Georgian London's Celebrity Criminal

What is it about a ‘bad boy’ that we love? That’s as true today as it was in the 18th century. In this episode of After Dark, Anthony and Maddy unravel the extraordinary rise, daring escapes, and final end of Jack Sheppard- the thief who became history's first celebrity criminal... This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. Produced by Tomos Delargy and McKenna Fernandez. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. UK listeners: voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. After Dark is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hello After Darkers. Now brace yourselves for a public service announcement.

• 0:04Anthony Delaney?

  History Hit, the production company behind After Dark, also makes documentaries. And I'm talking beautifully shot, fantastically told, immersive histories on screen. There's hundreds and hundreds available to watch right now, online at historyhit.com with a new release each week.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  There's a lot to digest there, but guys, take a deep breath because there is more. Anthony and I have made two new History Hit TV documentaries. I have recently made one about London's most notorious haunting, the Cock Lane Ghost, based on my new book Hoax that is releasing for Halloween.

• 0:36Anthony Delaney?

  And I've got one following that about the Great Irish Famine, which is coming soon.

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• 0:51Speaker 00

  Jack Sheppard, a common thief, became forever immortalised by his legendary escapes from Georgian London's highest security prisons. Sheppard repeatedly escaped the clutches of justice and turned every prison break into headline news. Crowds cheered him, newspapers followed his every move, and his story blurred the line between outlaw and celebrity. But how did a criminal become a national hero in life and a legend of folklore in death? From Georgian London's criminal underworld, welcome to After Dark.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie.

• 1:56Anthony Delaney?

  And I'm Anthony.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  And Anthony's still...

• 1:59Anthony Delaney?

  And it's me now that's going to talk.

• 2:03Anthony Delaney?

  My notes say, everybody loves a bad boy, but I don't. Do you?

• 2:08Speaker 00

  Not particularly. I've grown out of that now. I'm too grown up.

• 2:12Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah. No, I just, I was like, does anybody really have the energy for that? Like, read it in fiction, that's fine.

• 2:19Speaker 00

  Listen to a Taylor Swift album if you want to hear about a bad boy.

• 2:22Anthony Delaney?

  Is that, does she think about, she thinks about bad boys, does she?

• 2:25Speaker 00

  Oh my god. You need a Swiftie education. I've actually gone off of so much since the wedding.

• 2:29Anthony Delaney?

  Have you? Oh, yeah.

• 2:31Speaker 00

  Tacky.

• 2:31Anthony Delaney?

  I did think about you at that, actually, yeah. About how you're feeling about that.

• 2:34Speaker 00

  I had a lot of unsolicited texts from friends about, was I okay during this time?

• 2:39Anthony Delaney?

  I know. I just saw news coverage of it being like, oh, somebody that was doing detention centres for ICE was at the wedding and all this kind of thing.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I think she built supposedly like a castle. I don't want to sound quite like she's here, she's not going to hear. She built a castle inside Madison Square Garden. I mean, that's just sad. Buy a castle if you want one.

• 2:59Anthony Delaney?

  Can I tell you what? Yeah, because she could go to any castle in the world, you can do it. One of the things that, I love music doc, okay, we are going to do a history podcast in any minute now.

• 3:07Speaker 00

  But also a history podcast about celebrities, so this is relevant. Carry on.

• 3:10Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, there you go. She, well done. She, I saw the documentary, I love a music documentary. Even if I don't listen to the music or know anything about those people. And so I watched her one.

• 3:19Speaker 00

  See, I hate that, but I have watched it, yeah.

• 3:21Anthony Delaney?

  Do you? But no, and I went, god, you know, she was distributing wealth amongst the crew. And I was like, maybe I've been a little bit harsh. And I was like, well, maybe it was just that I don't like the music, but I quite like the person. And then this all happened. I just don't know.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  I think there's an issue of being frozen in teenage years. That's a problem.

• 3:37Anthony Delaney?

  I don't know enough, but I'll trust you.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  Like, let's hope this doesn't find the Swifties because this YouTube video will absolutely explode.

• 3:44Anthony Delaney?

  It's fine. It'll make the episode go viral because they'll, they'll watch it.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  Anyway, if you have come for the Swiftie bashing, please stay for the history. In this episode, we're talking about an 18th century celebrity, someone who was celebrated not for his musical output, but for his criminality and also his particular talent for escaping.

• 4:08Anthony Delaney?

  Can I just say that there is a book called The Confessions of the Fox? And it's about the person that we're going to talk about. I might as well, I don't know why we're here holding back.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  Is it?

• 4:15Anthony Delaney?

  Jack Sheppard, we're talking about Jack Sheppard, 18th century thief and person.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Now, is this a recent novel? Because on the tube on the way in, I was going over my notes for this, thinking about my research. And I was thinking, I want to write a historical fiction about Jack Sheppard. His life's so incredible, but you tell me it already exists.

• 4:30Anthony Delaney?

  It exists, but it's a very specific take. It's that Jack Sheppard was a trans man. And it really works in the context. You might be thinking, what? How is this going to work?

• 4:38Speaker 00

  I think that's very interesting.

• 4:39Anthony Delaney?

  It really, really works in the context. And it's, it's really good. It's smart.

• 4:45Speaker 00

  Okay, I'm ordering this as soon as we're done with this episode.

• 4:48Anthony Delaney?

  But we're in the 18th century at least, so we're on home ground.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  Never heard of it.

• 4:50Anthony Delaney?

  No, I know. Do you know what? I'm not working in the 18th century at the minute, so, and you're about to not work on the 18th century.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  I know, we're both betrayed iron true loves. We've gone to opposite ends of the spectrum, though.

• 5:01Anthony Delaney?

  I've gone earlier, you've gone later.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, and just later, I mean, I'm...

• 5:04Anthony Delaney?

  And I've just only just gone earlier, so we're still hovering around the edges.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  And I would consider everyone I'm writing about in the 19th century to be 18th century people anyway, so.

• 5:12Anthony Delaney?

  So we're still, okay, fine. We love the 18th century music.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  We're in the really long 18th century. It's getting longer all the time, guys. Do you want a bit of context?

• 5:17Anthony Delaney?

  Go on, sure, you might as well, yeah.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  Probably should. Okay, so we're talking about Jack Sheppard. This is a story that takes place in the 18th century, in London specifically. There are places that you're going to recognise in this story. Newgate Prison, ever heard of it?

• 5:29Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 5:30Speaker 00

  Clerkenwell, Spitalfields, grimy, busy, delicious places. If you have read my book or listened to the episodes we did on the Cock Lane Ghost, Spitalfields plays a massive role and hopefully that will give you some kind of sense of the, just the incredible atmosphere in this place. You know, this is somewhere that has a yearly fair, that has a meat market, there's blood running in the street. There are these sort of medieval windy passageways and roads and these sort of tenement buildings coming up. And there's very sort of fluid society in this part of London. People are renting rooms. You can slip in and out of different identities and there is a lot of crime going on.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  We are largely in 1724, which I feel like is more your territory. You're better on the early part of the 18th century. I mean, if it didn't happen, so 1760 onwards, I like. Yeah, I mean, really 1780. I would, I would pick the 1780s if I had to time travel, or maybe about 1815. But you're, you're comfortable with this. So we have Queen Anne on the throne, 1702 to 1714. And then we have...

• 6:34Anthony Delaney?

  She's not, though, on this history if it's 1724.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  No, I'm just, very true.

• 6:40Anthony Delaney?

  You're setting it up, yeah.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  I'm getting there, god. And then we have George the First in 1714 until 1727. So he's on the throne during this history. Thank you very much.

• 6:49Anthony Delaney?

