JACK SHEPPARD

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 August 1933, Page 10

JACK SHEPPARD

CRIMINAL AND “HERO.’ Reviewing “The Trial of Jack Sheppard,” by Horace Bleakley and S. M. Ellis, Desmond MacCarthy, writes in the London “Sunday Times”: — The most famous offender in the annals of English crime was an under-sized youth (sft 4in. to be exact ) lightly and neatly built, with a bullet head, ro.und, wide forehead, a slight stutter, and rathei’ prominent dark eyes. (Hogarth, by the by, belonged to the same English type.) He was extraordinarily quick, strong, and active. His round, pale face, as may be seen from Sir James Thornhill’s portrait of him taken in the condemned cell, expressed promptness, resolution, and pugnacity without brutality. His leading characteristic was pluck, and his pluck exceeded so remarkably his criminal propensities that he became a popular hero during the last weeks of his life, and after his death a favourite of novelists and dramatists. He was famous, not for his crimes, but for his escapes from prison. His criminal career was not particularly black, and it only lasted about fifteen months. It included a few petty thefts and three burglaries. On February 14, 1724, he was indicted for entering the house of William Phillips and stealing divers goods, also the house of one Mary Cook; these charges were dropped owing to insufficient evidence. But on the third count, that of entering the house of William Kneebone and stealing 108 yards of woollen cloth and two silver spoons in the night-time, he was found guilty ' and condemned to be hanged. Previ-1 ously he had succeeded in escaping both from St. Giles’s Round House and Clerkenwell Prison, and twice after I his death sentence he broke out of I Newgate. In making his last escape | from Newgate he showed such audac- I ity, strength, determination, and skill | that all the world felt that there was j much more to admire than to punish j in poor Jack. He became the object of that ready sympathy which! the citizen, even while he recognises the necessity of law, feels towards the better sort of rogue who incurs its penalties. The Criminal Law was an Ogre in those days (there is still something distinctly ogrish about it), and the thought of Jack burstingthrough six iron-bound doors of the Ogre’s strongest castle warmed every heart and rejoiced the imagination. What an uneven struggle! Bravo, Jack!

INFAMOUS JONATHAN WILD. It is not the trials of Jack Shop paid that are the most interesting part of this book. He had no counsel for, by a fiction, in this case trans parently false, it was held that the judge himself was always the accused’s best advocate. William Knee bone, William Field, and Jonathan Wild were the witnesses against him. The world has not forgotten Jonathan Wild, the vilest character in the eighteenth century underworld, who has his place of infamy in the “Dictionary of National Biography.” It is an odd coincidence that both Wild and Sheppard, his most celebrated victim, were the sons of carpenters. It was Swift who bestowed upon the criminal .hief-catcher the title of Jonathan Wild the Great, which, eighteen years

later, Fielding used in that ironic study of manners which bears the monster’s name. Six months after Sheppard was strangled upon 'the Triple Tree. Jonathan Wild made the same journey, only he made it drugged with laudanum and amid the execration of the angriest mob that ever assembled to a hanging. Kneebone, the second witness, was the draper to whom Jack Sheppard had been apprenticed. He had been a good master, and he was doubtless sore at having been robbed in return for past kindenss. He said in his evidence that Jack had confessed that he was ashamed of his ingratitude, but that he had been led into robbing his old master by frequenting had company.

It is unlikely that Kneebone would have prosecuted to the death had no pressure been put upon him, for he seems to have been uneasy about the consequence afterwards, and he visited his ex-apprentice in the condemned cell as a friend. Field, the last witness, was a base fellow who, at the persuasion of Jonathan Wild, turned King’s evidence. Jack Sheppard’s defence in court did not lack courage, but tact. He neither attempted to extenuate nor to deny his guilt, but he was so incensed against Field, who had “peached.” that he devoted the whole of his stuttering speech to exposing him as an old offender and seducer of unwary boys. At the second trial, necessary to prove the identity of the recaptured man, we catch a glimpse of the Ogre, who was in the habit of strangling boys and girls for small thefts, in its most repulsive aspect—when its voice takes on the tones ofan admonishing parent, only cruel to be kind. Mr Justice Powys, before rejecting Jack Sheppard’s petition, spoke of him as the most brutal I ruffian in the land, whose various escapes had magnified his offences and hardened the hearts of right-thinking men against him. Westminster Hall had not. been so crowded since the trial of the Seven Bishops, for this was the story with which London was ringing.

