“In different shapes and forms”: Spring-Heeled Jack and the Power of Perception in Victorian Transmedia

A mysterious man in 1830s England, eventually dubbed Spring-Heeled Jack in contemporary news reports, spent several months terrorising unsuspecting people in the nighttime streets by clawing their faces, spewing flames from his mouth, and then bounding away. During his menacing spree, newspapers throughout the country enflamed public hysteria with numerous articles detailing the “outrages” committed by the “fiend”. For no discernible reason, the attacks stopped as suddenly as they began and no more was heard about the man. Yet, a few decades later, he was resurrected in the public consciousness through various fictional genres as a character who was not a crazed villain but rather a misunderstood antihero who repented of his past actions. These skillful reconfigurations on the stage and in penny dreadfuls changed public perception about Jack from the horror and fear of his real-world behaviour to excitement and intrigue at his fictional exploits. Through a consideration of the language and tone of the original news articles combined with a close-reading of some of the later penny serials, this paper details the ways in which different media and their conventions shaped the public’s attitude towards Jack, and asserts his significance as a pervasive transmedial character of the Victorian era.