  Anne has nothing got to do with this.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  She's got nothing to do with this whatsoever. Well, I mean, he's sort of the head of the state.

• 6:55Anthony Delaney?

  I do. Everyone has this reaction. Everyone has this reaction to Anne. I'm going to try and rehabilitate her. Over the course of my career, it's not going to happen in this next book, but I'm going to try and rehabilitate her.

• 7:03Speaker 00

  I just see Olivia Colman. I can't be bothered. It's, look, it's a good film.

• 7:07Anthony Delaney?

  I think she's a really good politician and I think she's been, I think she's been overlooked. Oh god, we're not here to talk about Anne, sorry.

• 7:14Speaker 00

  Anne or Olivia?

• 7:15Anthony Delaney?

  Anne and Olivia.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  Vote for Olivia Colman for PM now. I mean, sure, we've had so many Primus to shoot her on.

• 7:22Anthony Delaney?

  She'll be there next year.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  Crime in this moment, Anthony Delaney, is on the rise. Did you know that?

• 7:27Anthony Delaney?

  Yes, it is. And, and there is an equally moralistic pushback that's happening at the same time where people are like, we need to reform this society. And the society for the reformation of manners is trying to get rid of all that vice from London society particularly.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's London in particular, isn't it? People are moving into the city, you know, the urban population's growing. And there are, it's a sort of industry, I suppose, that builds up in terms of dobbling people in for crimes, right? Thinking about the thief takers. And these are going to be important characters in our story. This idea that there's kind of, you know, there's no police force as such, but there are watchmen who patrol at night. And, you know, if you come across a crime or you're being stabbed to death in an alleyway, you shout for the watchmen and hope that they turn up. But also there are these people called thief takers who are more often than not actually criminals themselves and connected with the underworld. They will kind of identify people who are committing crimes, dob them into the authorities and literally take them, drag them into a prison cell for a price.

• 8:26Speaker 00

  So this is a system that's very open to corruption.

• 8:28Anthony Delaney?

  I always think in this period of time that the boundaries of, I don't want to say policing very specifically because there is no police force, but the boundaries of law enforcement, shall we say, are very porous in terms of the world of criminality. And even those people who are the morally supposedly upright and who are actually just boring old shites, they are using the criminal underclass to infiltrate these spaces, to get close to these people so that they can take them down. So, you know, it's a porous situation.

• 8:59Speaker 00

  And also, crime isn't like, you know, a society now where you sort of think of crime as something that's happening, you know, if you're lucky, somewhere else over there. It's not something you're involved in. You don't witness it, you don't know that much about it, you don't know anyone who does it, et cetera. And I think in this moment, you know, what crime is, what is categorised as a crime, and we'll talk about the Bloody Code in a minute, can be a whole spectrum of things and it permeates all of life. And a lot of people who, you know, by our modern sense, we wouldn't consider to be criminals, are brought before the courts and punished in some way for activities and actions that they've done. The other thing to mention in this period, which is really important to our story, is the booming print media. And I'm kind of bored of saying this about the 18th century because if you hear any 18th century historian talk, us included,

• 9:44Speaker 00

  everyone's always like, oh, print media is booming, you know, it's something that we're just constantly going on about. But it is so important to this story, this idea of the rise of celebrity, that newspapers, pamphlets, ballads, printed images are appearing on the street, are being exchanged in taverns, sold on street corners, you know, sold in new bookshops, all of this. And so stories, stories, both fiction and real, about people living now as well as in the past, are just being circulated like never before. And so when people become notorious in the media... They can be put on a pedestal and they become almost mythic because everyone, almost for the first time in society, everyone in that reading society knows who they are and

• 10:27Speaker 00

  supposedly what they've done. And, you know, we'll talk later about the sort of, um, the distance between reported fact and, you know, the fictions that are circulated about, about people and about Jack Shepherd in particular. The Bloody Code, we should probably cover this.

• 10:41Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah. So tell me about this. This is almost like honor amongst criminals in its own way, because it's, it's, again, if it's back into this porous thing, there is a code rather than necessarily laws. There are laws, but it's not necessarily governing. Anyway, bloody code, go. That's hard to say.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  Okay. So this basically refers to a list of supposed crimes and offences that could be punished by death specifically. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask you to guess how many crimes. For anyone who follows Anthony on Instagram, he did a, um, a video, was it yesterday about how much you hate when people make you guess things. Um, guess, Anthony Delaney, if you will, uh, how many crimes were listed in the so-called bloody code that for which you should be killed?

• 11:28Anthony Delaney?

  No, I'm not going to guess because how, I, how long is a piece of string? 10, 12? I don't know. Like,

• 11:36Speaker 00

  Well, you might be surprised to know that. The answer is 200, 200 crimes. These included stealing things, which

• 11:44Anthony Delaney?

  Fair. Well, no, not for death. Not for death. No, sorry, sorry, sorry.

• 11:47Speaker 00

  But like, at least that is a crime, right? Like, that is a crime. Um, poaching.

• 11:52Anthony Delaney?

  Sodommy.

• 11:53Speaker 00

  Yes. I mean, yes. Cutting down trees.

• 11:58Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah. Well, climate change.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. Environmental. Um, oh my God. Have you just listened to, um, just talking of environmental crimes against nature? The BBC have just done a podcast called Dead Rabbit about, um, hair coursing, which is a massive, just talking about poaching and stuff. It's a huge, huge crime taking place in the British countryside at the moment that nobody seems to know about. It's absolutely insane. Like, it's a crazy underworld.

• 12:20Anthony Delaney?

  Well, I don't know anything about that.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  I have consumed this podcast, so go listen.

• 12:24Anthony Delaney?

  What you're saying is they should all be executed.

• 12:26Speaker 00

  Um, I am not going to answer that, but I'm just gonna leave that hanging because I think it's really, really serious and these people are terrible. Um, but no, let's, let's move on. A lot of people who were sentenced to death, though, did not actually get killed. And I think this is important. You know, we've, we've spoken a lot on this podcast about execution days and we will be talking about that again in this episode. This idea of the sort of the circus, that hundreds, if not thousands of people would turn up to see people get hanged, that there'd be, you know, ballads singers singing about the deeds of these people on the scaffold. At Newgate, the bell, the execution bell was rung the night before. There'd be people lining the procession route from the prison to the place of execution. But of course, I mean, if you've got 200 crimes that people can be arrested for, including

• 13:09Speaker 00

  cutting down trees, you haven't got the time, the energy, the manpower to be executing that many people. So a lot of people were transported now at this point in the early 18th century. It is not transportation to Australia, as you might expect, uh, which kind of started up around 1780s, the best decade, not because people got transported to Australia, just to clarify. Uh, but it's dead to America, to the Americas. So a, a kind of really intense, dangerous time. If you are not living at the elite level of society and you are poor, you are hungry, you are going without certain basic needs and, you know, not even luxuries, things like bread, then you can find yourself at the mercy of the bloody code. And it's a pretty brutal time.

• 13:52Anthony Delaney?

  Which brings us then to the, the main man himself, the guy who does find himself at the mercy of these things, Jack Shepherd, or to give him his full title, Jackery Shepperson. That's not true. Don't, don't ever call him that. That's not his name. It's Jack Shepherd. Let's talk about what we know about his background before we, he becomes the celebrity that he becomes.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  Hmm. Okay. So it is kind of hard to access the reality of him because, as you say, he is elevated to this position of being a celebrity and kind of becomes a myth. So a lot of what we know from a young age is very much, you know, like, oh, well, he did this from a young age because we know what happens later, kind of thing. But here are the, the Fairfax maybe. Um, he's born in 1702, around about then, in Spitalfields. So again, we're talking about this kind of buzzing, heavily populated, growing, strange, grimy part of London. His father dies when he's young and it drives his family into poverty. So, you know, Jack is someone who is living really on the edge of society. I mean, kind

• 14:57Speaker 00

  of on the edge of London, right? At this time, like Spitalfields is quite far out on, you sort of, you know, he's very much on the outside looking in, um, in terms of society, in terms of the capital city, all of that. Um, he's described in his appearance, once he's grown to adulthood, as being only five foot four.

