IT was midnight when Jack Sheppard reached the leads, wearied by his
magical achievement, and still fearful of discovery. The 'jolly pair of
handcuffs,' provided by the thoughtful Governor, lay discarded in his
distant cell; the chains which a few hours since had grappled him to the
floor encumbered the now useless staple. No trace of the ancient slavery
disgraced him save the iron anklets which clung about his legs; though
many a broken wall and shattered lock must serve for evidence of his
prowess on the morrow. The Stone-Jug was all be-chipped and shattered.
From the castle he had forced his way through a nine-foot wall into the
Red Room, whose bolts, bars, and hinges he had ruined to gain the Chapel.
The road thence to the roof and to freedom was hindered by three stubborn
iron doors; yet naught stood in the way of Sheppard's genius, and he was
sensible, at last, of the night air chill upon his cheek.
But liberty was not yet: there was still a fall of forty feet, and he must
needs repass the wreckage of his own making to filch the blankets from his
cell. In terror lest he should awaken the Master-Side Debtors, he hastened
back to the roof, lashed the coverlets together, and, as the city clocks
clashed twelve, he dropped noiselessly upon the leads of a turner's house,
built against the prison's outer wall. Behind him Newgate was cut out a
black mass against the sky; at his feet glimmered the garret window of the
turner's house, and behind the winking casement he could see the turner's
servant going to bed. Through her chamber lay the road to glory and Clare
Market, and breathlessly did Sheppard watch till the candle should be
extinguished and the maid silenced in sleep. In his anxiety he must tarry—tarry;
and for a weary hour he kicked his heels upon the leads, ambition still
too uncertain for quietude. Yet he could not but catch a solace from his
splendid craft. Said he to himself: 'Am I not the most accomplished
slip-string the world has known? The broken wall of every round house in
town attests my bravery. Light-limbed though I be, have I not forced the
impregnable Castle itself? And my enemies—are they not to-day
writhing in distress ? The head of Blueskin, that pitiful thief, quivers
in the noose; and Jonathan Wild bleeds at the throat from the dregs of a
coward's courage. What a triumph shall be mine when the Keeper finds the
stronghold tenantless!'
Now, unnumbered were the affronts he had suffered from the Keeper's
impertinence, and he chuckled aloud at his own witty rejoinder. Only two
days since the Gaoler had caught him tampering with his irons. 'Young
man,' he had said, 'I see what you have been doing, but the affair betwixt
us stands thus: It is your business to make your escape, and mine to take
care you shall not.' Jack had answered coolly enough: 'Then let's both
mind our own business.' And it was to some purpose that he had minded his.
The letter to his baffled guardian, already sketched in his mind, tickled
him afresh, when suddenly he leaps to his feet and begins to force the
garret window.
The turner's maid was a heavy sleeper, and Sheppard crept from her garret
to the twisted stair in peace. Once, on a lower floor, his heart beat
faster at the trumpetings of the turner's nose, but he knew no check until
he reached the street door. The bolt was withdrawn in an instant, but the
lock was turned, and the key nowhere to be found. However, though the risk
of disturbance was greater than in Newgate, the task was light enough: and
with an iron link from his fetter, and a rusty nail which had served him
bravely, the box was wrenched off in a trice, and Sheppard stood
unattended in the Old Bailey. At first he was minded to make for his
ancient haunts, or to conceal himself within the Liberty of Westminster;
but the fetter-locks were still upon his legs, and he knew that detection
would be easy as long as he was thus embarrassed. Wherefore, weary and
an-hungered, he turned his steps northward, and never rested until he had
gained Finchley Common.
At break of day, when the world re-awoke from the fear of thieves, he
feigned a limp at a cottage door, and borrowed a hammer to straighten a
pinching shoe. Five minutes behind a hedge, and his anklets had dropped
from him; and, thus a free man, he took to the high road. After all he was
persuaded to desert London and to escape a while from the sturdy embrace
of Edgworth Bess. Moreover, if Bess herself were in the lock-up, he still
feared the interested affection of Mistress Maggot, that other doxy, whose
avarice would surely drive him upon a dangerous enterprise; so he struck
across country, and kept starvation from him by petty theft. Up and down
England he wandered in solitary insolence. Once, saith rumour, his lithe
apparition startled the peace of Nottingham; once, he was wellnigh caught
begging wort at a brew-house in Thames Street. But he might as well have
lingered in Newgate as waste his opportunity far from the delights of
Town; the old lust of life still impelled him, and a week after the
hue-and-cry was raised he crept at dead of night down Drury Lane. Here he
found harbourage with a friendly fence, Wild's mortal enemy, who promised
him a safe conduct across the seas. But the desire of work proved too
strong for prudence; and in a fortnight he had planned an attack on the
pawnshop of one Rawling, at the Four Balls in Drury Lane.
