Editing Spring-heeled Jack (section)

===Aftermath and impact upon Victorian popular culture===
The vast urban legend built around Spring-heeled Jack influenced many aspects of Victorian life, especially in contemporary [[popular culture]]. For decades, especially in London, his name was equated with the [[bogeyman]], as a means of scaring children into behaving by telling them if they were not good, Spring-heeled Jack would leap up and peer in at them through their bedroom windows, by night.

However, it was in fictional entertainment where the legend of Spring-heeled Jack exerted the most extensive influence, owing to his allegedly extraordinary nature. Three pamphlet publications, purportedly based on the real events, appeared almost immediately, during January and February, 1838. They were not advertised as fiction, though they likely were at least partly so. The only known copies were reported to have perished when the [[British Library]] was hit during [[The Blitz]], but their catalogue still lists the first one.

The character was written into a number of [[penny dreadful]] stories during the latter half of the 19th century, initially as a villain and then in increasingly heroic roles. By the early 1900s he was being represented as a costumed, altruistic avenger of wrongs and protector of the innocent, effectively becoming a precursor to [[Pulp magazine|pulp fiction]] and then [[comic book]] [[superheroes]].