Please click the icon to follow us on Facebook.outside Lambeth Court on this day the public hanging of the carpenter Thomas Millbank descended into the very apotheosis of urban terror that his costumed alter ego Spring Heeled Jack had visited upon the City of London and its surrounding villages.

The previous September three women were attacked, one of whom Polly Adams had her clothes torn off allowing Jack to scratch at her stomach with his iron clad fingers. All three described Jack as a tall, thin and powerful man who wore a dark cloak, glowing eyes and the ability to spit blue flames. A vigilante group formed by London's Lord Mayor, Sir John Cowan had been unable to capture him because he was able to escape all attempts with his extraordinarily high jumps.

"The highest ranks of life have laid a wager with a mischievous and foolhardy companion" ~ anonymous letter to the MayorThen five months later two cases and one drunken boast would lead to the bizarre arrest by the private investigator James Lea.

On February 19th a strange figure stood at the gate of a home and yelled out, "For God's sake, bring me a light, for we have caught Springheel Jack in the lane!". Within moments, eighteen year old Jane Alsop ran outside with a candle and confronted the figure who was enveloped in a large cloak and spit blue and white flames. The figure grabbed the young girl and clawed at her dress with his sharp fingers. Aslop's sister ran to her aid and dragged her inside the house.

Only eight 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.

Immediately after the Alsop attack a carpenter named Thomas Millbank boasted in the Morgan's Arms that he was Spring Heeled Jack. He was arrested and tried at Lambeth Street court. The arresting officer was James Lea, who had earlier arrested William Corder, the Red Barn Murderer. Millbank had been wearing white overalls and a greatcoat, which he dropped outside the house, and the candle he dropped was also found.

The execution represented something of an early triumph for the newly formed Metropolitan Policy Authority. Or so it was intended. Because shortly after the noose was placed upon his neck, the villain breathed fire upon the rope before leaping to his escape. There could be only one explanation for the unspeakable events of the morning, reported The Times of London. Spring Heeled Jack had won another wager with the highest ranks of life.