Sheppard, whom no house ever built with hands was strong enough to hold,
was better skilled at breaking out than at breaking in, and it is
remarkable that his last feat in the cracking of cribs was also his
greatest. Its very conception was a masterpiece of effrontery. Drury Lane
was the thief-catcher's chosen territory; yet it was the Four Balls that
Jack designed for attack, and watches, tie-wigs, snuff-boxes were among
his booty. Whatever he could not crowd upon his person he presented to a
brace of women. Tricked out in his stolen finery, he drank and swaggered
in Clare Market. He was dressed in a superb suit of black; a diamond
fawney flashed upon his finger; his light tie-periwig was worth no less
than seven pounds; pistols, tortoise-shell snuff-boxes, and golden guineas
jostled one another in his pockets.
Thus, in brazen magnificence, he marched down Drury Lane on a certain
Saturday night in November 1724. Towards midnight he visited Thomas Nicks,
the butcher, and having bargained for three ribs of beef, carried Nicks
with him to a chandler's hard by, that they might ratify the bargain with
a dram. Unhappily, a boy from the 'Rose and Crown' sounded the alarm; for
coming into the chandler's for the empty ale-pots, he instantly recognised
the incomparable gaol-thief, and lost no time in acquainting his master.
Now, Mr. Bradford, of the 'Rose and Crown,' was a head-borough, who, with
the zeal of a triumphant Dogberry, summoned the watch, and in less than
half an hour Jack Sheppard was screaming blasphemies in a hackney-cab on
his way home to Newgate.
The Stone-Jug received him with deference and admiration. Three hundred
pounds weight of irons were put upon him for an adornment, and the
Governor professed so keen a solicitude for his welfare that he never left
him unattended. There was scarce a beautiful woman in London who did not
solace him with her condescension, and enrich him with her gifts. Not only
did the President of the Royal Academy deign to paint his portrait, but (a
far greater honour) Hogarth made him immortal. Even the King displayed a
proper interest, demanding a full and precise account of his escapes. The
hero himself was drunk with flattery; he bubbled with ribaldry; he touched
off the most valiant of his contemporaries in a ludicrous phrase. But his
chief delight was to illustrate his prowess to his distinguished visitors,
and nothing pleased him better than to slip in and out of his chains.
Confronted with his judge, he forthwith proposed to rid himself of his
handcuffs, and he preserved until the fatal tree an illimitable pride in
his artistry. Nor would he believe in the possibility of death. To the
very last he was confirmed in the hope of pardon; but, pardon failing him,
his single consolation was that his procession from Westminster to Newgate
was the largest that London had ever known, and that in the crowd a
constable broke his leg. Even in the Condemned Hole he was unreconciled.
If he had broken the Castle, why should he not also evade the gallows?
Wherefore he resolved to carry a knife to Tyburn that he might cut the
rope, and so, losing himself in the crowd, ensure escape. But the knife
was discovered by his warder's vigilance, and taken from him after a
desperate struggle. At the scaffold he behaved with admirable gravity:
confessing the wickeder of his robberies, and asking pardon for his
enormous crimes. 'Of two virtues,' he boasted at the self-same moment that
the cart left him dancing without the music, 'I have ever cherished an
honest pride: never have I stooped to friendship with Jonathan Wild, or
with any of his detestable thief-takers; and, though an undutiful son, I
never damned my mother's eyes.'
Thus died Jack Sheppard; intrepid burglar and incomparable artist, who, in
his own separate ambition of prison-breaking, remains, and will ever
remain, unrivalled. His most brilliant efforts were the result neither of
strength nor of cunning; for so slight was he of build, so deficient in
muscle, that both Edgworth Bess and Mistress Maggot were wont to bang him
to their own mind and purpose. And an escape so magnificently planned, so
bravely executed as was his from the Strong Room, is far greater than a
mere effect of cunning. Those mysterious gifts which enable mankind to
batter the stone walls of a prison, or to bend the iron bars of a cage,
were pre-eminently his. It is also certain that he could not have employed
his gifts in a more reputable profession.
