Jack Sheppard

English thief

• Born: 1702
• Birthplace: Spitalfields, London, England
• Died: November 16, 1724
• Place of death: Tyburn, London, England

Major offenses: Theft and jailbreaking

Active: Early 1720’s

Locale: London

Sentence: Death by hanging

Early Life

Before turning to a brief life of crime, Jack Sheppard (SHEHP-uhrd), whose father had died when he and his brother Thomas were very young, was apprenticed to a carpenter, acquiring an expertise in the handling of tools that presumably served him well when he turned into a housebreaker. He was allegedly honest until he began associating with Elizabeth Lyon (also known as Edgeworth Bess), a woman who received stolen goods and later professed to be Sheppard’s wife. Sheppard started his career modestly, stealing from houses in which his master was commissioned to carry out repairs. However, he soon progressed to bolder adventures in association with his brother and Bess following his dismissal from his apprenticeship. Sheppard apparently had a speech impediment of some sort and was slight of stature; the notice issued after his famous jailbreak described him as being five feet, four inches in height and very slender.

Criminal Career

Sheppard appears to have been an exceedingly incompetent criminal. He owed his eventual arrest to his association with the corrupt magistrate and “thief-taker” Jonathan Wild, whose duplicity became legendary and whose own fall from grace was accomplished within three months of Sheppard’s execution. When Wild turned him in, Sheppard gave information against two of his accomplices: his brother Thomas, who was transported to jail, and Joseph Blake (also known as Blueskin), who staked his own claim to fame by attempting to murder Wild in the yard of Old Bailey, London’s criminal court.

Although his thefts were relatively minor, Sheppard gained fame—largely by virtue of reports in the Daily Journal and other newspapers—because of his two escapes from London’s Newgate Prison, although he was swiftly recaptured on each occasion. His speech impediment presumably made it difficult for him to remain unrecognized.

Sheppard’s first escape was on August 30, 1724, from the hold in Newgate Prison, where prisoners awaiting execution were held. Bess paid him back for securing her release from Saint Giles’s by smuggling in some tools, which Sheppard used to demolish the lock on the hatch in the hold’s ceiling. Then, Bess and a female accomplice smuggled Sheppard, clad in a nightgown, past the turnkeys. Once Sheppard escaped, however, he did not seem to have exercised any discretion: He immediately committed further burglaries.

Sheppard’s second escape, on October 16, 1724, seemed far more remarkable, since he had been shackled to the floor of a room in Newgate Prison. The fetters on his wrists had not been designed to hold such a thin man, and Sheppard slipped his hands free. He climbed up a chimney to the room above and removed an iron bar en route, which served him as a tool thereafter. Having broken the lock of the upper room, Sheppard made his way to the chapel and broke through another series of doors with the aid of his improvised crowbar and a nail that he had picked up along the way. Finally gaining access to a roof, Sheppard allegedly returned to his cell to fetch his blanket to use as a means to lower himself and escape. Although this second escape made him famous, Sheppard remained at liberty only for a fortnight. He was recaptured shortly after robbing a pawnbroker’s shop, where he furnished himself with a sword that he was too drunk to use when he was rearrested.

Two earlier jailbreaking escapades were subsequently added to the list of Sheppard’s notorious acts—the first involved breaking Edgeworth Bess out of Saint Giles’s Round House; the second, an alleged escape from another prison. No details of Bess’s release or Sheppard’s escape from the prison are reliably recorded, although subsequent literary accounts filled in the gaps with various confabulations.

Legal Action and Outcome

The crowds flocked to see Sheppard when he was returned to Newgate Prison for the third time. He was shackled to the floor of the condemned hold, watched night and day. He had to be tried again in order to prove that he was the same man who had previously been condemned, but the legal proceedings were hurried. A large crowd turned out to see him hanged on November 16, 1724; it rioted afterward and carried Sheppard’s body away after smashing the cart of the undertaker who had come to bury him. The body was later recovered and interred at St Martin’s-in-the-Fields.

Impact

Jack Sheppard’s legacy as a notorious thief and remarkable jailbreaker began even before his death. A pamphlet containing an account of his career was published before his execution, on November 4, and another—purportedly written by Sheppard himself—immediately afterward. Both were reprinted for more than a century. On December 5, within three weeks of the execution, a one-act farce titled Harlequin Sheppard opened at the Drury Lane Theatre; it was soon followed by a three-act version called The Prison-Breaker. The fact that Sheppard was a petty thief, of no distinction whatsoever, was quickly forgotten, and he became the most legendary bandit of his era. Although he bore little resemblance to the character of the dashing highwayman Macheath in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (pr., pb. 1728), reports about Sheppard’s career undoubtedly encouraged the composition of that work. Sheppard became the hero of several more plays and a notable novel by William Harrison Ainsworth, Jack Sheppard (1839), in which the famous escape was lavishly illustrated by a series of engravings by George Cruikshank. Sheppard was also featured in the 1969 comedy film Where’s Jack?, in which he was played by Tommy Steele.

Bibliography

Ainsworth, William Harrison. Jack Sheppard: A Romance. London: Richard Bentley, 1839. A novel originally serialized in Bentley’s Miscellany. The accounts by Ainsworth were very influential in maintaining Sheppard’s legend. Includes a highly elaborate (and, in most editions, copiously illustrated) account of the hero’s second escape from Newgate, but the account of the Sheppard’s early life is entirely imaginary.

Buckstone, John Baldwin. Jack Sheppard: A Drama in Four Acts. London: Webster, 1839. One of many theatrical melodramas based on Sheppard’s story and more elaborate than most; it is closely related to Ainsworth’s novel and might be regarded as a dramatic version of it.

Hibbert, Christopher. The Road to Tyburn: The Story of Jack Sheppard and the Eighteenth Century Underworld. New York: Longmans, Green, 1957. A more modern telling of the Sheppard legend, placing it in context with other crimes and criminals of the era.

The History of Jack Sheppard: His Wonderful Exploits and Escapes. London: James Cochrane, 1839. A Victorian update of the story told in two 1724 pamphlets, which further exaggerated the legend and maintained its currency.

The History of the Surprising Life and Adventures of John Sheppard. London: John Thift, 1724. The first of two pamphlets that gave rise to Sheppard’s legend. It was issued in advance of Sheppard’s execution.

A Narrative of All the Robberies and Escape of John Sheppard. London: John Applebee, 1724. This second pamphlet claimed that its text was handed to the publisher by Sheppard himself as he was being transported to Tyburn—a claim endorsed by the Daily Record but likely untrue.