• 15:14Anthony Delaney?

  Hmm.

• 15:15Speaker 00

  Um, how tall are you?

• 15:16Anthony Delaney?

  I'm six foot, exactly.

• 15:18Speaker 00

  Are you?

• 15:18Anthony Delaney?

  Me and Jesus.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  You and Jesus.

• 15:20Anthony Delaney?

  Apparently we're the only two, according to my grandfather, who's now dead, me and Jesus were the only two people that were exactly six foot.

• 15:28Anthony Delaney?

  Um, and you wonder where I get my complex from, when I'm compared to Jesus as I grow up.

• 15:33Speaker 00

  Wow. Um, so five foot four, you know, it's, it's, it's not huge. I mean,

• 15:37Anthony Delaney?

  No.

• 15:38Speaker 00

  Short king.

• 15:39Anthony Delaney?

  And I also think, I also think that's where, um, the author of Confessions of a Fox started to put together this idea that potentially

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Yes. So not only is he five foot four, but he is described as being slim, very physically fit and very agile and sort of slight. And that's going to come in handy in his career as both a criminal and an escape artist. Um, he's described as being charming. He's confident. His wit, he's very charismatic. Um, he is apprenticed to a carpenter as a teenager.

• 16:09Anthony Delaney?

  Good trade here, the potential for a good trade.

• 16:11Speaker 00

  You know, his father's died. He's been cast into poverty and then he gets this apprenticeship. In terms of an 18th century story, that's a success story for someone in his class. Like, you have secured yourself a skill, a trade. Um, as a, a young person, as an apprentice, you're living in the carpenter's house. You've got accommodation, uh, an income or, you know, you're being fed, taught, roof over your head, all of that. Doesn't stick with it.

• 16:33Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah. Cause else he's not gonna end up in, you're not gonna end up in prison for being a carpenter's apprentice. That's

• 16:40Speaker 00

  Well, look what happened to Jesus. Dun, dun, duh.

• 16:44Anthony Delaney?

  Everything comes back to Jesus. I'm not allowed to talk about Jesus on this podcast anymore.

• 16:47Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. No, I've seen the comments. Um, well, apparently I'm the only person to have ever had a baby and need to get over it. So we see them, guys. We see them. Um, oh God. Okay. So he, he is an apprentice. He's not going to stick at it and he's going to slip into the criminal underworld that isn't really an underworld. It's everywhere. How does he do this, you ask? He spends a lot of time in the pub. That is how you become a criminal, obviously. Uh, specifically the Black Lion just off Drury Lane. Um, what's your favourite historic London pub?

• 17:20Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, I actually have an answer for this. Like, what is she going to ask me? Um, this is my easy time, Maddie, where you tell all the history and I just sit back and ask some questions.

• 17:29Speaker 00

  Today.

• 17:30Anthony Delaney?

  Um, so mine is the Nell on Drury Lane. Because when I was working in the West End for my twenties and early thirties, we'd always go to the Nell.

• 17:39Speaker 00

  Not only is she, uh, Jesus, she's been in the West End, darling.

• 17:42Anthony Delaney?

  And, uh, so we'd go to the Nell on a Saturday night.

• 17:46Speaker 00

  Is that named after Nell Gwynn?

• 17:47Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah. And it just stops at Drury Lane and, uh, the theatre and we'd drink there and then we'd head out. Do you know what? It's great. Cause like, if you're reading Hallie's Covent Garden Ladies, or you're reading some of these things and you're just like, oh, Covent Garden sounds like such a vibrant-y thing. I actually have like, okay, it's a very 21st century experience of it, but like a bit of a thing. So we'd go for a drink in the Nell and then we'd go out and spill out onto the streets in Covent Garden and then we'd just sit on the closed, um, thingy of Drury Lane Theatre and just drink rosé out of a plastic cup. And that was my twenties and I wouldn't change it for the world. It was great.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  I love how you didn't want to answer this question and you've just given

• 18:22Anthony Delaney?

  Ah, yeah. Well, no, I didn't know what the question was gonna be. I was like, don't make me think. And, but that I have an actual thing of.

• 18:28Speaker 00

  So imagine Jack Shepherd doing the same in, in Drury Lane, in fact. It is here talking of Covent Garden Ladies, um, where he meets a woman known as Edgeworth Bess. This is a woman called Elizabeth Lyon. Lots of my ancestors were called Lyon, actually, or Lyons, but I don't think they were in England at this time. She's a sex worker and she's a known criminal. And this, you know, she's someone who would have been not out of place in Covent Garden in this moment. There's a, a healthy sex trade around here and healthy criminality and the two are very much kind of interlinked. She seems to befriend Jack and we don't know the details of their relationship exactly. At one point, she's described as his wife, um, which seems unlikely to me, but there's, there's obviously a companionship

• 19:12Speaker 00

  of some sort or a collaboration going on.

• 19:14Anthony Delaney?

  But probably as well to bear in mind that this is pre 1753 Hardwicke Marriage Act. So the confines of, or the, rather the parameters of what constituted a marriage was much looser, but still official. So they could have just made an, a, an agreement in front of two people and that would mean they were married. So then people leave those marriages all the time. So, you know, it's, there could be a world in which it's real, but I know what you mean. It, it, it feels again, like a very porous, so much of this particular history is actually quite, the edges are very blurred.

• 19:46Speaker 00

  They, they are. Yes. And, you know, this is kind of the nature of, of looking at people in this social class in this particular time period that the records don't exist. And the only reason we often know about these people is because they commit crimes and then appear in the record. Um, and in the case of Jack Shepherd specifically, he has been elevated out of that archival record and put on this kind of mythic pedestal. So, you know, he's a character as much as, as a real kind of historical figure. Um, so it is hard to get to the reality. We know that Elizabeth does introduce him to, let's say, disreputable people. So she's obviously very well connected, whether that's through her work as a, as a sex worker, um, whether it's through, you know, just the, the tavern, the Black Lion, that they're spending time and whatever it is, she's introducing people.

• 20:27Speaker 00

  And he gives up his apprenticeship and it's around now as well that he comes to know a thief taker, known as the Thief Taker General. He's like the big boss.

• 20:38Anthony Delaney?

  Given himself that name.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  Jonathan Wild. Have you come across him?

• 20:41Anthony Delaney?

  No.

• 20:42Speaker 00

  I wrote about him a little bit in my first book and I really think we should do an episode on him because he is, I mean, he's, he's taking the piss big time. He's, he goes around arresting criminals. He is the biggest, he's like a massive crime boss. Um, he is in on everything and he basically takes out his enemies and his competitors by dobbling them in.

• 21:01Anthony Delaney?

  But has given himself that title, right? Or that, that position?

• 21:03Speaker 00

  But the authorities are like, yeah, you were first. And they pay him every time he brings a criminal into them. They're like, thank you very much for your work, Jonathan Wild. And the, the relationship between Jack Shepherd and Jonathan Wild, you know, starts off potentially as a collaborative one, but it's going to become like, The biggest rivalry that London has seen in the criminal underworld. Love that for him.

• 21:24Anthony Delaney?

