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Spring-Heeled Jack, East-End Disappearances & Other Mysterious Characters

Can't read it. The print is minuscule and the resolution isn't good enough to zoom in.
Did people go blind trying to read these broadsheet formats so long ago? :pop:
I had to take a break from this endeavour, as my eyes were suffering!

However, if I isolate and save only the article itself as a pdf file, sees to be alright?

Important to note, that if I search for, 'spring heeled jack', some early articles are identified, even though I can't see any mention of, 'spring heeled jack', therein:

Screenshot_20200613_201740_resize_69.jpg


I will hopefully now be able to post those articles in date sequence, until apparent first use of the terminology.

Earliest duly attached.
 

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These are the next six articles, which are seemingly relevant.

Thankfully, as pdf files, the source of each is clearly identified and as extracts the file size now greatly reduced.
 

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The final four articles, with the last two being, in sequence, first actual reference to, "Spring heeled Jack", which has come up from available search material.

Hopefully all maybe of some interest.
 

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I bet, and it's nice to see someone going to the trouble of doing it as the newspaper reports are fascinating.

I find the more you read it the easier it gets after a while for those people put off by the density of the writing.
 
He calls SHJ "humanoid cryptid" - providing another example of how "cryptid" refers to anything weird now. The word has been freed from its zoological intent and is evolving in the wild, the fertile land of paranormal pop culture.
And, why not.
I noticed that too. The term is now applied to anything from fictional monsters like the Rake and Slenderman to things like the Fresno Nightcrawlers. It should really just mean unknown animals.
 
Don't cryptids inherently have a spectrum, though? Bigfoot is supposed to have potentially human-level intelligence and possibly language, with an aside of supernatural phenomena, depending on who you talk to. Chupacabras are similarly monstrous/supernatural in an animal sort of way. Mothman is vaguely supernatural as a harbinger; not just an animal, and accompanied by vaguely UFO-ish ideas in the men in black visits. It's like how saying "Godzilla is just a lizard" is deliberately ignoring aspects of those films-- 'cryptid' as applied to unknown animals was already being applied to a category with interesting dimensions. It was coined for cryptinae (ichneumon wasps), so it's crept a lot, and 'scientifically unknown animals' is just part of that, not even an original and technical definition.
 
'Talking 'till Dawn' had a podcast on SHJ. IIRC they concluded it was likely one man with a bit of a 'kink' for 'cutting' women and some copycat behaviour, with most of the supernatural stuff being either added on afterwards in the telling, or just newspapers embellishing things at the time.
 
It was coined for cryptinae (ichneumon wasps), so it's crept a lot, and 'scientifically unknown animals' is just part of that, not even an original and technical definition.
I never heard this. When John Wall proposed the term in 1983, he did it to replace the word "monster" that was commonly used. Are you saying it was used as a basis for cryptinae, a subfamily of wasps?

Originally, from what I have always understood, cryptids, in the ISC view did not involve any supernatural properties. There was nothing that resembled a mysterious humanoid phenomenon like SHJ in its purview. But, you are right, the scope has DEFINITELY expanded to include all weird beings.
 
Or the subject of a Tim Burton movie.
I can see it now - an awkward teenager put together by a mad inventor who died before he could give him proper feet, instead replacing them with large springs. Trying to fit into society, Jack wanders onto darkened streets and towpaths, his awkward leaping alternately terrifying and injuring the locals, prompting him to hide out in some creepy mansion somewhere, from whence he only leaves in order to frequent the occasional Fortean message board...
 
'Following a blow to the head, Jack developed an evil alter ego, Jacqueline. Jack had no idea of her existence, until one morning when he awoke covered in someone else's blood and wearing a pair of turquoise stilletos...'
 
I never heard this. When John Wall proposed the term in 1983, he did it to replace the word "monster" that was commonly used. Are you saying it was used as a basis for cryptinae, a subfamily of wasps?