.SHEPPARD’S PRISON-BREAKING. The escape from the Round House was nothing remarkable, although ii was a. good joke that Jack Sheppard after punching a hole in the roof should have joined the crowd below and directed attention to an imaginarj fugitive; but that from Clerkenwell was a feat. His only implements were a couple of gimlets, with which In succeeded in perforating an oak beam nine inches thick till he could snap it, and lower through the window his "doxy,” Edgworth Bess. She was a hotly Amazon ; it is more surprising that he should have also hauled her up and over the high door of the prisonvard. His first escape from Now-gate, too, in which she was an accomplice, was more an exploit of audacity than energy. While the jailers were chuting at the end of the long corridor, shoppard succeeded in breaking one jf the spikes of the grill through ivliicb he had been conversing with lis friends. Bess received him in her irms and slipped u nightgown over lim. (They were hidden from the ‘yes of the jailers by a projection in he corridor). After he’was re-cap-ured precautions were taken that he hould not escape again. He was pernanently handcuffed, and his ankles rere not only chained together but astened to a stape in the floor by a

heavy padlock. On the afternon of October 15, 1724, after he had been' removed to the Condemned Hold, he succeeded in slipping his handcuffs and opening the padlock with a nail; then, after twisting the chain between his legs to and 1 tro and exerting his unusual strength, he succeeded in breaking one of the weaker links. Binding the broken chain about his knees with his stockings, he tried to climb the chimney, but six feet up he encountered an iron bar. 1

In order to get at this he had to batter a hole in the wall with the padlock. This bar proved an all-impor-tant instrument. From the chimney he had no difficulty in making a hole with it in the floor of the room above. This was an unoccupied room, the door of which had not been opened for seven years. By this time the sun had set. He succeeded in battering the box of the lock sufficiently to allow him to use his fingers in turning it, and found himself faced with the door into the chapel. To his consternation this door had neither lock nor keyhole; it was bolted on the other side. Ho succeeded, however, in punching a hole in the wall large enough to allow bis hand to pass through and pull the bolt. But a stouter door, that which led out at the other end of the chapel, was still in front of him.

After half-an-hour’s toiling away in the dark, using bar, spike, and nail in turn, he succeeded in prising open the box of the lock, when at the end of a passage he was stopped by the most formidable obstacle of all. This door was secured by a huge lock-box. tugger and stronger than any of the others. It was bound with iron; a thick bolt was maintained' by a great padlock, while a broad iron filet reaching from top to bottom overlapped the side on which the bolts were shot. “As his fingers revealed these obstacles to him one by one, it seemed to him that there was little hope of overcoming them.” But the clock of St. Sepulchre’s happened to strike eight, which reminded him how much he had accomplished' in five curs, and his pluck came back.

EXECUTION AT TYBURN. He started to attack the filet. It was a piece of metal seven feet high, seven inches broad, and two inches thick. For a long time it resisted. At last, by using the bar as a lever at the bottom, lie wrenched it from the doorpost; lock, bands, bolts and padlock came r.way with it. It was an extraordinary foal of strength, all the more remarklie for being performed in pitch ; arkness. The last door of all was ! olted on the inside; he was on the .■ado I

Ihe march to Tyburn on the day of is execution. November 16, was atched by an enormous concourse of ccplc. To the last he kept up his . pints; even the lugubrious chantoutide his cell at midnight: - 0,1 prisoners that are within iter wickedness and sin. tier many mercies shown, on are appointed to die on the morrow-,” ■ id not damp them. Dressed in a neat lit of black, thin lor the season, he cas thankful for the pint of warm] ick which the prize-fighter, Figg, l anded up to him in the cart. A re- ; mtei records that “his behaviour was i odost. but his concern seemed less I ian could be expected from one under such fatal circumstances,” till he saw the Triple Tree, “when his counten-

ance changed and he appeared very restless and uneasy.” He hoped for rescue till the last. He w-as, as was not unusual, a quarter of an hour choking and wriggling at the end of the rope. When he w-as cut down the crowd made a rush for his body. They were resolved he should never suffer the indignity of being cut up by surgeons, and with that object smashed up the hearse his friend’s had provided to carry him off and resuscitate him. The little body in black, with its torn ami swollen neck, was tossed for a while upon a sea. of hands and shoulders, and then disappeared. He was afterwards buried in the churchyard of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Of all these events you can read in this admirably edited book.