On the next day he hired a garret in Newport Market, and soon afterwards, dressing himself like a porter, he went to Blackfriars, to the house of Mr. Applebee, printer of the dying speeches, and delivered a letter, in which he ridiculed the printer and the Ordinary of Newgate, and inclosed a communication for one of the keepers of the gaol.
Some nights after this he broke open the shop of Mr. Rawlins, a pawnbroker, in Drury Lane, where he stole a sword, a suit of wearing apparel, some snuff-boxes, rings, watches, and other effects to a considerable amount; and determining to make the appearance of a gentleman among his old acquaintance in Drury Lane and Clare Market, he dressed himself in a suit of black and a tie-wig, wore a ruffled shirt, a silver-hilted sword, a diamond ring, and a gold watch, and joined them at supper, though he knew that diligent search was making after him at that very time. On the 31st of October he dined with two women at a public-house in Newgate-street, and about four in the afternoon they all passed under Newgate in a hackney-coach, having first drawn up the blinds. Going in the evening to a public-house in Maypole Alley, Clare Market, Sheppard sent for his mother, and treated her with brandy, when the poor woman dropped on her knees, and begged that he would immediately retire from the kingdom. He promised to do so; but now being grown mad from the effects of the liquor he had drunk, he wandered about from public-house to public-house in the neighbourhood till near twelve o’clock at night, when he was apprehended in consequence of the information of an ale-house boy, who knew him. When taken into custody he was quite senseless, and was conveyed to Newgate in a coach, without being capable of making any resistance, although he had two loaded pistols in his possession at the time. He was now lodged securely enough; and his fame being increased by his recent exploits, he was visited by many persons of distinction, whom he diverted by a recital of the particulars of many robberies in which he had been concerned, but he invariably concluded his narration by expressing a hope that his visitors would endeavour to procure the exercise of the royal mercy in his behalf, to which he considered that his remarkable dexterity gave him some claim.
Having been already convicted, it was unnecessary that the forms of a trial should be again gone through, and on the 10th of November he was carried to the bar of the Court of King’s Bench; when a record of his conviction having been read, and an affidavit made that he was the same person alluded to in it, sentence of death was passed upon him by Mr. Justice Powis, and a rule of court was made for his execution on the following Monday. He subsequently regularly attended chapel in the gaol, and behaved there with apparent decency, but on his quitting its walls, he did not hesitate to endeavour to prevent any seriousness among his fellow prisoners. All his hopes were still fixed upon his being pardoned, and even when the day of execution arrived, he did not appear to have given over all expectations of eluding justice; for having been furnished with a penknife, he put it in his pocket, with a view, when the melancholy procession came opposite Little Turnstile, to have cut the cord that bound his arms, and, throwing himself out of the cart among the crowd, to have run through the narrow passage where the sheriff’s officers could not follow on horseback, and he had no doubt but he should make his escape by the assistance of the mob. It was not impossible that this scheme might have succeeded; but before Sheppard left the press-yard, one Watson, an officer, searching his pockets, found the knife, and was cut with it so as to occasion a great effusion of blood. He, however, had yet a farther view to his preservation even after execution; for he desired his acquaintance to put him into a warm bed as soon as he should be cut down, and to try to open a vein, which he had been told would restore him to life.
He behaved with great decency at the place of execution, and confessed that he had committed two robberies, for which he had been tried, but had been acquitted. His execution took place at Tyburn, on the 16th of November, 1724, in the twenty-third year of his age. He died with difficulty; and there were not wanting those among the crowd assembled, who pitied him for the fate which befel him at so early a period of his life. When he was cut down, his body was delivered over to his friends, who carried it to a public-house in Long Acre; from which it was removed in the evening, and buried in the church-yard of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields.
The adventures of this notorious offender excited more attention than those of many of our most celebrated warriors. He was, for a considerable time, the principal subject of conversation in all ranks of society. Histories of his life issued from the press in a variety of forms. A pantomimic entertainment was brought forward at Drury-lane theatre, called “Harlequin Sheppard,” wherein his adventures, prison-breakings, and other extraordinary escapes, were represented; and another dramatic work was published, as a farce of three acts, called “The Prison-Breaker;” or, “The Adventures of John Sheppard;” and a part of it, with songs, catches, and glees added, was performed at Bartholomew Fair, under the title of “The Quaker’s Opera.”
The arts too, were busied in handing to posterity memoranda for us never to follow the example of Jack Sheppard.
Sir James Thornhill[2], the first painter of the day, painted his portrait, from which engravings in mezzotinto were made; and the few still in preservation are objects of curiosity. On this subject the following lines were written at the time:—
“Thornhill, ’tis thine to gild with fame
The obscure, and raise the humble name;
To make the form elude the grave,
And Sheppard from oblivion save.
Though life in vain the wretch implores,
An exile on the farthest shores,
Thy pencil brings a kind reprieve,
And bids the dying robber live.
This piece to latest time shall stand,
And show the wonders of thy hand:
Thus former masters graced their name,
And gave egregious robbers fame.
Apelles Alexander drew,
Cæsar is to Aurelius due;
Cromwell in Lily’s works doth shine,
And Sheppard, Thornhill, lives in thine.”
In modern times, the adventures of Sheppard and his contemporaries have become even better known and more remarked, in consequence of the work to which we have already alluded, and from which we have made an extract which details his exploits with great exactness; but at the same time gives to them a degree of romantic interest to which they are hardly entitled. The rage for house-breakers has become immense, and the fortunes of the most notorious and the most successful of thieves have been made the subject of entertainments at no fewer than six of the London theatres.
Blewitt, whose name is mentioned in the foregoing sketch, as one of the earliest companions of Sheppard, was eventually hanged, with others, for the murder of a fellow named Ball, a publican and ex-thief, who lived in the Mint, and who had provoked the anger of his murderers, by threatening to denounce them. Their execution took place on the 12th of April, 1726.
JONATHAN WILD.
EXECUTED FOR FELONIOUSLY CONNIVING WITH THIEVES.
THE name of this most notorious offender must be familiar to all; his arts and practices are scarcely less universally known. The power exercised by him over thieves of all classes, and of both sexes, was so great as that he may have been considered their chief and director, at the same time that he did not disdain to become their coadjutor, or the participator in the proceeds of their villany. The system which he pursued will be sufficiently disclosed in the notices which follow of the various transactions in which he was engaged; but it appears to have been founded upon the principle of employing a thief so long as his efforts proved profitable,