Looking Back, with Eric Leaver

YOU just can't keep an old-time jumper down. For, out of the past - and out of an argument down at Rossendale reader Mr R.L. Leach's local - leaps legendary Jack Higgins, the spring-heeled hero who was "world champion" at his sport.

And although it is donkey's years since Jack's amazing feats attracted crowds, bets and contenders for his crown and half a century after his flying feet kicked the bucket, his fame lives on, along with present-day wagers on his achievements.

So who was the amazing athlete and what, literally, did he get up to? asks Mr Leach, of Fern Terrace, Haslingden.

Born in the King Street area of Blackburn, Jack rose to stardom in the 1890s with the stunts he made a career of. At 18, at the town's Ohmy's Circus, he jumped over the heads of 20 horses and in and out of seven wash tubs, each spaced three yards apart. He could also clear the canal in one bound - and touch the surface with one foot in mid-flight. Another of his feats was jumping into a crate of eggs and out again without cracking a single one.

Jack took his gravity-defying act all over the country and on a 25,000-mile tour of America, taking on all-comers. Even at the age of 55, in 1927, he jumped over a horse and cab at the New Princes Theatre in Blackburn.

Yet, his achievements were not all down to muscle-power. For, like many fellow jumpers of the era, Jack added impetus to his leaps and bounds by the use of dumbbell-shaped hand weights which he swung backwards at arm's length to gain an extra boost before discarding them.

But though he found lasting fame - and still provokes queries to this newspaper like that of Mr Leach - a fortune eluded him.

He was almost penniless when he died in the late 1940s.

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