Futility Closet - 034-Spring-Heeled Jack -- A Victorian Supervillain

Episode Date: November 17, 2014

Between 1837 and 1904, rumors spread of a strange bounding devil who haunted southern England, breathing blue flames and menacing his victims with steel talons. In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we review the career of Spring-Heeled Jack and speculate about his origins. We also recount Alexander Graham Bell's efforts to help the wounded James Garfield before his doctors' treatments could kill him and puzzle over why a police manual gives instructions in a language that none of the officers speak. Source for our segment on Spring-Heeled Jack: Mike Dash, "Spring-Heeled Jack: To Victorian Bugaboo From Suburban Ghost," Fortean Studies 3 (1996). Sources for our segment on Alexander Graham Bell and James Garfield: Candice Millard, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, 2011. Amanda Schaffer, "A President Felled by an Assassin and 1880's Medical Care," New York Times, July 25, 2006. You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to Futility Closet, the celebration of the quirky and the curious, the thought-provoking and the simply amusing. This is the audio companion to the popular website that catalogs more than 8,000 curiosities in history, language, mathematics, literature, philosophy, and art. You can find us online at futilitycloset.com. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to episode 34. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In today's show, we'll learn about Spring-Heeled Jack, a bizarre leaping devil who haunted southern England in the 19th century. We'll also recount Alexander

Graham Bell's efforts to help the wounded James Garfield before his doctor's treatments could kill him, and puzzle over why a police manual gives instructions in a language that none of the officers speak. All right, Spring-Heeled Jack. I've always found this character just tremendously endearing. He's basically a sort of steampunk supervillain who went bouncing around southern England for most of the 19th century. You'd be walking down some dark lane, and he'd come bounding over a wall, cackling, and oppress you in some vague way, and then cackle some more and then they'll bounding overhead you disappear uh and he has quite a diabolical appearance as well he had eyes that resembled balls of fire his hands had uh steel talons on them and his face was diabolical and uh he was said sometimes that he breathed blue fire i like him for two

reasons one is that his career lasts from September 1837 to 1904, which happens to be almost precisely the reign of Queen Victoria. And he's the least Victorian thing you can possibly imagine. This cackling, diabolical devil who was boinging promiscuously around the countryside and breathing fire at people. It's not the way you'd expect a gentleman to behave. And second, it's not really clear what he's trying to accomplish. He's sort of like the boogeyman in that way. Like the boogeyman is evil.

We're agreed on that. And he's under your bed or he's in the closet, but he never really seems to accomplish very much. Like it's not clear what his goal actually is. Whatever it is, he's not going about it very effectively. And Spring-Heeled Jack is like that. In the accounts we have of him, he would confront you dramatically, but then he would just poke you or slap you or push you over something

and then bound across the countryside again. So I guess he's evil. We can stipulate that. But he doesn't seem to be going about it very effectively. It looks most likely his career lasted for 67 years, but it seems most likely the first few encounters in the early months of 1838 most likely were pranks carried out by someone we don't know, and then it sort of melted into a general urban legend until about 1904. So we don't know exactly how it got started or why it quite ended when it did,

but at least the first few encounters in 1838 are kind of hard to explain. Even if you know it's a prankster, it's hard to tell exactly what's going on here. So let me just run through those because I think they're really interesting. He sort of materialized gradually in the later months of 1837. There were increasing reports of something abroad in the countryside southwest of london in the villages there a ghost a bear or a devil variously were oppressing people in these rumors and uh there were rumors also that some noblemen had been uh wagering with each other that they could pull these pranks on people so there was just some sort of vague malice out in the villages that rumors were more and more broad in london that that these were coming um and came they did come

1838 the the two best known attacks by springfield jack are on two teenage teenage girls jane alsop and lucy scales in february that year and jane alsop is the best publicized. We have the most news accounts coming down to us from that one. And it's very hard, even if you go into this believing it's a prank, which seems pretty certain, it's hard to tell exactly what's going on. So this is one newspaper account of what happened to her on the night of February 19th, 1838. 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 that he would not ring so loud.