  So we have, and this is why we mentioned Queen Anna's start, because most, a lot of that history that you just, in terms of his early life, is taking place during her reign. So now that's very clear. I just jumped to conclusions. I'm very sorry. The next thing, though, is we're going to very much concentrate in 1724 now, where these, the, his criminality, Jack's criminality, really starts to put him in that celebrity status, where he gets arrested, he escapes, he gets arrested, he escapes. So what, what, give us an overview, just to begin with. What is the shape of this part of the story in terms of arrests and escapes? Because there's a pattern.

• 21:58Speaker 00

  Okay, so we have five arrests.

• 22:01Anthony Delaney?

  Five arrests.

• 22:01Speaker 00

  And we have a number of escapes, and I'm not going to tell you the number because you might give away the ending. So first arrest.

• 22:08Anthony Delaney?

  Okay.

• 22:09Speaker 00

  Jack starts his criminality, kind of small scale, with some petty theft. I don't think we know what he actually stole.

• 22:18Anthony Delaney?

  Petty theft would be a really good drag name. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the stage. Petty theft. That's good.

• 22:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, take that if you want it. He's arrested in July 1724 for a theft that takes place at Clare Market, which is a London market. And he's taken to St Giles Roundhouse, which is one of the kind of smaller prisons of the, of the city. And how long do you think he spends in there, Anthony Delaney?

• 22:43Anthony Delaney?

  Now, can I just ask a question before you're asking me to guess again, basically?

• 22:46Speaker 00

  But I tried not to word it, but yes, I am.

• 22:49Anthony Delaney?

  Can you, just can I ask a little bit more information before I guess? He escapes, I presume, rather than being let out. He's not released, he escapes. Is that true? I don't know.

• 22:58Speaker 00

  Wait and see. Good God.

• 22:59Anthony Delaney?

  But then I can't really guess. This is the problem with this, because like, if he escapes, he's probably not in there that long. If he's let out, he's probably in there longer.

• 23:08Anthony Delaney?

  12. I'm not even going to say a time period, just 12. Hours, years, days, who knows?

• 23:13Speaker 00

  Okay, so he is in prison for petty theft for a grand total of three hours, during which time, he manages to get up out through the roof and escape. He climbs down the side of the building.

• 23:25Anthony Delaney?

  Okay, yeah.

• 23:26Speaker 00

  And I think this, we're going to come again and again to this. And I think Jack Shepard's story is so interesting, because we think of the London prisons, the big and the small ones, you know, at this point, there's huge things like, like Newgate, but also things like Walco's prison, which was a debtor's prison, and St Giles, you know, kind of smaller operations, which were often, you know, held for people who, you know, had been accused of things in the bloody code, but also debtors who were just being held there until they could pay their debts off. And, you know, we think of these as institutions. This is not in the same way as the Victorians have this idea that going to prison is the punishment in and of itself, right? Like 18th century prisons are kind of holding pens, but there is a sense that they represent state power and control, and that once you're in them,

• 24:07Speaker 00

  you can't leave until you're allowed to leave. And that the fabric of those buildings is watertight, quite literally, that it holds those people in. And what Jack Shepard is going to show again and again is that these are buildings like any other. They're vulnerable to all kinds of manipulation, you know, escapology, finding these little, again, literal cracks, little moments of, of possibility. And it really undermines authority in London, as well as the actual buildings themselves. So, sorry.

• 24:41Anthony Delaney?

  Wait, not that I'm not interested in Jack Shepard, because I am, because we've designated a whole hour to him or whatever. But if I said to you, Jack P. Shepard, does that mean anything to you?

• 24:51Speaker 00

  Is he someone from the First World War?

• 24:53Anthony Delaney?

  No, he's an actor on Coronation Street, and he plays David Platt.

• 24:58Speaker 00

  Oh, yes, yes.

• 24:59Anthony Delaney?

  But imagine being Jack Shepard, and then Jack P. Shepard.

• 25:02Speaker 00

  Quite slight as well.

• 25:03Anthony Delaney?

  He is.

• 25:03Speaker 00

  Oh my God, petition for him to play Jack Shepard.

• 25:06Anthony Delaney?

  Hmm. Jack P. Shepard as other Jack Shepard without the P.

• 25:12Speaker 00

  Casting sorted.

• 25:13Anthony Delaney?

  Yep, thank you. Sorry. Now, so that was the.

• 25:15Speaker 00

  Thank you for that incredibly important suggestion, and genuinely.

• 25:18Anthony Delaney?

  I, I don't think you would have been happy today without.

• 25:21Speaker 00

  I would have thought of that when I got home and thought, I can't believe we didn't mention that. Okay.

• 25:25Anthony Delaney?

  Right, so he's escaped, no, he's been arrested once, escaped after three hours.

• 25:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, so this is certainly unusual, that someone has escaped. But, you know, this is, it's a small prison, it's not that much of a big deal necessarily. He's not been arrested for anything enormous. He draws attention to himself by this. The whispers start, the stories start to circulate. But, you know, one, one three hour stint in prison and an escape through the roof does not a celebrity criminal make.

• 25:55Anthony Delaney?

  Man is the time, I've said that.

• 25:58Speaker 00

  So well known face. Okay, so he needs to be arrested again, doesn't he?

• 26:02Anthony Delaney?

  He does.

• 26:02Speaker 00

  And he is going to be. So later on that year, so we're in July 1724, he's arrested this time with Elizabeth Lyon.

• 26:10Anthony Delaney?

  Okay, yeah.

• 26:10Speaker 00

  From the Black Lion Pub.

• 26:11Anthony Delaney?

  Which isn't even that unusual, that often couples would be taken up for certain things, or it's with sex worker and a, and a call or whatever. So, you know, people are arrested together.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  Watchmen or thief takers, you know, someone's up to no good, and then

• 26:26Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 26:26Speaker 00

  the woman there with is like, hey, leave my alone. They're like, right, you're coming to it. You know, there's not a lot of specificity here. The, the offence this time is supposedly pickpocketing in Leicester Fields, which is now Leicester Square, isn't it? It's the area around there, which is probably still very pickpockety. Well done. This time, he's taken to New Prison in Clerkenwell. So we're kind of like escalating up the chain, I suppose, of prisons.

• 26:52Anthony Delaney?

  Give him a, give him a better holding cell this time, yeah.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  Well, he's not famous enough at this point for them to even think of that.

• 26:59Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, yeah, of course, yeah.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  So Jack and Elizabeth are put into the same cell. They're going to escape again, obviously, this time. So he's gone out the roof.

• 27:07Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 27:08Speaker 00

  Before. Thoughts on how I might escape this time? I'm going to make you guess so much in this episode. What would you do if you were, okay, if you were stuck in this room, what objects are you going to use to escape?

• 27:20Anthony Delaney?

  I'm not going to try.

• 27:21Speaker 00

  You're not going to try.

• 27:22Anthony Delaney?

  Thank you. I love the way you didn't fight me on that.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  I know. Yeah, okay. No, you're not, you're not.

• 27:26Anthony Delaney?

  Okay, but for the sake of the, the, the thing.

• 27:29Speaker 00

  For the sake of the thing being the podcast we are employed to do.

• 27:35Anthony Delaney?

  I, how does he escape? Digs down. If he went up the first time, he's going, oh, you're like, oh, no.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  Okay, correct. I mean, sure, but he's, no, see, he's several floors up, so not an option. Okay, so what, what he does do is he and Elizabeth take the bed sheets off the bed in the prison cell, they tie them together, and they go out the window. I have an image here that I would like you to.

• 27:59Anthony Delaney?

  That's why I've got a picture of somebody letting somebody out the window with a bedsheet.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  The clue was in front of you the entire time. Describe the picture, please.

• 28:06Anthony Delaney?

  Um, okay, it looks, I would say, if I were to, oh, there's the clue, it is later. I was going to say, if I had to guess, this is later than the 1720s, because she is very romanticised, she's got very polite little.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  I love her.

