kind of like the equivalent of death. But the specific incident with Maria Davis appears to be complete fiction. And I wanted to flag this because it's important to separate the documented history from the elaborated legend. And to keep like we did with the Jersey devil. I really want to like get to the core of this. Obviously fake some shit is that just keeps getting repeated. Yeah, but like when you look into it, you know. If some, if an author writes a book and he says he has sources, a lot of the time,

I do that. Like, I trust a lot of books that are written that are like as sources. I mean, I'm not a historian. You know, I'm not writing a book myself about things. But like, I can imagine reading a book written in 1919. 77 where he claims he has these sources, nobody, like bothers. And when he's finally asked about his sources decades later, he's like, oh, they were gone. I don't know where they are anymore.

Like, you know, like, no, but it makes sense to me, right? Like you're, unless you're specifically looking into the things he's talking about, no one's really going to double check. That's why it's always important if you're reading about studies, read about multiple studies in that same topic and see where the studies like, you know, read how they were done, where they're, you know, that kind of thing. But this is just about Spring Hill Jack. Nobody really cared until Mike over.

here took care of it, not me, this other guy. The Springfield Jack sightings didn't stop after 1838. They went quiet for a while, but then flared up again in the 1870s in different parts of England. In 1872, there was the Peckham ghost reports of a figure terrorizing that area. In April and May of 1873, Sheffield had its park ghost sightings with people claiming someone was jumping out at them in the darkness. These would be at best copycats, but probably unrelated prank.

that are just getting tied to Springheel Jack. Or they could literally just be mass hysteria, people seeing what they expected to see because legend was still circulating in penny dreadfuls and newspapers at the time. And in 1877, something happened that's much harder to dismiss because it's involved the British Army,

multiple witnesses, official reports, and even gunfire. Aldershot barracks in Hampshire, March 1877. This is a major military installation. We're not like, not an isolated village in the dark. This is a place with, like we're talking professional soldiers, armed guards, official protocols, patrols, and Spring Hill Jack, or someone claiming to be Spring Hill Jack, decided to attack the centuries. Jesse, I'm going to have you read the military newspaper account of this event. Someone or other appears to have made up his mind to play some rather questionable pranks with the centuries at this camp while on night duty.

On Tuesday night, last a century was on duty at the North camp, and about midnight someone came towards him who refused to answer to the usual challenge of who comes there. And after dodging about the Century Box in a fantastic fashion for fashion, for some time, some little time, made off with astonishing swiftness. Not however until the Century had loaded his rifle and fired, but without any effect. spring healed jack as he has been termed in camp then paid a similar visit to the century on duty to the cemetery who also fired but alas without hitting the object so dangerous you're just shooting out of dude who goes there and then the guy's like I'm out of your mind is it is it weird that out of all of that the one thing I took away was at some point we moved on from who comes there to who goes there I did I also had that same thought like this is like

Some scourty. This is like some squirty cream type shit. This is the, we just don't have this anymore. I feel like it makes you automatically sound British if you say it. Who comes there? Who comes there? But yeah, like basically a figure approaches a military guard at night. At midnight, the century issues a challenge.

Shoots Adam misses comes back again. Shoots Adam misses. People's then the legend goes on to say that it dodges around the bullet or it's moving in a way that's inhuman. They say astonishing swiftness. and then it goes to a different century post near the cemetery and the exact same thing happens. The Times reported on April 28, 1877 that, quote, the ghost had slapped one century several times around the face before fleeing across the terrain

with astonishing bounds. Which there's no, that's not what the report initially said, but the newspaper. Astonishing bounds is so bold, dude. And slapped a century multiple times in the face before getting out of there. The illustrated police news in September then gave more details. The attacker's method was to climb onto the sentry box and pass his hand, which was arranged to feel, quote, as cold and clammy as that of a corpse, over the face of the Sentinel.

The sentries had been ordered to fire on site. So apparently he's like climbing over and just being putting his hand in their face. I mean like, oh, you can't see what you're doing. I don't really know what the fuck is happening. Now here's what, like, for me, makes this interesting from a historical perspective because we actually know who probably was fucking with them. Not necessarily in the supernatural bounding across and, like,

leaping, but there might have been somebody actually fucking with them. Who else? But another noble, Lord Ernest Hamilton, who served with the 60th rifles at Aldershot, later wrote that he believed the culprit was Lieutenant Alphrey, described as, quote, a very big and powerful man, but extraordinarily active.

Which I don't know what that means. extraordinarily active? Yeah, extraordinarily active. So probably you would think he'd be slow, but for a man of his size, he was quite fast, I guess is probably the vibe. I think it means he's annoying. Once the centuries were issued quite active, isn't he? It's so active. Oh, she'd just relax a little.