The person instantly replied that he was a policeman and said, for God's sake, bring me a light, for we have caught Spring-Heeled Jack here in the lane. She returned into the house and brought a candle and handed it to the person, who enveloped in a long cloak and whom she at 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 a 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 from the hasty glance which her fright enabled her to get at his person she she observed that he wore a large helmet, and his dress, which appeared to fit him very tight, seemed to her to resemble white oilskin. 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 of some metallic substance. She screamed out as loud as she could for assistance, and by considerable exertion got away from him and ran towards the house to get in. Her assailant, however, followed her and caught her on the steps leading to the half-door, when he again used considerable violence, tore her neck and arms with his claws, as well as a quantity of hair from her head, but she was at length rescued from his grasp by one of her sisters. Miss Alsop added that she had suffered considerably all night from the shock she had sustained

and was then in extreme pain, both from the injury done to her arm and the wounds and scratches inflicted by the miscreant about her shoulders and neck with his claws or hands. That's as violent as he ever gets. And even in that attack, it's not really clear what he's trying to do. He's clawing at her. And the whole thing, the other thing I find really interesting is it has this sort of clumsy half mechanical oddity to it. Like he's not a real superhero.

He's got to apply the candle to some contraption on his chest and he's wearing a helmet. So even if that's a prankster, it's hard to understand even how he rigged this up so he could breathe flames and have red eyes. Yeah, well, I was just wondering, I mean, when you said he had to apply the candle, is it maybe she was mistaken and he was actually applying it closer to his mouth because he could have put something gaseous in his mouth that he sort of breathed out and made a big flame? Yeah, that's entirely possible.

Those fire eaters do that. Right. That's what I was thinking when I was listening to you. And then maybe his eyes would have just reflected red in the flame or something. And she was obviously very upset. Yeah, yeah. So her memory isn't clear, but...

I don't know how to account for the metallic claws, but... So that's Jane Allisup. Eight days later, on February 28th, the second attack happened to an 18-year-old girl named Lucy Scales. She and her sister were returning home from visiting their brother and passing along an alley when they saw a person standing in an angle of the passage. She was wearing also a large cloak, and as she came up to him, he spurted a quantity of blue flame in her face, which blinded her and alarmed her, so she dropped to the ground and was seized with violent fits.

Her brother heard her screams and came running up and found her in a fit and her sister trying to support her. The other sister described the assailant as appearing tall, thin, and gentlemanly with a large cloak and carrying a lamp. That's more technology. Yeah. He, in this case, didn't speak or even try to touch them. He just walked quickly away.

So he didn't tear at her or wear a helmet. So, I mean, there's some discrepancies, but... Right. So police questioned a couple people there, but let them go. And no one knows whether that... It seems probably likely that those two attacks may have been the same person, but no one knows who that was. There's one more attack in close succession to these, which is just as tame as the second one.

A few days after Lucy Scales was attacked, Spring-Heeled Jack rapped on the door of a house in Turner Street and asked to speak with the owner, a Mr. Ashworth. And before the servant boy who'd answered the door could answer, the figure threw back his cloak to reveal Jack's costume, and he ran off. But the boy noticed that the cloak wore an embroidered letter W, which may be a clue. No one knows. But there was an Irish nobleman, the Marquess of Waterford, who had a terrible reputation for being dissolute and addicted to jokes and drinking and wagers, and it's known that he was in London at the time of the first incident.

