The Morning herald., 1875-12-31
Two queer Characters.

I
Two queer Characters.
Some eighty-6ve years ago, on the 18th
of January, 1870, one Renwick Williams
more commonly known as ''the Monster
capitally indicted at the Old Bailey ses
sions house, London, for feloniously
assaulting and wounding Miss Ann Porter
and tearing, spelling, cutting and defacina
her clothes. The case against the prisoner
was abundantly proved. 1t appeared that
as Miss Porter and her sister were walking
along St. James street, they were very nat.
nrally alarmed to observe man following
them. He quickened his pace and passed
them, and as did so he stabbed the lady
.,amed with knife, in most brutal and
dangerous manner.
The tsial created considerable excitement
as precisely similar outrages were commit
ted in various parts Of London, ,and the pris-
oner was believed to have been in each
case responsible for the crime. He was
found guilty but had the fortune to escape
the gallows ona pure point Of law, as there
was a flaw in the Indictment and the
judges added that the ofense was one which
did not come within the statute upon which
the prosecution had relied. He did not,
however, get off altogether scot-free. A
few days later he was again put on his
trial for an assalt, and, being found guilty,
was sentenced to long and we'll deserved
term of imprisonment. Gilray celebrated
the conviction with a cartoon conceived
and executed in his own peculiar style.
The interest which the case had aroused :,
however, gradually died ont, and nothing
Of the kind again occurred until, in the
first few months of Queen Victoria's reign,
and almost fifty years after the condemna-
tion Of ''the Monster" the notorious
"Spring.heeled Jack" burst upon London,
and literally frightened respectable people
out Of their wits. The famous or infa-
nous, miscreant, whoever he was, con-
trived for couple Of years, or thercabouts,
to defy the watch and battle the sagacity
of the Bow-street runners. He was never
captured, and his victims, under the not
unnatural Influence Of their terror, gave
the most contradictory accounts of his de-
meanor and personal appearance.
There is, however, certain record Of
tradition to the effect that he was tall,
thin, 1.-the man, usually clad in mackin-
tosh overcoat and a lew crowned billy
cock" hat, and that he used to spring sud-
denly from over walls, or out of empty
houses, or from under the shadow of dark
archways, plant himself directly in the
path of respectable women, menace and
insult them in The most outrageous manner,
and then, as suddenly, leap back again into
the darkness out of which he had 80 rays
teriously emerged. All kinds Of
speculation were aheat respe ing
his identity. Some persons believed him
to be harlequin, clown, tr other acrobat,
with n morbid taste for aEnoying and
frightening innocent and timid females.
Others recognized in him well-known
marquis, whose madcap freaks had at the
time acquired an unenviable notoriety.
Others again, were of the opinion that he
was a certain royal duke, of immense
wealth. and with somewhat eccentric pro-
clivities.
Whoever he really was, the one thing
that is certain about Springfield Ell Jack
ia, that he kept his secret. For about two
years he was the bugbear Of London, At
the end Of that time he ceased his pranks
IS suddenly and as mysteriously as he had
commenced them. Some affirmed that he
was dead: others that he had broken his
leg; others that he had repented of his evil
courses. Whatever may have been the
true explanation, he disappeared, and al
though his name still fingers in legend
along with those Of Sawney Bean and the
great "Bogy" himself as terror to wilful
and wrong-headed young people OF either
SIX, no one has ever attempted in these
days Of gas lamps, an improved police, and
a stipendiary metropolitan bench, to revive
his exploits in their original lawlessness.