Originally, from what I have always understood, cryptids, in the ISC view did not involve any supernatural properties. There was nothing that resembled a mysterious humanoid phenomenon like SHJ in its purview. But, you are right, the scope has DEFINITELY expanded to include all weird beings.
No, you're right, his usage is not that usage, I conflated. But the term did exist in application to wasps before (and possibly independently of) its usage--specifically because we're talking about parasitic wasps (hence the 'hidden' part).
I do still think it's more or less fine to accept the creep in the term, even if only because it's hard to avoid by association to some things that can be taken as purely animal.
 
No, you're right, his usage is not that usage, I conflated. But the term did exist in application to wasps before (and possibly independently of) its usage--specifically because we're talking about parasitic wasps (hence the 'hidden' part).
I do still think it's more or less fine to accept the creep in the term, even if only because it's hard to avoid by association to some things that can be taken as purely animal.
I find the usage creep quite an interesting aspect. It is, at least, a result of the non-organization of the field. It's propelled almost entirely by amateurs and pop culture media.
 
I find the usage creep quite an interesting aspect. It is, at least, a result of the non-organization of the field. It's propelled almost entirely by amateurs and pop culture media.
I'm so delighted by the way linguistic evolution looks in the modern era (with rapid cultural variation/dissemination facilitated via the internet, and yet norms are being perpetuated far longer now than they would have been before widespread communications technology). I'm not really researchy-into it, but there's moments where the differences get really blatant and it's fascinating.
 
I listened to the Dark Histories podcast about Spring-Heeled Jack last night, which provided more details than I'd previously been aware of.
Of particular interest was the description of women he had assaulted being left "witless", "hysterical" and "unlikely to regain their senses" seemingly being Victorian euphemisms for women left traumatised having been raped or seriously sexually assaulted.
Jack himself apparently wore a long fur (possibly bear-skin) coat and hood, which he would throw aside to reveal a lantern, some sort of grotesque mask and metallic partial body armour including clawed gauntlets, which he would use to rip the extensive Victorian clothing off his victims, often wounding them in the process. When fleeing the scene, he had a strange, bounding gait, giving rise to his nickname. There was only one account of him jumping unfeasibly high, which was likely an exaggeration. I suspect his unusual lopsided running technique may have been due to a knee injury or arthritis (bit like how I hobble around a cricket pitch these days).
So, strip away all the media hysteria, stoked by the likes of The Sun, Illustrated Police News and assorted "Penny Dreadfuls" and you are left with a serial sex-offender, with a notable limp, wearing an innovative disguise, enhanced by some magician-like pyrotechnic effects. Sadly, his notoriety resulted in several copycat incidents around the country and continued for many decades.
 
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I listened to the Dark Histories podcast about Spring-Heeled Jack last night, which provided more details than I'd previously been aware of.
Of particular interest was the description of women he had assaulted being left "witless", "hysterical" and "unlikely to regain their senses" seemingly being Victorian euphemisms for women left traumatised having been raped or seriously sexually assaulted.
Jack himself apparently wore a long fur (possibly bear-skin) coat and hood, which he would throw aside to reveal a lantern, some sort of grotesque mask and metallic partial body armour including clawed gauntlets, which he would use to rip the extensive Victorian clothing off his victims, often wounding them in the process. When fleeing the scene, he had a strange, bounding gait, giving rise to his nickname. There was only one account of him jumping unfeasibly high, which was likely an exaggeration. I suspect his unusual lopsided running technique may have been due to a knee injury or arthritis (bit like how I hobble around a cricket pitch these days).
So, strip away all the media hysteria, stoked by the likes of The Sun, Illustrated Police News and assorted "Penny Dreadfuls" and you are left with a serial sex-offender, with a notable limp, wearing an innovative disguise, enhanced by some magician-like pyrotechnic effects. Sadly, his notoriety resulted in several copycat incidents around the country and continued for many decades.
In some of these descriptions, I wonder whether he actually didn't wear any lower garments at all. I agree with the rape/sexual assault conclusion, and wonder whether he did something like paint his lower limbs and...er...member with some kind of metallic paint. Then he could throw off the coat and count on his victim being frozen by his outlandish appearance.

I wonder if this would have been mentioned in reports?
 
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