E. Cobham Brewer, who compiled Brewer's dictionary of phrase and fable, wrote in 1880 that the Marquess used to amuse himself by springing on travelers unawares to frighten them, and from time to time, others have followed his silly example. So no one knows, it's never been proven,

but it's plausible that he was the one behind these first two attacks. I suppose at this point, we'll never find out but if that's the case that might explain most of this because from this point onward he jack presented such a vivid figure that he sort of melted into an urban legend at this point and was taken up by the popular culture and became the figure of penny dreadfuls and cheap novels and plays and was just sort of a figure in the culture. Right. So from this point on, he still appears in newspaper accounts and stuff,

but it's harder and harder to pinpoint cases where there was actual or real incidents that happened. I see. Um, one of the most notable sightings, there's just a couple more that are sort of canonically associated with Spring-Heeled Jack. One, actually a string of them took place in 1873 at Aldershot Barracks,

which were the headquarters of the British Army in Surrey at the time. Something like 10,000 troops were billeted there, and they were guarded at night by armed sentries, and someone started messing with the sentries. Rumors began to spread through the camp that a ghostly figure was roaming among the sentry posts. Here is an excerpt from a military newspaper, March 17, 1877. Someone or other appears to have made up his mind to play some rather questionable pranks with the sentries at this camp while on night duty. About a week ago, it appears, but we do not vouch for the correctness of the story. A sentry 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 sentry box in a fantastic fashion for some little time, made off with astonishing swiftness, not, however, until the sentry had loaded his rifle and fired, but without any effect. That has the same character as these other attacks, where he's not even really going to attack. He's just sort of fainting and vaguely menacing and then then running the other way he didn't breathe blue flames no i don't know how yeah uh he appeared whoever it was appeared again about a month later slapping the sentry this time wrestling with another one giving him two black eyes and then bounding away across the fields okay it's still got the same kind of three stooges quality where he's apparently he's evil

and then at the end of the summary showed up one last time uh passing his hand which this report says was is arranged to feel as cold and clammy as that of a corpse over the face of the sentinel so these are more pretty benign pranks yeah it's thought now uh he was gone from aldershot for good by the end of august it seems like the most likely explanation for the aldershot appearances are that it was some kind of young officer who was just enjoyed playing pranks but that's pretty dangerous because these were armed sentries who fired at him and he could easily have died he apparently wasn't hit so we'll never find out who he actually was and then there's one last appearance that spring-heeled jack makes this is in 1904 all the way up in liverpool which is much further north than he'd

been before but he was still wearing his usual mask and cloak and and uh tight boots the news of the world on september 25th says everton is scared by the singular antics of a ghost to whom the name of Spring-Heel 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. William Henry Street is in the scene of his exploits, and crowds of people assemble nightly to see them,

but only a few have done so yet, and Jack is evidently shy. He's said to pay particular attention to ladies. So far, the police have not arrested him, their sprinting powers being inferior. have done so yet and jack is evidently shy he's said to pay particular attention to ladies so far the police have not arrested him their sprinting powers being inferior and after that he's gone apparently he's allergic to the 20th century or just the legend had run his course and uh he hasn't been seen again otherwise he might still be out there as far as i know uh one woman who was a girl at the time in liverpool Liverpool said that the account of his

appearance there actually is traceable to a local man she said was slightly off balance mentally and had a religious mania and he would mount rooftops and cry out, my wife is the devil. So, possibly I noticed in, if you read the news accounts closely, both the Aldershot Barracks and the Liverpool appearance, it sounds

like the name Springheel Jack is being applied sort of after the fact yeah some miscreant who shows up or any prankster that shows right just because because that idea was already in people's minds it was just an easy convenient label to apply to someone who resembles this in any way so that probably went out of fashion and so you couldn't have spring that makes as much sense as anything else um So anyway, that's a 67-year career of what you'd have to call evil, I suppose, of a sort. No one was ever caught in connection with any of these, and at this remove, I doubt we'll ever find out who was behind it.