Once the centuries were issued live ammunition with explicit orders to shoot on site, the appearances stopped. No court martial record exists, which suggests. that if it was Lieutenant Alphrey, he either wasn't caught or the army decided not to prosecute one of their own officers for terrorizing their own soldiers. Prank gone wrong. But think about what this tells you about the Spring Hill Jack phenomenon by 1877. It's been 39 years since Jane Alsop was attacked. The Marquess of Waterford has been dead for 18 years and yet the name Spring Hill Jack is

so culturally now embedded that when someone starts attacking centuries at the military base, the newspapers immediately just start calling it a Spring Hill. Jack phenomenon. The legend is completely divorced itself from any specific person. It's become a template at this point. If you want to terrorize people in the dark, if you want instant notoriety, you put on a costume, you become Springheeled Jack, and you do it. It just feels a bit, it just feels yellow journalism-y at this point. Like, yeah. But that's, but that was the Jersey devil. It was Ben Franklin trolling somebody he hated. And that was, that's how the Jersey devil came into fruition.

Like the original, yeah, the original could have just been a person, but by now, it's just a role that someone can play. And with the legend becoming self-sustaining, let me give you an example of how insane the fictional Springheeled Jack became versus reality. This is from an 1878 penny dreadful, which is a cheap serialized fiction that cost one penny per installment back then. And Jesse, I'm going to have you read this bizarre description of like what he is. But like, this is just what they saw him.

as at this point in time. This is one of those those, this is basically what you would get if you were like a Reader's Digest level thing. It's kind of what it is really. Yeah, no, that's exactly what it is. It's like a comic book.

It's like a nasty little comic book. It's like Penny Dreadful. It's like a nasty little comic book. A nasty little comic book with tities. Okay, all right. With eyes like burning coals and breath of blue flame, Spring-heeled Jack alighted upon the church steeple, his terrible laugh echoing across the rooftops of London.

No wall could contain him, no weapon could harm him, for he was neither man nor beast, but a creature of the shadows themselves, born from the fears of the wicked and the nightmares of the innocent. With a single bound he crossed the Thames itself, landing upon the world. on the Tower of London, where he mocked the guards before vanishing in thin air, leaving only the smell of brimstone and the sound of his demonic.

Cacklinga. That was a journalist who said that? This isn't a penny dreadful. Yeah, this is, they're selling a... Journalist. They're having a good time with it. It's serialized fiction is what this is. It probably came with an image of like

the Spring Hill Jack, but then also a... woman he's holding with like half ripped clothes and like just a like a little too much leg is showing um and and i mean just think about where we are now from where it started with jane allsup's testimony to where this thing is in the lore at this point but the penny dreadful version is what people remembered the penny dreadful version is what became the legend and so by the time you get to 1877 or even 1904 which we will very soon as we wrap this all up people aren't reporting what they actually saw. They're reporting what they think

Spring Hill Jack is supposed to look like based on 40 years of sensationalization and fiction. There is one more incident from 1877 that's worth mentioning because it does add another weird layer to the physical evidence. In November, there was sightings at Newport Arc in Lincoln.

A mob gathered and chased the figure. That's like everybody saw. Multiple witnesses reported that when people fired at it, they heard the distinct sound of bullets hitting metal. Now, on one hand, this could support the idea that the attackers were wearing some kind of armored costume and they were getting protected by that. Because, you know, I guess Victorian stage armor, though, wasn't sophisticated, but it wouldn't be hard to strap some sheet metal on you, I guess.

But on the other hand, this is exactly the kind of detail that gets added in urban legends. Like, I heard bullets hit him and it sounded like metal. It makes the story better. It makes it more fun to tell your friends or tell your family. It makes it more mysterious. And once a few people say they heard it, everyone who was there will remember hearing it. Yeah,

because human memory is fallible. I was thinking about that, that it reminds me, at least this moment you're talking about, reminds me of the very infamous, who saw the leprechaun say, yeah. Like that video where everyone sees the lepercon. People just get hype.

People just get hype about it. Yeah, they get hype. Yeah. And that's the problem with analyzing spring heel jack sightings from the 1870s onward. It's like we're 30 to 40 years. past the original incidents now. Most people reporting sightings weren't alive in 1838, and they know Spring Hill Jack from Penny Dreadfuls, uh, and not much from the actual sources where they came from.

So when they see something strange, they're not reporting what they saw. Like I said, they're reporting a legend that they've been told over the many years. Now we're going to move to the final part in 1904. We jump forward to the 20th century. It's been 67 years. 67. We can we can we can sit on that for a little bit. You can let you can see the great visual comedy of Patreon.com. Right now are so excited. All we all got sad at ourselves when he said it. It's been 67 years since Barnes Common.

