This is John or ‘Jack’ Sheppard, born in Spitalfields, London on 4 March 1702. Like most boys at this time, he was indentured as an apprentice to a craftsman, in this case a carpenter, named appropriately Mr. Woods. Sheppard learnt his craft quickly and was soon idling; distracted by the various elicit enticements of London, particularly a prostitute named Elizabeth Lyon. In order to supplement his trainee’s wages and pay for his new lifestyle, Sheppard, with help from his friends and brother, Thomas, turned to theft.
So far, this could be the story of hundreds of idle apprentices in the 1720s, but in 1723, he broke Lyon out of St Giles parish roundhouse (roughly where the Odeon Covent Garden now stands). In February 1724 Sheppard was himself committed to the roundhouse and locked in a room on the top floor. He cut a hole through the ceiling and climbed out onto the roof. He got down to the ground, passed through the crowd that had gathered and got away.
After this, Sheppard and Lyon were caught again and imprisoned in Clerkenwell New Prison. Sheppard cut his way out of the barred window of their cell. Making a rope from Lyon’s dress and the sheets from their bed; they climbed down into the yard of Bridewell Prison, which stood next door, before climbing over the 25 ft high gate to freedom. From this point until the end of the year, Sheppard was the top news story in London.
In 1724 London had no police force; even the Bow Street Runners wouldn’t exist for another quarter of a century. Aside from elderly watchmen and parish constables, the primary means for controlling crime was thief-takers. These were private businessmen who, through contacts in the criminal underworld, arranged the return of stolen property to the original owners and also arrested suspected criminals, often informing against them. By the 1720s, a man named Jonathan Wild had such a monopoly in the business that he adopted the title Thief-taker General of Britain and Ireland. Egotism was hardly Wild’s only sin – his monopoly on ‘policing’ came from the fact that he was secretly in charge of London’s criminal gangs and essentially fencing stolen goods back to their owners for a fee. His position as thief-taker allowed him to impeach any criminals who didn’t work for him (such as Sheppard) and let the law dispose of them at the gallows. Any of Wild’s own gang who stepped out of line were dealt with in a similar fashion. Did I also mention that Wild was a bigamist, ran a brothel and had his predecessor arrested for homosexuality?
The robbery that Sheppard would be condemned for was of 118 yards of cloth and other goods to the value of not quite £50. Sheppard was arrested, tried and sentenced to execution (the theft of goods worth more than a shilling was a capital crime, as was receiving stolen goods). He was placed in the condemned hold of Newgate Prison. With the aid of Lyon, he cut off one of the spikes that topped the gate into the hold, climbed over and then, disguised in a dress and bonnet, walked out of the prison. He was recaptured about a week later and placed in the strongest room, known as the Castle. On the evening of 15 October, he began his most remarkable escape. With a nail, he picked the locks of his handcuff and then broke one of the links of the chain that ran between his leg irons and the floor. He then broke a hole in the chimney breast, climbed up the chimney and, making another hole, emerged into the room above. He broke the lock on the door, went to the prison chapel and picked the lock. He broke through four more doors and climbed onto the roof of the prison, which spanned the street. He then returned to his cell and retrieved his blankets. Securing them to the side of the gatehouse, he climbed down onto the roofs of Newgate Street. Climbing into the window of one of the houses, he crept down to street level and got away.
This escape secured Sheppard’s last stint at liberty as well as his lasting fame. He was returned to Newgate two weeks later, loaded down with 300 lbs of chains and locks. Despite a last minute attempt at liberation with a hidden penknife, Sheppard was taken to Tyburn on Monday 16 November 1724 and executed. He was just 22 years old.
Following this, Wild’s power in the criminal underworld began to wane. After a knife attack from one of his own men outside the Old Bailey courthouse, Wild was bed-ridden for several weeks. Unable to maintain the service he had provided and with the press casting him as an ogre in his pursuit of Sheppard, doubts began to be cast on Wild’s business practises. Then, in an outrageous move, Wild attempted to break one of his accomplices out of prison. Wild was arrested and imprisoned in Newgate, where he attempted to continue his business. He was tried on several accounts and eventually found guilty of receiving stolen goods. He was executed on 24 May 1725, drugged with laudanum by himself and pelted with stones, dead animals and poo by the London mob. That’s all 100% accu-rat.