And he never killed anybody or kidnapped them or, yeah. No. So what do we make of all this? It's sort of impossible to tell. It seems like there's nothing. We don't need any supernatural explanation to make sense of this stuff. Even in 1838, as you said, you could breathe fire and his

apparel and metal talons, you could do any of that without, you know, without any kind of supernatural means. And this famous leaping isn't, there's not very much good evidence of that. It's mostly people's imagination. Could it have just been very agile? So it's probably equal parts mass hysteria and just

urban legends and it probably started with some sort of odd prank that's the last question i have in my mind is it does really appear that something happened to jane alsop in uh february 1838 and i would kind of like to know what that was it seems unlikely that even if she wanted to make up some sensational story you wouldn't make it that outlandish if you want people to believe you so it seems like some prankster did some confusing technological thing to her in the lane there that evening, but I suppose we'll never find out what it was. Hmm. If you're looking for more cerebral entertainment, either for yourself or as a gift for someone else,

check out the Futility Closet books. Both are filled with hundreds of pieces of mental candy, a mix of quirky oddities and curiosities, offbeat inventions, odd words, and brain-teasing puzzles, perfect for whenever you need a few minutes of thoughtful entertainment. Look for them on Amazon and learn about Niels Bohr's clever method of hiding Nobel Prizes from the Nazis, how the Greek king Periander concealed the location of his own grave,

and the dangers of taking William Thackeray to a dull scientific lecture. In episode 33, Greg discussed Robert Todd Lincoln's connection to the assassination of three different American presidents, including James Garfield. Both Daniel Sturman and Ben Hughes wrote in about Garfield's shooting and the story that Alexander Graham Bell had tried to create a metal detector to aid his doctors. Daniel Sturman said, During your discussion of Garfield's assassination, you mentioned how the gunshot wounds may have done less to kill him than the probing of the doctors in trying to find and remove the bullet. There's a fascinating tidbit I read once about it. Apparently, Alexander Graham Bell fashioned a crude metal detector in order to help the doctors find the bullet,

but led them in the wrong direction because it detected the bed springs in President Garfield's bed. I don't know how true the story is. It does appear in Wikipedia under the article Assassination of James A. Garfield, as well as under the article Metal Detector, though some details differ between the two. But it's the kind of story that's right up your alley, and I'd definitely be interested to hear if you can determine just how true it is. Okay. So I looked into these stories as they are related on various websites

and did find that there is indeed a fair amount of inconsistency about several of the details. But there is pretty good consistent agreement about the main points. Bell did indeed try to invent a metal detector to help with Garfield's medical care after he was shot, and Garfield's doctors almost certainly did kill him. Here's what I was able to find out about the events using two pretty authoritative sources. I'm relying heavily on Candace Millard's 2011 book, Destiny of the Republic, a tale of madness, medicine, and the murder of a president, and the New York Times article, A President Failed by an Assassin and 1880s Medical Care, by Amanda Schaefer from July 25, 2006.

The basic story is, as Greg noted last week, that Garfield was shot twice by a Charles Gatteau on July 2nd, 1881. The first bullet just grazed the president's arm, but the second entered the right side of his back and ended up lodged deep inside his body. At least a dozen different medical experts repeatedly probed the president's wound, trying to figure out just where the bullet had ended up. Now, at this point, British surgeon Joseph Lister had introduced antisepsis and sterile techniques to European medicine in the mid-1860s, but Lister's ideas were not yet widely accepted in the United States. The new ideas were definitely rejected by the

doctor who ended up in charge of the president's care. That was a Dr. Willard Bliss, and that was his actual name, Dr. Willard Bliss. His name was Doctor? His name was Doctor, yes. Bliss had been brought to Garfield after the shooting by Garfield's Secretary of War, Robert Todd Lincoln, as you mentioned last week. And Bliss maneuvered and intrigued to get himself completely in charge of the president's care. He basically saw the shooting as an extraordinary opportunity to get national recognition for himself.