• 28:19Anthony Delaney?

  This is Elizabeth, is that her name? Yeah, Elizabeth Lyon. She's, she's been let down on those bed sheets. She's got very polite, dainty little ankles, and you can just about see her ankles underneath her shifts.

• 28:31Speaker 00

  And she is a sex worker, let's not forget. She has to be sexualised in this image.

• 28:34Anthony Delaney?

  Although the, the clothes that she's wearing are not 1720s clothes, they are far more later century clothing. But she, she, she's, you know, she's very romantically been let down. She's being let down on, on like, kind of spiky things. He's looking.

• 28:50Speaker 00

  Anti-pigeon things.

• 28:51Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, looks like that. He's up in his little half window, and he's looking very gnarled of face, I must say, where she's quite beautiful and.

• 28:59Speaker 00

  Well, to be fair, he is having to lower the entire body weight of a woman out of the window. No, darling, you don't wear anything, it's fine.

• 29:07Anthony Delaney?

  And he's letting her down, and yeah, he's up there. Now, in the background, you can see, like, actually, it's very bucolic, it's not very London-y at all. Or is my eyesight just really bad? No, I see trees and hills. And then obviously, there's a prison that they're being, there's a big wall around the prison, and then it's signed George Crookshank. So this is how I do know that it is later than 1720s.

• 29:27Speaker 00

  So this image is from a novel about Jack Shepard by William Harrison Ainsworth, who, have you ever come across him? I'm obsessed with him. So I have a first edition of this novel, of the Jack Shepard novel.

• 29:37Anthony Delaney?

  Do you actually?

• 29:38Speaker 00

  I do, yeah. So I, I bought it when I wrote my first book, because, so Ainsworth is, is writing in the first half of the 19th century, looking back at the 18th, and he writes a lot about the French Revolution, the Gordon riots, I think he wrote about, he writes this novel about Jack Shepard. He's sort of obsessed with like, a generation or two before, which is really interesting. And I'm always interested in people's perspective on the 18th century as they get sort of further away from it. So he's very much a sort of an early Victorian writer. And George Crookshank worked with him across all of his novels and did these illustrations. And the reason why I bought this first edition was because in the Jack Shepard novel, we know he's going to become a chronol, because in the early illustrations of him, there is graffiti everywhere in the background. And for anyone who hasn't

• 30:23Speaker 00

  read my first book, you'll know it's all about graffiti in the 18th century, and this idea that it was associated early on with criminality. And Jack Shepard, we even see him carving his own name when he's an apprentice into a bit, a bit of wood. So I bought it for the images, really, but it's, it's a stonking good read. I mean, it's, it's stonking. It's, it's sort of ridiculous, you know, but it's worthy of, of Jack Shepard, the myth, not the man necessarily. But, you know, again, we see this, in this image that we're talking about, this kind of, as you say, romanticisation, this idea that Shepard is this sort of unstoppable force, and that he's, he's just on this journey of ridiculous exploits, escaping constantly, and that he sort of can't be, he can't be stopped. And, you know, he's bringing people along for the ride.

• 31:09Anthony Delaney?

  That's the second arrest and the second escape. We are about to go to break, and when we come back, he's going to get arrested again.

• 31:25Anthony Delaney?

  Terry Cottle died by suicide, but his heart lived on, transplanted into Sonny Graham. Years later, Sonny died the exact same way, same heart, same fate. But that wasn't the strangest connection between them. Sonny also married Terry's widow. Hosted by Karen Kilgariff, this is Heart, an Apple original podcast produced by Plan B and Blanchard House. New episodes are available Mondays and Apple TV subscribers get special early access to the entire season. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

• 32:05Speaker 02

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• 32:44Speaker 03

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• 32:47Speaker 02

  And trace the voyage of the first Vikings as they arrive on Iceland's lonely shores. For the best historical stories to get lost in, check out Dan Snow's History.

• 33:12Anthony Delaney?

  Right, we're back. Third arrest and we have, oh, this is where Jonathan Wild, not Jonathan Swift, and that is what's in my head every time I talk about this because he's the only 18th century Jonathan that I know about.

• 33:24Speaker 00

  Jonathan Swift, we should do an episode on Jonathan Swift at some point, but.

• 33:26Anthony Delaney?

  The Lilliputians. And Jonathan Wild, the thief, taker, general, one time.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  He's entering the chat.

• 33:35Anthony Delaney?

  One time lad that he hangs around with is, is going to get involved.

• 33:40Speaker 00

  They're not going to be friends anymore. Okay, so Jonathan Wild, yeah, thief, taker, general, as he's known. He is, he's a criminal of all kinds. He's known as a poacher, but he's also a gamekeeper. Hmm, how does that work? He's sort of this contradiction of things. He's like, he's in with the people in authority, but he's also governing the underworld as well. He, as I say, he brings people in, he's paid for it crucially. If you're a criminal in 18th century London, you are under the control of Wild. And Jack simply refuses. He's like, no, no, I'm a lone wolf. I'm doing my own crime over here, my own escapes. I can't be stopped, won't be stopped. You're not the boss of me. Wild doesn't take this well.

• 34:21Anthony Delaney?

  Can I just say, I like both of those aspects. Like, obviously I don't want to be a criminal, but if you're going to be a criminal, you might as well be the king of the criminals.

• 34:31Speaker 00

  Oh, you'd be the thief, taker, general, would you?

• 34:32Anthony Delaney?

  No, I don't think I would because I wouldn't have the energy, but I think I'd probably be Jack Sheppard where I'm like, well, I'm just not going to do that. It's more likely, right, that I'm going to just do that over there, rather than do the group thing.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah, you, yeah, you're not doing the group thing. In August 1724, still in 1724, Wild decides he's going to get rid of Jack because Jack, you know, he's starting to become a bit famous. And Jonathan Wild is the only famous criminal in town. He's, he's in like some notoriety, this new celebrity criminal has got. So he dobbs him in for burglary this time. He says that Jack robbed the home of his former carpenter master, a man called William Kneebone, which is a great name.

• 35:14Anthony Delaney?

  Kneebone, I know, great name.

• 35:17Speaker 00

  Jack is captured. He is brought before a magistrate and he's sentenced to death. So it's not looking great.

• 35:25Anthony Delaney?

  So he's had two incarcerations. Now he's going to be incarcerated again because that's the thing, you're held until, even if you are going to be executed, you're going to be held until the next execution day.

• 35:34Speaker 00

  So he, he's taken to Newgate this time.

• 35:37Anthony Delaney?

  Okay, we're at the pinnacle now.

• 35:40Speaker 00

  So Newgate, kind of not far from where he started, Spitalfields, right? It's, you know, this, it's where the Old Bailey stands now. It was built in 1188 and it stood until 1904. It is notorious. The, the conditions in this prison are grim. Prison fever, which is probably typhus, you know, is just a constant, like you might go in under a conviction for a crime that means you're going to be hanged, but you might not even make it to your execution day. Like, it's, it's not good in there. It's, it's really, really grim. It's overcrowded, it's squalid. There are, it is kind of, I always imagine it as this like incredibly dark, dank space inside with these really thick walls. And it had very famously these really heavy prison doors.

• 36:23Speaker 00

  And, you know, because it doesn't stand anymore, we, we can't go and experience this space. But the Museum of London, or the London Museum, as it's about to come, if it ever reopens, I think it's meant to be reopening this year. Has at least one of the doors from the prison. Have you ever been to see it? And it's, it's so, you get such a sense of like the, the imposing nature of this structure.

• 36:42Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, no, it is. And it's, it's, you're so right about Newgate because it's disappeared architecturally. We do, I think, underestimate what that experience might have been like in the 18th century.