Victoria is dead. Edward the 7th is on the throne. The Victorian era is officially over. And in 1904, Springheeled Jack appears one last time in Everton, Liverpool. The Liverpool Echo, September 21st, 1904 reported that, quote, considerable commotion was caused yesterday in William Henry Street, Everton, on a rumor that a sort of, and then quotes within the article, Springheel Jack was pursuing his antics in that neighborhood. The news of the world had been more detailed. A quote, Everton, Liverpool is scared by the singular antics of a ghost to whom the name of Springheel Jack has been given because of the facility with which he has escaped by huge springs.

all attempts of his would-be captors to arrest him. He is said to pay particular attention to ladies. So far the police have not arrested him, their sprinting powers being inferior. The cops are just not fast enough, I guess. The threats get alive. Exactly. That last line, I think, is like peak British understatement.

The police can't catch him because they're slower, but said in the most polite, eloquent way. But the detail that really captures people, people's imagination is the rooftop jumping. Multiple witnesses reported seeing the figure bounding from house to house across the rooftops of Everton. This becomes the iconic image, Springheeled Jack silhouetted against the sky, leaping across impossible distances with crowds watching from below.

Except here's what actually fucking happened, according to a later eyewitness named Mrs. A. Pierpoint. She later told the Liverpool Echo in 1967, 63 years after the fact, So take this with the appropriate skepticism, obviously, that the 1904 figure was, quote, a local man slightly back. Sorry, a local, a local man slightly off balance mentally. He had, quote, a form of religious mania and would climb on the rooftops crying out, My wife is the devil! When police closed in, he'd jump from one rooftop to another, another to escape them. What the fuck? My wife is the devil?

He'd get on the roof and just start screaming my wife as the devil until the cops were there. And then he'd just jump rooftop to rooftop to get away. God bless him. God bless him. If this is true and I kind of believe it probably is, then the final Springheeled Jack citing was just a mentally ill man having a religious crisis on the rooftops while a crowd of crowd watched in the newspapers then sensationalized it. But at this point, it doesn't really fucking matter if it's true.

Right. Like because by 1904, Springheeled Jack is already 67 year old legend, the people who saw him in Everton don't need to know the truth. They already know what they're seeing. They know the story. And so the story continues. So there is a, you know, let's talk a little bit at the end here about the leaping, the bounds and stuff.

Obviously, we know he didn't do any of that stuff. I just just skip to the theories. I want to like, where did this actually all come from? To me, I think it pretty much speaks for itself. Well, there are many theories that Springheeled Jack is something that we've covered in the past, actually last episode. a form of thought form, a ghost or a paltkeist made real because of the collective belief that he is real. Whether that's true or not, maybe that's what he became later on.

But originally, I don't really feel there's much wiggle room to say that seems likely it may have been a noble who was just a fucking terrible human being who then spurred on copycats. So once I read in Mike's work about how easy it is to miss the flame, to me that was the moment. The whole legend made sense. It no longer felt supernatural. And I was like, ah, now I'm more curious about why and who these people are. And so we have theory A, multi-generational hoax. People say this is the most accepted historical explanation that the first spring heel jack

was likely wealthy prankster, possibly the Marquess of Waterford, possibly one of his friends. possibly multiple people coordinating attacks and making a big old betting pool of money about whether they could do anything for it. And this is where I think the strongest evidence sits. Then we have theory B, the mass hysteria theory. The theory suggests that after the initial panic in 1837 to 1838, most subsequent sightings were either misidentifications

of ordinary things or the result of people seeing what they expected to see in the dark streets as they got jumped. Dark streets, poor lighting, cultural conditioning from penny dreadfuls. You hear footsteps behind you in a dark alley. You turn. You see a man in a cloak, which is all not that uncommon at the time. And your brain just fills in the rest before you have a chance to understand what you're looking at.

It seems so crazy, but you're right. Like, it's, I've seen it happen a thousand times with the Zodiac killer with anyone. They're just like, oh, I saw him. And they, and they, and most of the cops are like, most of them think they saw. Most of them think they do. And you can't convince them otherwise. This is the inherent problem with everything we cover on this show is, this is also a thing for ghosts, aliens, cryptids.

Like people will say I saw it and they didn't see anything, but because they're preconditioned by society or the things they're interested in. Like, oh, I heard about shadow people. So now I'm like, do I see shadow people? Like that kind of thing. And it snowballs. And it makes it so I have to sit here and be like, well, I guess if 1% of people did see it for real, it's fine.

But I genuinely think most people are like, I didn't see anything. but I'm going to say because like I think I did or just even look back to the like I to the drones right when people started looking at the sky more who never really looked at the sky and the amount of people who were like seeing things that are literally the most normal shit but they think it's something else because they're just not conditioned to look up that way and so like your shadow person thing if once you're told something about something and that's what you're looking for it's an explanation for what the thing could be so it's what you go to first rather than a pause and being like what did I hold on

what was that it was like it was like it was like it was like it was like Oh, shadow person. Right. And so like maybe, but so maybe Spring Hill Jack started with a few real attacks in those first couple of years. And then the rest of the 60 some odd years are cultural phantom phenomenon. Because there, we do know that Jane Alsop was really assaulted before Spring Hill Jack was a huge thing.