That sounds bad. Yeah. extraordinary opportunity to get national recognition for himself. That sounds bad. Yeah. Now, earlier in his career, Bliss had been expelled from the powerful District of Columbia Medical Society for championing black doctors and for showing an interest in the new field of homeopathy at the time. The condemnation and temporary derailment of his career had led him to become very conservative,

and he now avoided any practices that seemed to be new or experimental, which in his mind definitely included Lister's new ideas. So they weren't being antiseptic in probing the wound? Yeah, he rejected the ideas completely. So basically all these different doctors who were probing Garfield to try to find the bullet were using unsterilized metal instruments or just their bare, unwashed hands. And this was

done several times a day, almost daily. And they couldn't find it. And no, they never did find it. The massive infection which resulted from all these unsterile practices is almost certainly what eventually caused Garfield's death. Unbeknownst to his doctors, Garfield's body basically ended up being just completely ravaged by infection and cavities of pus that were as large as four inches by six inches. I mean, just picture how large a cavity of pus that would be. As just one example of this, an abscess of pus that had formed between his mouth and his ear nearly drowned him with the pus when it burst open. So the infection is what killed him? Yes, the infection is definitely what killed him. His doctor, Bliss, cut himself on a knife while treating Garfield, and some of the

president's puss got on Bliss's wound, and Bliss's hand became so painfully swollen with infection that he ended up having to put it in a sling. That's just how virulent the infection was. As soon as Alexander Graham Bell got the news of Garfield's shooting, which of course reached him by his telephone, he immediately thought that finding the location of the bullet would be like a really urgent concern. And he actually just went right to work trying to invent a way to do this. I mean, it just occurred to him like, we need a way to do this. And he just set out to find one. His first attempts involved using light and the fact that metal is more opaque than most body tissue and this is actually sort of a precursor to the later

use of x-rays which hadn't yet been discovered. So it was kind of clever. He just came up with it? Yeah but he soon realized that actually this method's only going to work if the bullet was rather shallowly located in the body. But still it's amazing to just. Yeah I mean he actually had like his assistant put a lead ball in his mouth and shine a light on it so he could see the ball through the mouth. It was kind of interesting. But, okay, so when he realized that that's just not going to work if it's kind of, the ball

is pretty deep in his body, he turned to trying to fashion a metal detector based on the use of sound. Earlier, Bell had needed to solve the problem of electromagnetic fields creating extraneous noises in telephone wires, and now he planned to use a sort of similar process in which he would try to detect the presence of metal through its causing an audible disturbance in an electromagnetic field that he would generate for himself.

So he spent weeks trying to create and then perfect this device, during which time he sought suggestions from a number of scientists and other inventors. And once he had a working model, he and his assistant began testing it by searching for flattened bullets that they would hide in various objects, like bags stuffed with wet bran or massive sides of beef. But one of the problems he faced was that for metal, lead is actually one of the poorest conductors of electricity, so it was producing a rather weak effect. His original device could only detect a lead ball buried no more than an inch deep, which just was not going to be deep enough. Yeah.

So after weeks of work, he was able to increase the range to just more than two inches. Like it was just such slow work for him. And during this time, he rarely left his lab and was just working exhaustively on the project night and day, just determined to come up with something that was going to do the trick. Yeah, because the President of the United States is dying. By late July, Garfield's condition had worsened to the point that Bell needed to try out his invention, although he was still working to try to improve it.

He had, like, a few more days to try to, you know, get it to where the point he needed it to be. So working feverishly, he and his assistant finally managed to extend the device's range to more than five inches, which is pretty good given that it started off at an inch. And the device had worked successfully in tests they'd run with Civil War veterans who actually carried bullets in their own bodies. But the one thing Bell hadn't accounted for in all his tests was Bliss's complete control of the sick room. Bliss not only expected Bell to find the bullet, but to find it only where Bliss had been saying that it should be, which was on

the right side of Garfield's body near his liver. Bliss was just positive that's where the bullet was. Even though no one could find it. Even though no one could find it, yes. They hadn't been able to reach it. So this was the only part of Garfield that Bell was allowed to examine with his new machine. When Bell conducted his test on the president, he did hear something in the suspected area, but it wasn't quite the same sound that he'd been hearing in all his other tests. Bliss declared the test a success because Bell did hear something and it was exactly where Bliss said he should be hearing something, so he was totally happy. But Bell had his own doubts. The next day, he returned to ask whether all metal had been removed from the area of the president's bed and was at that point told that the president's mattress contained steel wires.

