A phantom with a name. Spring-heeled Jack surfaced in the suburbs around London in the winter of 1838, after the Lord Mayor, Sir John Cowan, read out an anonymous letter at the Mansion House on 9 January. On the night of 19 February 1838, a cloaked man at a gate in Bear-bind Lane claimed Jack had been caught and asked Jane Alsop, 18, for a light. Thomas Millbank, who had boasted he was Jack, was arrested but not convicted. Jane insisted her attacker breathed fire. Decades later, in 1877, the sentries of Aldershot Camp met the name in the dark.
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