Lucy scales for the same reason. But this and the centuries at Alders shot were really attacked by a prankster. But there's no way to, you know, they're all set. They could all be separate things. And obviously the last more fun theory, even if less believable one, the high strangeness of it all. The theory that, like, what if Springfield Jack was something genuinely anomalous? A theory that like, even if he wasn't a ghost to understand initially, that he wasn't fully this devil creature that he did was created. A Tulpa theory.

Tulpa, which we talked about last episode, you know, the thought form. Maybe that's what he became. But obviously the problem with this theory is the same problem with all paranormal theories as. Jesse just said it will require us to accept that the laws of physics are not like are optional on some level or on misunderstood in some way. We are wrong about something for sure. We are wrong about something and that all of this can be explained that way. Because even if we say, you know, reality isn't fully understandable, maybe this is possible, majority of the sightings are still not that.

Like, it still isn't that. I think, as always, the human explanation is the scariest one. just a wealthy fucker who can go to court and pay anything and get away with it. To be honest, it's probably a little of all. Well, the origin of them all. So that's where we leave

the story of Springheeled Jack with those final theories. Obviously, I'm curious your thoughts, but kind of here's what I keep coming back to. I keep coming back to the fact that I think it started as somebody or copycat assaults that the records in a particularly Jane saying

she knows she breathes fire, which then made sure that nothing could be admissible in court unless they breathe fire and it just snowballed from there. But that is the end of the Spring Hill Jack's story. And boys, I'm curious your thoughts on Spring Hill Jack. What did you know about Spring Hill Jack before we dove into this? Because I knew basic stuff. I knew kind of that he existed and that's about it.

Like I knew that he was around. I knew something about fire being part of it. I know we've talked about him on the show briefly before. Yep. Yeah, he's been brought up a couple times in random episodes. Yeah, he seems just kind of like, I don't want to see a performance artist, but like, somebody who's postmodern in the sense that they want to be viewed by society based on what they're doing in a certain way.

A little jokery is what you're saying? Not necessarily. I feel like there was a attempt. Like, how do I put this? Like, if I wanted to rob a bank, I would like do something really obvious to my face, like put a big scar across the front of my face or something like that so that people would only be thinking about the scar instead of what I look like. And I feel like Spring Hill Jack's look is kind of just like so crazy because it's just easy to like completely like anonymize yourself

by by doing that. Slap a helmet on and then and then stun them with fire. The only thing they're going to remember is the fire part. Yeah. And it kind of feels like that thing about like animals, rats or whatever, getting put into closer and closer spaces and having to like turn on each other a bit and, and like their, they're like group dynamics change. And I feel like the awareness of being around people and the fact that you can't escape people and stuff like that and that like in some ways there's like rules of society that you're going to like fall through the cracks on. I think alone is enough to inspire somebody to do something like Spring Hill Jack just based on how any real actual crazy person that I've ever seen has acted in the streets.

There's a bit of a flamboyant flare to it. I don't know how else to describe it. The confidence. There's a there's a there's a notion that you're going to be observed. You know, and I think that's, I think that's the big thing. And whether it's a fucking asshole or not, I think there was a little bit of derangement involved. 100%.

Somebody really willing to like stir some shit up, see what happened. It could be even newspaper selling. Like it could be like, we watch this newspaper added details. Yeah, actively. It could be like that they just made it for the newspaper. Like newspaper made it to report on it. Right.

But I mean, I think to wrap this up in a nice little bow, I think Springfield Jack, like many, many monsters or urban legends or even cryptids, may not have been a monster that actually existed. But it was a monster the people of the time needed to explain the monster.

they already had. It's a way for them to frame people who are, you know, what to look out for. Like a cryptid, keeping people away from the water. It kept women more on their toes walking in dark alleyways because Springheel Jack might jump out

at you. With that neat little bow and a nice historical dive into Spring Hill Jack, a very Victorian cryptid ghost thing. We wrap today's episode. We'll be back. Next week with a brand new episode. I hope everybody enjoyed their Thanksgiving. We'll have to do a minisode.

Patreon.com slash ChulamaniPod where you get a bunch of extra content, including minisodes every week. We appreciate you. We love you. Oh, goodbye. Bye-bye. Anyway, we're sitting outside indulging the report one night. Enjoying ourselves. I needed to go to the bathroom, so I stepped back inside and after a few moments, I hear my wife go. Holy shit, get out here. So I quickly dashed back outside. She's looking up in the sky and fall. I look up to a dozen lights traveling across the sky.