This was a couple of decades before box springs were common. So Bell just hadn't anticipated this type of complication. Sure. So he asked the White House if he could get a duplicate of the mattress and then threw himself into trying to deal with this new challenge. But then he received word that his very pregnant wife was seriously ill in Boston. So he left immediately for Boston, where his wife went into premature labor and delivered a child who only lived for three hours.

Oh, God. Yeah. labor and delivered a child who only lived for three hours. Oh, God. Yeah. Bell just had these really deep feelings of grief over the loss of his son, but also guilt for not having been there with his wife because he was feverishly working in D.C. on his metal detector. But he continued working in Boston to try to improve the metal detector, to get around this problem of the box springs, and sent instructions to his assistant in Washington for a new attachment to add to the machine. But at this point, Bliss refused to allow another attempt, saying that Garfield was too gravely ill for it. So they

never did get to try it out again. After Garfield died on September 19th, an extensive autopsy was performed, and the results just absolutely stunned the doctors. The bullet was not on the right side, where they had repeatedly probed for it and where they had had Bell listen for it. It actually had ended up on the left side of the president. Yeah, the autopsy showed that the bullet had pierced Garfield's vertebra, but it missed his spinal cord. It hadn't struck any major organs, it hadn't struck any arteries or veins, and it ended up in some fatty tissue on the left side of the president's back, just below his pancreas. On the right side of his body was a long channel that had been made entirely by the doctors themselves looking for the bullet.

With their unsterilized fingers. And the amount of infection throughout Garfield's body was just absolutely astounding, including throughout both his lungs. However, Bliss, who had staked his career on treating Garfield, insisted that the president had not died from infection, but rather from the injury to his backbone, and that the medical care he had provided had been exemplary. He presented Congress with a bill for $25,000, which in today's currency would be more than half a million dollars. And Congress ended up only paying him $6,500 of that. And Bliss's health, career, and reputation

were all irrevocably damaged by the whole episode. Dr. Ira Rutko, a professor of surgery at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and a medical historian himself, has said, Garfield has such a non-lethal wound. In today's world, he would have gone home in a matter of two or three days. I know, isn't that sad? And actually, it's even worse because if Garfield had been shot just 15 years later than he was,

the bullet would have been quickly found by the new x-ray images that were being used in medicine and the wound would have been treated with antiseptic surgery. He would likely have spent no more than a few nights in a hospital rather than suffering just miserably. That's such a horrible way to die. He was just miserable for more than two months just to die at the end of that. Millard notes in her book that had Garfield even simply just been left alone, he probably would have survived. At the time of his shooting, which was 16 years after the end of the Civil War, there were hundreds of men walking around with bullets still inside them. That's a good point.

The difference is those men had received very little medical care. Millard also notes in her book that throughout his months of terrible pain and being so extremely ill that he lost more than one third of his body weight, Garfield was unfailingly kind and courteous, maintaining his sense of humor and trying to keep up the spirits of those around him, which I thought was a really nice note to know. Schaefer reports that Gatteau himself repeatedly criticized Garfield's doctors, suggesting they were the ones who had actually killed the president. Gatteau is reported to have said, I just shot him. One last postscript about the events surrounding Garfield's shooting is that his long illness prompted the invention not just of the medical detector, but also of the first air conditioner. Washington, D.C. can be very hot and humid in the summer, as we both know.