• 36:54Speaker 00

  I think it's, we don't consider it enough as, you know, it's a real sort of spectre of an old form of London. And it's, you know, it's there and it's really great moments. It's damaged during the Great Fire of London in 1666. In 1780, it's burnt to the ground again during the Gordon riots. Again, mentioned in my first book, I'm really plugging myself today.

• 37:10Anthony Delaney?

  You are, yeah.

• 37:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, wow. It's just that I'm covering so much of the same, of the same.

• 37:15Anthony Delaney?

  Terrain, yeah.

• 37:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. It's closed in 1902 and it is around that time. Over the next few years, it becomes replaced by the Old Bailey, which again is, you know, kind of such a sort of huge institutional column of British authority now. So Jack finds himself in Newgate. He's waiting to die. Things aren't looking good. This is a fortress.

• 37:38Anthony Delaney?

  I, I can think of, listen, there probably is, but off the top of my head, I can't think of anybody else that comes to mind that has escaped Newgate.

• 37:46Speaker 00

  I mean, do you want to commit to that?

• 37:48Anthony Delaney?

  No, I said, I, this is what I said, there probably is, but you'll, you'll let us know in the comments, we know, but.

• 37:54Speaker 00

  It must, it must have been near impossible.

• 37:56Anthony Delaney?

  But it's, it's not easy.

• 37:58Speaker 00

  But it's not impossible.

• 37:59Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, well, it's not, yeah.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  Okay, so for this one, he's going to need a bit of help. And one of the things about Newgate is that you can have visitors and often people would pay to come and see famous celebrities. We did one of the OG, in fact, I think the first ever After Dark episode on Sarah Malcolm, the murderer. In, I think that's the 1720s as well, isn't it? Around the same time. And she is taken to Newgate and she is painted by William Hogarth. People pay to come and see her, she's so notorious. You know, there's this sort of coming and going of people constantly and you would have visitors, people you knew, but also total strangers as a prisoner. And one of the visitors to Jack is Elizabeth. She comes in to see him and.

• 38:40Anthony Delaney?

  What does she bring?

• 38:41Speaker 00

  So, well, the jailers don't think to search her. So she smuggles in a metal file.

• 38:47Anthony Delaney?

  Right.

• 38:50Speaker 00

  Now, the newspapers at the time report this escape. And he, I take this with a pinch of salt.

• 38:56Anthony Delaney?

  Sure.

• 38:57Speaker 00

  Essentially, they say that the jailers themselves are sat in another room somewhere in the prison, sitting around the table, all discussing Jack's previous exploits and his escapes. Meanwhile, he's busy filing away. Yeah, like, oh, what was that? Yep, keep going. He manages to make a little bit of a gap in a door. And because he's so slight, he gets through it. He is off, out into the world. He's gone.

• 39:26Anthony Delaney?

  So it's not like he breaks, well, he breaks the door, but like, it's not like in the other ones, he gets, he kind of breaks the boundaries with this one. Okay, the door is a boundary, but like, he's still in turn, he's still inside the prison and has to then navigate the, the kind of public areas with Elizabeth.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, I suppose, again, because like coming and going in the prison.

• 39:48Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 39:48Speaker 00

  It's a world in which, you know, he's just disguised, he escapes, he makes his way out, nobody notices. It's not great in terms of, if you're a prison guard, you're going to be in big trouble. Like, this is a famous criminal who's waiting to die. Obviously Jonathan Wild, the thief, taker, general, not happy when he hears this.

• 40:04Anthony Delaney?

  That he's got.

• 40:05Speaker 00

  Pretty annoyed, he's feeling pretty humiliated. This is three, we're on three now. The media at this point, they're, they're biting, they're interested. So, you know, they've been following his escapes really from the first, but this is like, this has escalated now. He's now a household name. Biographies of him start to appear.

• 40:23Anthony Delaney?

  Already.

• 40:23Speaker 00

  Already, you know, he's, he's still alive and out there in the world. Ballads are sung about him, the cheap broadsides, you know, that you would get kind of pinned to the wall or sold on street corners, all telling tales of him.

• 40:35Anthony Delaney?

  And he's like, what, 22 at this point?

• 40:36Speaker 00

  He's not even 22, I think. Maybe he's just 22.

• 40:39Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, in his early twenties, yeah.

• 40:41Speaker 00

  Definitely, exactly. And he, you know, he's becoming, I suppose, what we might describe as the sort of one of the first mass media celebrities. He is everywhere, everyone knows something about him, whether it's true or not, of course, is debatable. The Daily Journal publishes a letter supposedly, again, not a pinch of salt, written from Jack, who's just escaped Newgate, to the hangman who didn't get an opportunity to hang him. Do you want to read this? And I will just caveat this by saying that he signs it John Sheppard. So we are talking about Jack Sheppard here, but he signs it John Sheppard. And confusingly, he refers to the hangman as Jack, just to, just to hold on your mind.

• 41:21Anthony Delaney?

  Keep that nice and clear, yeah, okay. "Sir, I thank you for the favour you intended me this day. I'm gone a few days for the air, but designed speedily to embark. And this night I am going upon a mission for a supply. It's a stout fortification, but what difficulties can't I encounter when, dear Jack, you find that bars and chains are but trifling obstacles in the way of your friend and servant, John Sheppard, from my residence in Terra Australis incognito."

• 41:55Anthony Delaney?

  Okay, he didn't write that.

• 41:56Speaker 00

  No, he absolutely didn't write that, but you know.

• 41:58Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, there's more.

• 41:58Speaker 00

  He's absolutely taunting the hangman, basically saying like, I'm off on a little holiday. I've gone for some fresh air because Newgate was not to my taste. And, you know, the shackles can't hold me down. Yeah. And then he does a PS, which I think is just, I mean, obviously he didn't really write this, but like, this is petty and.

• 42:15Anthony Delaney?

  He says, pray my service to Mr. Ordinary, i.e. the chaplain of Newgate Prison, yes. And Mr. Appleby, the publisher of criminal biographies. Okay.

• 42:24Speaker 00

  So he's basically like, say hi to my friends.

• 42:26Anthony Delaney?

  Who would have gained money, both of those people from his death, had he, and a lot of money because he was famous.

• 42:32Speaker 00

  I suppose what this letter shows, even though it's very likely not written by Jack Shepherd, who possibly couldn't even write, actually, like his literacy level. I mean, maybe if he was an apprentice, but like, I'm not convinced he would have written this. But I suppose what it shows is this kind of interesting relationship that is building between the idea of Jack and the media. And, you know, we see this again with another famous Jack in the eighteen eighties, right? This idea of Jack the Ripper, supposedly writing into the newspapers, obviously committing far more serious and grim crimes. But this idea of sort of, the sort of mutual reliance, I suppose, the codependency of a celebrity criminal and the media who builds them up.

• 43:15Speaker 00

  And we're already in the seventeen twenties seeing that explored. So in reality, Jack has escaped. We know that is fact. He has gone from Newgate. And he's, you know, becoming this kind of cult hero. But in reality, he is, he's still a wanted man. There's still a death sentence hanging over him.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  He's recaptured.

• 43:34Anthony Delaney?

  Already?

• 43:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:36Anthony Delaney?

  Very quickly.

• 43:36Speaker 00

  Quite quickly.

• 43:37Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 43:38Speaker 00

  Because he's pissed Jonathan Wild off so much. Wild is now obsessed with taking him to the gallows. That's like his mission in life now. He's like, I need to go to this guy.

• 43:49Anthony Delaney?

  And what, where are we now? That was three, we're at four.

• 43:52Speaker 00

  We're at four now.

• 43:53Anthony Delaney?

  Okay, yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 00

  We're at four.

