Editing Spring-heeled Jack (section)

=== Scales and Alsop reports ===
[[File:Spring Heeled Jack-penny dreadful.png|left|thumbnail|Illustration of Spring-heeled Jack, from the 1867 serial ''Spring-heel'd Jack: The Terror of London'']]
Perhaps the best known of the alleged incidents involving Spring-heeled Jack were the attacks on two teenage girls, Lucy Scales and Jane Alsop. The Alsop report was widely covered by the newspapers, including a piece in ''[[The Times]]'',<ref name=oldford>{{cite news | title = The Late Outrage at Old Ford | work = [[The Times]] | date = 2 March 1838 | url = http://archive.timesonline.co.uk | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20081006085903/http://archive.timesonline.co.uk/ | url-status = dead | archive-date = 6 October 2008 }}</ref> while fewer reports appeared in relation to the attack on Scales. The press coverage of these two attacks helped to raise the profile of Spring-heeled Jack.{{citation needed|date=June 2017}}

====Alsop case====
Jane Alsop reported that on the night of 19 February 1838, she answered the door of her father's house to a man claiming to be a police officer, who told her to bring a light, claiming "we have caught Spring-heeled Jack here in the lane". She brought the person a candle, and noticed that he wore a large cloak. The moment she had handed him the candle, however, he threw off the cloak and "presented a most hideous and frightful appearance", vomiting blue and white flame from his mouth while his eyes resembled "red balls of fire". Miss Alsop reported that he wore a large helmet and that his clothing, which appeared to be very tight-fitting, resembled white oilskin. Without saying a word he caught hold of her and began tearing her gown with his claws which she was certain were "of some metallic substance". She screamed for help, and managed to get away from him and ran towards the house. He caught her on the steps and tore her neck and arms with his claws. She was rescued by one of her sisters, after which her assailant fled.<ref name=scotsman1/><ref name=burke>{{cite book | last = Burke | first = Edmund | author-link = Edmund Burke |author2=Ivison Stevenson  | title = The Annual Register of World Events: A Review of the Year | publisher = Longmans, Green | year = 1839 | location = London | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=sdkHAAAAIAAJ&q=spring-heeled | page = 23 }}</ref>

====Scales case====
On 28 February 1838,<ref>''[[The Morning Post]]'' of 7 March 1838, in Mike Dash, 'Spring-heeled Jack', ''Fortean Studies'' 3, p.pp.62–3</ref> nine days after the attack on Miss Alsop, 18-year-old Lucy Scales and her sister were returning home after visiting their brother, a butcher who lived in a respectable part of [[Limehouse]]. Miss Scales stated in her deposition to the police that as she and her sister were passing along Green Dragon Alley, they observed a person standing in an angle of the passage. She was walking in front of her sister at the time, and just as she came up to the person, who was wearing a large cloak, he spurted "a quantity of blue flame" in her face, which deprived her of her sight, and so alarmed her, that she instantly dropped to the ground, and was seized with violent fits which continued for several hours.<ref name="Burke, pp. 26-27">Burke, [https://books.google.com/books?id=sdkHAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA26&vq=spring-heeled pp. 26–27]</ref>

Her brother added that on the evening in question, he had heard the loud screams of one of his sisters moments after they had left his house and on running up Green Dragon Alley he found his sister Lucy on the ground in a fit, with her sister attempting to hold and support her. She was taken home, and he then learned from his other sister what had happened. She described Lucy's assailant as being of tall, thin, and gentlemanly appearance, covered in a large cloak, and carrying a small lamp or bull's eye lantern similar to those used by the police. The individual did not speak nor did he try to lay hands on them, but instead walked quickly away. Every effort was made by the police to discover the author of these and similar outrages, and several persons were questioned, but were set free.<ref name="Burke, pp. 26-27"/>