And Garfield was terribly ill and often fevered, so it was hoped that by cooling his room, that would lessen at least some of his suffering. A corps of scientists and Navy engineers ended up fashioning a complicated system that involved using an electric fan to blow air through cheesecloth screens that had been soaked in ice water. It took them a few iterations to work out something that didn't add to the president's misery by increasing the humidity of the room or by being deafeningly noisy, but in the end they got something working that actually was effective so so something good came out yeah two inventions actually came

out of the whole incident that's a shame that would have been a really great heroic story if bell had succeeded yeah although by then it you know by then it really probably was too late i mean he already would have been terribly infected and they would have had no way to treat the infection so even if they knew where the bullet was it was too late it was too late still let's I mean, he already would have been terribly infected, and they would have had no way to treat the infection. So even if they knew where the bullet was, it was too late. Still, that's, I mean, I know it was very stressful and difficult for him and ended tragically. I mean, Bell worked heroically to try to, you know, create this metal detector to be able to use. Well, good for him.

So thanks to Daniel and Ben for writing in about this. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. This week, Greg's going to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to present him with a situation, and he's going to try to figure it out using only yes or no questions. This week's puzzle comes from Paul Sloan and Des McHale's 1998 Ingenious Lateral Thinking Puzzles. Okay. You feeling ingenious? Yes.

I guess we'll find out. Okay. It's a very short puzzle. Okay. Part of the police manual gives instructions in a language that none of the policemen speaks. Why? Oh, that's interesting. Is this a real thing?

Uh, supposedly. Okay. Part of the police manual gives instructions in a real thing? Uh, supposedly. Okay. Part of the police manual gives instructions in the language that another policeman speaks. Uh, all right. But ostensibly this isn't set in some real world place. Is it? No, it is. I mean, this is supposedly true.

But I'm saying, can I ask you, can I try to narrow down what police department it is? Oh, no. I mean, just the police manual, let's say. Just some generic police manual? Yeah. Okay. Okay, so I'm not trying to figure out it's a Spanish police manual or something. Right.

Okay. Instructions. I think they were meaning it to be in America, in the U.S. Okay. All right. be in america in the u.s okay all right so instructions for doing something not instructions for the police but instructions that the police give to someone else yes in another language yes do i need to know specifically what it is what the other language is no no no okay oh sorry but the action that you're trying to get like if you're saying stop thief in french or something

is it something like that where you're just giving instructions or a command to a person who speaks another language? I think the meaning of your sentence is yes, but the exact wording of your sentence is no. Okay, if I'm a new policeman. Yes. I'm reading the manual. Yes. And I get to this section. Right.

Yes. I'm reading the manual. Yes. And I get to this section. Right. It's teaching me, I think you're saying, how to say a sentence in another language. Yes. Okay.

And I'm being taught that so I can use it out in the field somewhere. Yes. In real life when I'm out being a police officer. Yes. So let's say I read the manual and I memorize that, whatever it is. Right. And I'm actually out doing my job. Okay.

And I encounter that situation. Okay. And I use that situation. Okay. And I use the sentence. Okay. Does that all work so far? Okay. Would I be saying that sentence to a citizen? No.

To a criminal? No. But to some specific person? Not as you just worded it. Okay, not to someone in some particular situation, right? Yes. I'm having a little trouble with your wording, but I can't tell you why. Well, okay. Yes.

But I would use it, right? You would use it. I'd encounter the situation and think, aha, thank God I read that manual. Right. Right? Because I don't speak whatever it is. Right. And I use the sentence.

Let's say I do that. Okay. I speak it to this person in this situation. I do say the sentence, though. Yes. But I don't speak it to this person in this situation i do say the sentence though yes but i don't say it to the person right i say it to some passing kitty cat all right that's actually closer really yes all right okay this took an interesting turn. I'm sorry. I keep imagining you talking to the nearby cats. All right. I encounter this situation.

Let's back up one step. And I think, aha, I know what to do. I read my manual. Right. If I hadn't read the manual, I wouldn't be able to do this, right? Right. So what I'm doing is saying a sentence. Not necessarily a sentence.

Or saying some utterance. Right, yes. Saying some utterance. In another language. Yes. Than my own native language. Correct. And a sentence that I didn't know before I read the police manual.

