“This, with my kind love to you, and pray give my kind love to Mr. Wagstaff, hoping these few lines will find you in good health, as I am at present, but I must own you are the loser for want of my dying speech; but to make up your loss, if you think this sheet worth your while, pray make the best of it. Though they do say I am taken among the smugglers, and put into Dover Castle, yet I hope I am among the smugglers still. So no more, but your humble servant,
“JOHN SHEPPARD.
“P.S. I desire you will be the postman with this letter to Mr. Austin, the jail-keeper; so farewell; now I quit the English shore.
“NEWGATE, FAREWELL.”
“Mr. Austin,—
“You was pleased to pass your jokes upon me, and did say, you should not have been angry with me, had I took my leave of you; but now pray keep your jokes to yourself; let them laugh that win; for now it is an equal chance, you to take me, or I to go away; but I own myself guilty of that ill manners; but excuse me, for my departure being private and necessary, spoiled the ceremony of bidding adieu. But I wish you all as well as I am at present. But pray be not angry for the loss of your irons; had you not given me them I had not taken them away; but really I had left them behind me had convenience served. So do not be angry. And what is amiss done, you right, for my scholarship is but small. This, from your fortunate prisoner,
“JOHN SHEPPARD.”
In a few nights after leaving these letters, he broke open a shop in Monmouth-street, and stole some wearing apparel. On the 29th of October he broke open the house of Mr. Robert Rawlins, a pawnbroker, in Drury-lane, from whence he took a sword, a suit of apparel, a snuff box, rings, watches, and goods to a considerable extent.
On the 31st of October he dined with his two women, Cook and Skeggs, at a public-house in Newgate-street, where they were very merry together. About four in the afternoon they took coach, and drawing up the windows, passed through Newgate, which then was similar to Temple-bar, and on to the Shears’-alehouse, in Maypole-street, by Clare-market; where, in the evening, he sent for his mother, and treated her with some brandy. As she knew the danger he was in, she advised him to take care of himself, and keep out of the way; but Jack had been drinking pretty hard, and was grown too wise to take counsel, and too valiant to fear anything; and, therefore, leaving his mother, he strolled about in the neighbourhood, from alehouse to gin-shop, till near 12 o’clock, when he was apprehended by means of an alehouse boy, who had accidentally seen him. Poor Jack was then drunk, unable to make any resistance, and was once more conveyed to Newgate.