• 43:56Speaker 00

  He is dragged back to Newgate and he's put in Newgate's most secure room, which is known as the castle.

• 44:03Speaker 00

  And just to give you an idea of how serious they are about keeping him there. He's handcuffed and there is a padlock used on the handcuffs to attach him via an iron staple to the stone floor. So his hands are tied to the floor, essentially. He's not going anywhere.

• 44:18Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  Or is he?

• 44:22Speaker 00

  While he's in prison in Newgate this time, people are now paying to come and see him. Like, people are turning up every day to come and have a look at him.

• 44:31Speaker 00

  So much like Sarah Malcolm, you know, artists are coming in to sketch him. That interest is, is sort of building all the time. And also he starts, when he's not handcuffed to the floor, he starts dressing in fine clothing. He's presumably somehow making money out of this, or people are bringing him clothing as gifts, right? And so he's really kind of putting on a bit of a show. I suppose he's trying to get people on side, you know, if you're there waiting to die. Maybe you're hoping someone's going to bring you something to help you escape.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  Maybe you're just hoping to get, that public opinion might save you if you're lucky enough. And so he really kind of leans into this idea of, of being a celebrity criminal, right? Sort of holding court at Newgate.

• 45:13Anthony Delaney?

  So he has this celebrity status. He is now shackled and manacled and really kept in place in prison. They are not wanting him to escape. But he is known for his escape attempts. And I'm assuming there is another one in the pipeline, but maybe I'm wrong.

• 45:29Speaker 00

  There is. He escapes again. So this is the, what are we on now? This is the third.

• 45:33Anthony Delaney?

  No, fourth.

• 45:34Speaker 00

  Fourth escape? I've lost count.

• 45:36Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, no, I'm.

• 45:37Speaker 00

  Anyway, so, but, okay, so he's arrested in September. He's in Newgate. On, in October, on the fourteenth of October, he has an opportunity. And I don't think this is a coincidence, right? There's no evidence that he was involved in organising this. But what happens is Jonathan Wild, thief-taker-general, is at the Old Bailey, which is next door to Newgate, right? And now the current building takes up the footprint of part of Newgate.

• 46:06Speaker 00

  He is standing there at the Old Bailey when he has it, someone comes up to him and cuts his throat.

• 46:12Anthony Delaney?

  Wild.

• 46:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:14Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 46:14Speaker 00

  And obviously this draws a crowd. There's enormous sort of moment going on. Interesting, Wild survives this, which is pretty incredible. And I think gives you a sense of the kind of man that he was, that he had his throat cut and lived. But during this confusion, the uproar that happens, inside Newgate, Shepherd's like, this is my moment. And now, this is, I just, he's, not only is he like an incredibly sort of, you know, slight person who can move through all these spaces, he must have been incredibly determined and strong, because what he does to get out is, when they go into his cell, the floor is covered in rubble. He's gone through the ceiling again, which remember he did in his first escape. He's then broken through what are called the six great doors of Newgate.

• 46:58Speaker 00

  These are locked and bolted. And when the jailers come to find that he's gone, the locks and the bolts are just strewn all over the floor. So he's removed them all. I mean, determined, but also he got through six of those and nobody noticed him just sort of wheedling away, working on these doors. He then manages to get to the roof and he uses his blankets from the prison cell to climb down onto the roof of a shop next door. Climbs off that roof, enters the street and walks away.

• 47:26Anthony Delaney?

  Susan, I'm suspicious. I, I, I.

• 47:29Speaker 00

  You don't buy it.

• 47:30Anthony Delaney?

  I don't buy that. Like, we know Newgate better than that. Like, also blankets, even, even like, go to that. Most people don't have blankets in Newgate.

• 47:39Speaker 00

  So I think there's someone helping him on the inside. Maybe benefiting from, you know, the constant cat and mouse of him coming in and out of prison, the money that's changing hands with visitors coming to see him, who, you know, maybe are paying for his extra blankets, et cetera.

• 47:53Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, because you could, you could do that.

• 47:55Speaker 00

  You could buy people favors in prison, you know, nicer food, wine, beer, et cetera. And we know he's been probably bought nice clothing. So maybe he just, you know, maybe someone's bought the blankets for him. But they've clearly also brought in tools for him to dismantle these six doors. So I don't think anyone's looking away for long enough for that to happen.

• 48:16Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 48:16Speaker 00

  He's, he's being helped. So he's gone again from Newgate and he's literally just stepped into the street and disappeared into the London crowds. It's a magic trick.

• 48:24Anthony Delaney?

  Okay. Well, my suspicious hackles are up. Is that a word? Hackle?

• 48:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, like on a dock when the, the back of the fur on the back of the next one's up.

• 48:34Anthony Delaney?

  But when we come back, we are going, well, Maddie is going to tell us where it all goes wrong for Jack Shepherd.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  Hi there. I'm Dan, host of Dan Snow's History Podcast. And I can imagine on these dark winter nights, all you're going to do is curl up with a cup of tea and get lost in an amazing story. Well, I can help you with that. Twice a week, I tell you the most dramatic and extraordinary stories from history with details I can guarantee you've never heard before. Feel the frostbite of that grisly failed American invasion of Canada in the dead of winter. Imagine every clash and blow at the Battle of Bosworth. Follow Eleanor of Accretaine, one of the most powerful women in the medieval world, as she goes on crusade to the Holy Land with three hundred handmaidens in tow.

• 49:31Speaker 03

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• 49:33Speaker 02

  And trace the voyage of the first Vikings as they arrive on Iceland's lonely shores. For the best historical stories to get lost in, check out Dan Snow's History.

• 49:59Anthony Delaney?

  Maddie, where does it all go wrong for Jack Shepherd?

• 50:03Speaker 00

  What an astute and interesting question. It does go wrong, unfortunately. Well, fortunately, unfortunately, I don't know. It depends on your perspective. I'm sort of rooting for him. I've bought into the.

• 50:11Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, go on, yeah, mythology, yeah, yeah.

• 50:14Speaker 00

  So he's arrested for what will prove to be the final time, spoiler, on the first of November seventeen twenty four. I mean, this is quite the career over this year. You know, he's been arrested and escaped. This is crazy. This is still in the same year. He's found hiding in lodgings on Drury Lane, which of course is, you know, where he initially meets Elizabeth at the pub and all of that. So this is very much his old stomping ground. Stupid mistake, rookie error.

• 50:38Speaker 00

  Jonathan Wild's after him again. It's Jonathan Wild, you know, holding his throat together.

• 50:42Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:42Speaker 00

  As he marches around London.

• 50:44Anthony Delaney?

  Oozing through his fingers.

• 50:45Speaker 00

  I mean, sort of like, you know, a great, one of those villains in like an action movie that won't die. And the hero keeps bashing them down. They just keep going back up. You know, it's pretty awful. He's arrested again. He's taken to Newgate. He's put in irons again and he is now kept under close guard. There's no looking away from this now. Like, people are watching him twenty-four seven.

• 51:04Anthony Delaney?

  So this is the fifth arrest.

• 51:06Speaker 00

  So he's taken to Westminster Hall to plead in front of the Attorney General.

• 51:13Speaker 00

  And, you know, I think this says so much about

• 51:16Speaker 00

  how famous he is, that he's allowed to come before the Attorney General and kind of beg for his life and say, no, please, the public love me. I can't die. And the Attorney General says to him, you keep escaping and you could potentially just go and, you know, anonymously have a new life. Why do you keep committing crimes?

• 51:37Anthony Delaney?

  And coming back to Drury Lane.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  And coming back to like, mate, you've had your chances.

• 51:41Anthony Delaney?

  Go to Kent.

• 51:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, go to Kent. That's the most exotic quarry place Anthony can think of.