Right. That's all true? Yes. Okay. And I'm saying it, you say, I can't remember what you said. I wouldn't say it to a citizen. I wouldn't say it to a criminal. Right, right.

And I keep objecting to the wording you're using for when you're trying to describe... When I say it? No, who the sentence would be directed towards. Right, okay. But I say it. You do say it. In a particular situation. Yes.

And I don't... In a particular situation that the manual is covering, I don't know how to say this. I wouldn't just say it... Right, right. Not in the situation, right. Okay. I cannot resist going back to the kitty cat. Okay, go back to the kitty cat.

I encounter... When we say the situation, is it a person doing a particular thing? Possibly... Might I say it when I'm completely alone? No. I mean, there have to be other people involved. Yes. Is it a person doing a particular thing? Possibly. Might I say when I'm completely alone? No. I mean, there have to be other people involved. Yes. Or they have to be in a certain location?

No. But there are other people present but not doing any particular thing. Not a specific thing, but... Doing something. Yeah. So I encounter people doing something in a situation that's covered in the manual. Yeah. And I utter the manual? Yeah. And I utter the sentence.

Yeah. And the sentence has some effect. Yeah. Because people hear me say the sentence? No. Really? Really. So I would say a sentence in another language that I don't understand. Right.

Without the intent of having people understand me. Correct. Exactly. That's actually very precise. And by police we mean what I think of as conventional police officers. Yes. Is it abracadabra? That's not the sentence.

Do you have the actual sentence in mind? Do you know what it is? No. And it's not necessarily a sentence. You used the utterance before. Yeah. Right. And you said you don't even know what the language is, right?

It's not one specific language, no. Is it? Okay, so it's not necessarily a sentence. It's not a command or a... No, it is a command. It's a command, but it's not directed to other people? Correct, exactly, yes. It's directed to animals?

Yes. It's a command directed to animals in another language? Yes, yes. That a police officer would use. Yes. It's directed to animals? Yes. It's a command directed to animals in another language? Yes. That a police officer would use? Yes. And has used? I mean, has this presumably happened out in the real world? Yes. Yes. I think it has happened out in the real world. And the animal would respond to this sentence?

Yes. Can I call a sentence? You said maybe not. It might not be a sentence. It's some utterance that the animal would recognize? Yes. In another language? Yes. Okay. So do I need to know what kind of animal it is yes yes and the police use this yes is the animal a mammal yes a horse no uh some domestic yes animal yes a pet a common pet? Yeah. I mean, like a dog or a cat? Yes. A dog? Yes.

A police officer? Oh, is it like a canine officer? Yes. Oh, and the manual tells them how to, can I say communicate with a dog? Yes. In another language? Yes, yes. That the dog will understand?

Yes. Is that because dogs are trained in this? Yeah, well, this is where it breaks down a little bit. Apparently, this is true, that many police dogs in the U.S. are often trained on commands that are not common languages in the U.S. Sloan and McHale say that it's because they do it on purpose to make it unlikely that any person other than the police officer can control the dog. Wow, that's clever. You know, if you teach the dog in Dutch or German or something,

very few police officers, criminals, right, would be able to confuse the dog or give it other instructions. Some people, I tried to look into this to see if it's actually true, and some people say that that's the reason. Other people say that, no, the reason is actually that many police dogs were trained in Europe initially. I see. So we get them, we import them from like germany or and they come speaking german basically or understand they'll speak german they understand german but but it still has that it still has the effect right you would have to be you would be trained to speak like say german commands or

dutch commands or you know whatever the language is so that you could control the police dog that's i had no idea that's really clever yeah so that's why control the police dog. I had no idea. That's really clever. Yeah. So that's why I said you were closest when you were saying kitty cats rather than saying a person. If anybody out there has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to possibly use on the show, you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's another episode for us. If you're looking for more Futility Closet, check out our books on Amazon

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