Jack Sheppard, born 1702, was one of England’s most infamous criminals. Although he committed crimes of thievery and burglary, Sheppard is most well-known for capturing the imagination of Londoners through his four audacious escapes from prison before his final arrest and subsequent hanging in 1724. Despite his crimes, Sheppard was popular, particularly with women, and emerged as a working-class hero. Sheppard’s story has been told many times over the past three hundred years including ‘autobiographical’ accounts of his life which were recorded and printed for sale on the day of his execution.
The Adaptations
Sheppard’s story has been shaped by societal contexts and narrators for a variety of different mediums. In 1728 it was the subject of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera which is often considered the first musical. Just over one hundred years later, Sheppard’s story was still popular and was retold in the novel Jack Sheppard: A Romance. The sexual revolution plays a role in the 1969 film Where’s Jack? and the theme song describes Sheppard as a dreamer striving to change the world. In 2018 his story was told in the novel Confessions of the Fox, where Sheppard is reimagined as a transvestite man. The continued popularity of Sheppard’s story can be attributed to the potential variations in its message, from a declaration of deviance, to a cautionary story of morals.
Early Life
Born John Sheppard, Jack’s early life was spent in Spitalfields, an area of abject poverty. Following his father’s death when he was only a young child, Sheppard was sent to a workhouse and later apprenticed and indentured to a carpenter. He was an exemplary pupil who showed great promise and aptitude for carpentry. After five years of apprenticeship without issue, Sheppard began a life of crime. Despite the social pressure to pursue a career in carpentry which would have led to a relatively stable life, Sheppard rebelled, not out of necessity, but merely to supplement his legitimate wage.
The Accomplices
Sheppard was affected by drinking and formed attachments to prostitutes, particularly Elizabeth (Bess) Lyon who was by his side for the rest of his life. One of Sheppard’s first acts of defiance against the authorities was not his own escape, but when he broke into St Giles’s Roundhouse to rescue Lyon who had been arrested and imprisoned. In his History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard, Daniel Defoe describes the beginning of Sheppard’s relationship with Lyon as a “fatal acquaintance” and a consequence of their intimacy being “a main loadstone in attracting of him up to the fatal Tree”. By his own account, Sheppard blames his temporal and eternal ruin on Joseph Hind who ran the Black Lyon Ale-House where he became acquainted with Elizabeth Lyon. Regardless of this disparity in accounts, it seems that Lyon had a significant impact on Sheppard’s life and subsequently has featured as a key character in his story. Her depiction in Sheppard’s story varies; at times she is shown as a loving wife hurt by Sheppard’s misdeeds, and at other times, an impressionable young girl who falls in with the wrong crowd, or a common prostitute who is the blame for Sheppard’s downfall.
Jack Sheppard’s brother Thomas, also a carpenter, was a partner in crime for some time before his own arrest. Thomas also features in many retellings of Sheppard’s story, and in a similar fashion as Lyon, he has often been blamed for his brother’s downfall. After numerous burglaries together, Thomas informed on his brother leading to Jack Sheppard’s first arrest and imprisonment.
the Escapes
Sheppard escaped by breaking through the ceiling and climbing to the ground on a rope of bedsheets. In 1723 Sheppard was sent first to St Anne’s Roundhouse for pickpocketing and then to The Newgate Ward. Here he escaped through the window after making a hole in the wall. In August 1724, Sheppard was sentenced to death after being convicted of burglary. He again escaped from Newgate after filing away an iron spike on the door. Sheppard was caught and again imprisoned at Newgate in October 1724, this time escaping by scaling a wall and sliding down onto a neighbouring roof. This final escape was so astonishing that some believed supernatural forces had intervened for Sheppard. It was said that the Devil had come to Newgate to help him escape, reflecting the incredulity of his story. This is recorded by Daniel Defoe who was working as a journalist at the time and demonstrates the public’s appetite for a sensational story with a daring working-class hero.
Two weeks after his last escape, Sheppard was again captured. He was discovered drunk, dressed in a fine suit with rings on his fingers which he had stolen from a pawnshop two nights before. Now a popular and celebrated figure, goalers at Newgate charged a fee for aristocratic visitors to see Sheppard which demonstrated his widespread fame and popularity. The King’s portrait artist, James Thornhill, painted Sheppard’s portrait and a petition was sent to the King begging for his life to be spared.15 It is obvious that by this point Sheppard’s story of escape and defiance was well-known throughout London.
Death
After Sheppard declined to inform on his associates, his death sentence was confirmed on 10 November and less than a week later he was taken to the gallows at Tyburn. The crowd which followed represented at least a quarter of the London’s population at the time, showcasing the reach of his story which had been spread in pamphlets and news stories. Jack Sheppard had become an instant legend and arguably the eighteenth century’s equivalent of the modern ‘celebrity’.