Even before Sheppard died, likenesses and retellings of his life began to appear. The official biographies of condemned criminals, known as The Ordinary’s Accounts, for 4 September 1724 includes ‘JOHN SHEPHERD, a notorious Thief and House Breaker (whose Life should have been inserted in this Paper, had he not made his narrow Escape from Death on Monday last’. Sheppard’s escape from the condemned cell afforded the opportunity of a second account of his life, as well as ensuring an audience for it. Three more lives of Sheppard appeared before the end of the year.
During his confinement in Newgate, Sheppard was visited by Sir James Thornhill, the royal painter to George I. Although Thornhill’s original painting has not survived, a number of sketches and engravings remain (see above). They show a youthful, somewhat androgynous face, dominated by wide, innocent eyes. His large hands are a prominent feature of the portrait, as though Sheppard was an artist or architect. He worked with his hands.
Twelve days after Sheppard’s execution, the first play based on his life, Harlequin Sheppard opened. In 1728, a far more acclaimed play opened; John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. The play is innately aware of the expanding cultural world it inhabited, making it one of the earliest post-structural works. The play shared this awareness with its audience through references to a diverse range of cultural phenomena, such as accounts of condemned criminals. In the characters of the highwayman Macheath and his rivalry with thief-taker Mr Peachum, the audience would have recognised Sheppard and Wild. It did not end there either; works of fiction based on these two men’s lives would continue to appear for nearly three centuries.
The genius of Jack Sheppard’s story is the many ways it can be reinterpreted. In the hands of clergymen and moral guardians it served as a cautionary tale against the evils of alcohol, prostitutes and of breaking the bonds of apprenticeship. Ballad-writers, playwrights, authors and directors over the centuries have delighted in what is an essentially exciting, romantic (with a big or little R) story. Historians have taken it as an important social event in itself, or as an iris through which to explore Georgian London. Sheppard has also been viewed as a libertine and an archetypal rebellious youth – James Dean in a frockcoat. And in opposition to rebellion, naturally, is authority. In the personage of Jonathan Wild, this authority is rife with hypocrisy, brutality and corruption.
As recently as 2009 the art installation/ film The Last Days of Jack Sheppard juxtaposed the jail-breaker’s exploits with the bankers and speculators who caused the South Sea Bubble (the first modern economic crisis, in 1720), as a barely veiled metaphor for the current world financial meltdown. Sheppard’s story is also part of a long line of narratives, fictional and factual, in which the criminal is less villainous/ more reliable than those who claim to be upholding society’s values.
None of this is to say John Sheppard was an unambiguous hero. He was not. He engaged in house breaking and theft. He did not, despite what we might like to believe, rob from the rich to feed the poor. Nor was he coerced into it. He turned to crime to pay for vices that he could have rejected. He was a genius of applied thinking, using the skills he learnt as an apprentice to enter and exit buildings almost at will. Yet this logic seems to have deserted him when it came to fleeing the confines of London, which he only left for a week in his whole life. On the other hand, his crimes were not violent, he was loyal to a fault and he confessed and regretted his transgressions. So not an angel, but maybe an honest thief is preferably to a dishonest lawman. In the dramatis personae of London in 1724, he comes out as the best and the most interesting of a bad bunch. His story is full of thrills – it's standing on the narrow ramparts of Newgate in the moonlight, six stories above the street and halfway to freedom. It’s breaking your lover out of jail, or being locked in with them. It's the crooked thief-taker brought to the gallows by his own arrogance. But there are also underlying resonances, indelible themes which will continue to resound whenever we live in a world where youth runs amok and authority is corrupt.
Would you like to know more?
Jack Sheppard on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Sheppard
Jonathon Wild on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wild
Jack Sheppard in the Newgate Calendar http://www.exclassics.com/newgate/ng173.htm