• 51:47Speaker 00

  So we, he's not allowed to escape again. He's not allowed to be let off. The Attorney General has no sympathy. And so execution day comes. And as per tradition of execution days, there are crowds in their thousands outside of Newgate, particularly because this is Jack Shepherd's day of death. People, you know, sort of vying to get a glimpse of him. They're climbing trees. They're climbing into buildings, looking out of second and third story windows, climbing on horseback on each other's shoulders. You know, they really want to get a glimpse of him. It's estimated that between a hundred and two hundred thousand people go to Tyburn with him.

• 52:23Anthony Delaney?

  Two hundred thousand. You sometimes hear of a hundred thousand, but two hundred thousand is.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  Particularly in London in this period, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, we're only in seventeen twenties. This is, this is really significant.

• 52:32Anthony Delaney?

  Almost everyone.

• 52:33Speaker 00

  But on the day of the execution, there is a plan for him to escape. You know, Elizabeth and the rest of his cronies are not going to let this go. And so his friends and supporters do hatch a plan that they're going to smuggle him tools, once again, to escape before he's taken to Tyburn. And potentially on the way on that journey as well, that, you know, the criminals will be put on the cart and paraded. And there's a sense that maybe they can pass him things and he can, you know, loosen his hands or whatever and then leap to his, to freedom.

• 53:06Speaker 00

  And there's a sense as well that there's the, you know, some sort of discussion about maybe overpowering some of the guards and just dragging him into the, into the crowd. But the prison guards get wind of this. And to be honest, you'd be proud for this. You'd be like, something's gonna happen. And he's transported under an extra protection. They can't get anywhere near him. And his final escape plan fails. He is sent to the gallows and, you know, there's, I can imagine the atmosphere that day. And, you know, if you're a ballad singer or a food vendor or, you know, anyone who has, is involved in the economy of execution day, you are making a killing this day. This is a huge moment.

• 53:47Speaker 00

  You're welcome.

• 53:47Anthony Delaney?

  I would imagine that what we, the reason that this story then endures after death, which I would imagine only becomes more popular. I mean, you, you can fill me in on this.

• 53:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 53:58Anthony Delaney?

  Is because he becomes a sort of, I would imagine, folk hero type thing going, look at this underdog who's trying to push back against the establishment.

• 54:07Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 54:07Anthony Delaney?

  And he, he's got his own community and he's got the everyday man thing going on. Is that kind of where that goes then?

• 54:16Speaker 00

  I think that's very fair. Yeah. I mean, I think there's, there's a sense of, I, I think we have to split the two Jacks in this moment, right? We have Jack, aged 22, who goes to his death. And the Daily Journal reports on the execution day. It says, he vehemently resisted and endeavored to beat the officers. This is a man who doesn't want to die. He's 22 years old. Like, he is struggling to the last. He does not want to face that noose. But we have Jack, the myth, the legend, who, as you say, kind of becomes this almost Robin Hood figure, right? There's this, the story that is told of him is not that he's, you know, committing petty crimes and hangs around in these kind of dodgy taverns with sex workers and, you know, as part of this kind of underclass.

• 54:58Speaker 00

  But, you know, that he's somehow, that it's politicized, that he's stealing from the rich. So is he really to blame? Why is that that bad? You know? And we see him kind of pass into, into folklore and into all these kind of different cultural retellings. So he appears in poems, in broadsides, as we said. And Daniel Defoe, talking of other 18th century writers, writes a, potentially is, is attributed to Daniel Defoe, writes a biography of him. And the beggars opera, which appears only in 1728, so not that long afterwards, is all about Jack Shepherd, which I didn't actually realise.

• 55:31Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, I don't know if I put two and two together there, yeah.

• 55:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, so that's kind of interesting. You know, and I think it's, it's fair to say that he's one of the sort of first, yeah, mass media celebrities. I don't know if I'd say he is the first, but I think he's one of the earliest. And certainly the media is kind of cutting its teeth on how to report these stories and how to tell these tales in ways that whips up such public feeling that you are selling copy after copy after copy. You know, this is, this is big business. As we've already said, in 1839, William Harrison Ainsworth writes his novel, illustrated by George Cruikshank. And that becomes a Victorian bestseller throughout the 19th century. And Ainsworth actually

• 56:11Speaker 00

  has that novel adapted for the stage as well. So Jack Shepherd is, you know, really living large across all these different kinds of media. And he's, he's a subject of, of TV shows now, of plays. As you've mentioned, the beginning of novels as well, even today, you know, that he, he kind of is reinterpreted. And I love that interpretation of him maybe as a, as a trans man. And I think, you know, that kind of speaks so interestingly to the physicality maybe of that character and this, the sort of the ambiguity as well, and that we can't really access the real person. So why not, you know, sort of riff on that a little bit?

• 56:48Anthony Delaney?

  And that's, that's it for me. That you've some, my feelings on that up going. I actually think we're really far from the history on this sometimes. And therefore, why not?

• 56:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:58Anthony Delaney?

  You know what I mean? Like, there's so much invention happening, even in 1724, that you might as well keep inventing. That's, that's what this story is. Now, can I just ask you, before we go, give your interest in this history a mark out of 10?

• 57:12Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 57:13Anthony Delaney?

  How interested are you? I was gonna do this at the start of the episode, but it would have been very rude, so I didn't.

• 57:18Speaker 00

  Um, I, I think this is fascinating because I think it gives such a sense of, I know I'm not giving it a mark of 10, I'm getting to it. It gives such a sense of the sort of, the, the bubbling, busy, complex, layered world of early Georgian London that I love and that I've spent so much time researching and writing about. And in terms of Jack Shepherd himself, I think there is a slight frustration there because, as you say, there's the distance and so we can't quite access who he was. But I think the, as a sort of structured story, and I see it very much as a story, these, these multiple escapes. And the sort of cat and mouse story between him and Jonathan Wild, I think is so fascinating. So I would say, I would say a 7.5 out of 10.

• 57:58Anthony Delaney?

  Three. I'm so glad that's done. Three. I, he is the least interesting 18th century person in the entire world. I've, no, but I'm glad that you did it.

• 58:11Anthony Delaney?

  I, I'm glad we did it. Come back. You have to finish the show. You have to finish the show.

• 58:17Speaker 00

  I do, I do want.

• 58:17Anthony Delaney?

  It, it, I, I don't know. It's just the distance between the history and the myth. That's what it is for me. You know, I can struggle with that sometimes. And when I saw this on the schedule for, for this month, I was like, oh, Jesus, not Jack Shepherd, please. No, but I'm really glad we did it because it is a staple 18th century. Like, we have to do this. And there's so much proper thing in it. And that's why I did like Confessions of the Fox, because it was like,

• 58:41Speaker 00

  A twist on.

• 58:41Anthony Delaney?

  Make it up and make it something new and all that kind of thing.

• 58:43Speaker 00

  Okay, so what we've learned is this was a waste of time.

• 58:45Anthony Delaney?

  No, it wasn't. And that's why I didn't say this at the start.

• 58:47Speaker 00

  Leave your rating of 10 in the comments below.

• 58:50Anthony Delaney?

  No, don't. I did, I did, I did truly enjoy the conversation.

• 58:55Speaker 00

  I don't think there's any coming back from there.

• 58:57Anthony Delaney?

  No, there is. But as a subject matter, I was just a bit like, oh, and you didn't think of this. You just, you just delivered it with very professional acumen. But it's like, it, I, I, yeah, I don't know. It's, it's never one that appeals to me.

• 59:12Speaker 00

  I think this is over now.

• 59:13Anthony Delaney?

  What, the whole podcast?

• 59:14Speaker 00

  The whole, goodbye.