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May 29, 2018 14 tweets 5 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
He was the terror of London; a demonic figure with glowing eyes and fiery breath who could leap ten feet high. The penny dreadfuls of the time wrote up his exploits in lurid terms. But who was he really?

Today I look at one of the earliest pulp legends: Spring-Heeled Jack...
#London has always attracted ghosts, and in the 19th Century they left their haunted houses and graveyards and began to wader the capital's streets. But one apparition caught the Victorian public's attention more than most...
In October 1837 a 'leaping character' with a look of the devil began to prey on Londoners. Often it would leap high into the air and land in front of a carriage, causing it to crash. The 'devil' then fled with a high-pitched laugh.

The public soon named him Spring-Heeled Jack.
More attacks followed; Kensington, Ealing, Vauxhall, Brixton. Spring-Heeled Jack seeme to be appearing everywhere: knocking on doors, lurking in alleys, jumping out at coaches before leaping away...
Sir John Cowan, the Lord Mayor of London, was having none of it. He believed these were "wicked pranks" by well-to-do gentlemen dressed up in costumes to scare the unsuspecting. Tales of a 'devil' who could leap nine feet high were simply exaggerations...
Two attacks in 1838 gained particular notoriety: in separate incidents Spring-Heeled Jack attacked Jane Alsop and Lucy Scales in Limehouse. Both young witnesses swore the creature breathed blue flames as he leapt at them.
Thomas Millbank was arrefsed after boastin in a pub he was Speing-Heeled Jack, and items he used to disguise himself were soon found. However he was was acquitted on a key point: he could not breathe blue fire, as both Alsop and Scales had testified their attacker did.
The press had a field day with Spring-Heeled Jack; soon he had his own penny dreadful magazines and his 'exploits' were widely read. Plays and songs were also written about him.
Yet sightings of Jack waned as his fame spread. It wasn't until 1843 that sightings were reported again, but this time nationwide; Northamptonshire, Devon, Norfolk. Suddenly Jack was everywhere, leaping high and breathing fire...
...and then he vanished again! It seemed Spring-Heeled Jack was intermittent, as well as itinerant!
In 1872 Jack was in Peckham. In 1873 he was in Sheffield. By 1877 he was in Lincoln. His last appearance was in Liverpool in 1904...
So who, or what, was Spring-Heeled Jack? Initial suspicion fell on the Marquess of Waterford, who had a reputation for drunken brawling, brutal jokes and vandalism. He certainly had the money and inclination to make himself into a fire-spitting monster molesting the populace.
But the longevity of the legend suggests that a form of mass psychosis, egged on by the press and many malicious pranksters lay behing Spring-Heeled Jack's appearances across England. It's a good story...
Whatever the truth, one thing is certain: Spring-Heeled Jack was one of the first pulp legends and helped set the template for the genre. Will he ever return? Who can say!

More stories another time...

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More from @PulpLibrarian

Dec 2, 2018
It is the greatest frog-worshiping zombie biker occult horror film ever made. Possibly the only one. It's certainly like no over movie you've ever seen.

Today in pulp, I look back at the 1971 classic Psychomania...
By the early 1970s British horror films were trying to get 'with it' to attract a younger audience. So it wasn't surprising that in 1971 screenwriter Arnaud d'Usseau tried to create a biker horror movie.
d'Usseau had previously written Horror Express, an Anglo-Spanish sci-fi/horror movie loosely based on John W. Campbell's novella Who Goes There. Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas did their best with the material.
Read 18 tweets
Oct 9, 2018
"The gun is good! The Penis is evil!" bellows a huge stone head floating over the Irish countryside. It's quite a strange start to any movie, but it's about to get even stranger...

This is the story of John Boorman's classic 1974 film Zardoz.
In 1970 director John Boorman began work on a Lord Of The Rings film for United Artists. It would be an unusual adaption; The Beatles would be the Hobbits and Kabuki theatre would open the movie . Alas the studio said 'No', but the idea of a fantasy film stuck with Boorman...
So in 1972, following the commercial success of Deliverance, John Boorman started work on Zardoz - a fantasy film into which he would cram many unorthodox ideas. Initially Burt Reynolds was to play the lead role of Zed, but pulled out citing other filming commitments.
Read 13 tweets
Oct 8, 2018
As it's #LibrariesWeek let's look back at Britain's favourite library book*: the 1977 Usborne Guide to the Supernatural World!

(*according to my readers)
Supernatural World was an anthology of three existing Usborne pocketbooks: Vampires, Mysterious Powers and Ghosts. As an Usborne hardback it was deemed perfect for the nation's libraries.
Usborne had previously fascinated and frightened readers with its 1977 World Of The Unknown series: a terrifying triptych of ghosts, monsters and UFOs. Supernatural World would continue in the same vein.
Read 12 tweets
Oct 7, 2018
It was a university course for the price of a packet of cigarettes: Pelican Books! Maybe the blend wasn't to everyone's taste, but there's no denying the addictive nature of the range.

Today in pulp I look back at the autodidact's bible...
In 1937, two years after Allen Lane founded Penguin books, the company decided on a new imprint to provide academic and intellectual non-fiction for the general public. Lane believed there was a market for “intelligent books at a low price” which he was determined to serve
Over its lifetime Pelican sold a quarter of a billion books covering almost 3,000 subjects. Lane apparently came up with the Pelican name when he overheard a woman at King’s Cross railway station mistakenly asking for a Pelican book instead of a Penguin one.
Read 14 tweets
Oct 7, 2018
📩PULP POSTBAG TIME!📩

And today's letter is home computer related...
Mr Derrick Wibley from Penge writes: "Dear PL, I recently invested in a 48k ZX Spectrum to help run my stationery business 'Penge Pens'. However I'm worried it's not powerful enough to meet the needs of my ambitious business expansion programme. What should I do?"
Well Mr Wibley fear not! The ZX Spectrum is a fully-scaleable integrated solution to your business needs - provided you buy the right peripherals!
Read 13 tweets
Oct 6, 2018
The Time Machine, Brave New World, 1984: these weren’t the first dystopian novels. There's an interesting history of Victorian and Edwardian literature looking at the impact of modernity on humans and finding it worrying.

Today in pulp I look at some early dystopian books…
Paris in the Twentieth Century, written in 1863, was the second novel penned by Jules Verne. However his publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel rejected it as too gloomy. The manuscript was only discovered in 1994 when Verne’s grandson hired a locksmith to break into an old family safe.
The novel, set in 1961, warns of the dangers of a utilitarian culture. Paris has street lights, motor cars and the electric chair but no artists or writers any more. Instead industry and commerce dominate and citizens see themselves as cogs in a great economic machine.
Read 26 tweets

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