These same friends often lingered at the foot of the Triple Tree, when, the three-mile journey over, the sentence was carried out, in order to be at hand to hang on to the legs of the condemned and thus put a speedy end to his sufferings. Not so friendly was the purpose of the respectably-dressed women in deep mourning, who, professing to be the nearest of kin to the deceased, mingled in the crowd in the hope of securing the body for some anatomist.
In the beginning of the eighteenth century people began to travel farther afield. They were richer, more numerous, and more enterprising; they made journeys by coach to Bath and Cheltenham to drink the waters, or went out for the evening to Vauxhall Gardens to dine and gamble, dance and make merry. Fine clothes, costly jewels, and gambling gains were spoils easily disposed of, and highwaymen and footpads quickly followed in their wake. Naturally, places near the Metropolis were the most lucrative. If nothing of value was secured from the coach belonging to Lord A——, another coach owned by the Marquis of B—— soon passed by, and loot might be forthcoming; if not, the highwaymen waited for Mr. C——.
Outlying districts of London became unsafe at night, and Highgate, Hampstead, Richmond, Hounslow, and Shooter’s Hill were all hot-beds of robbery by these “gentlemen of the road.” Hyde Park and Knightsbridge came in for a share of petty larcenies and assaults by the meaner footpads and outlaws who lurked at many a dark corner, and few persons thought of going home by night except under escort, and with torches to light the gloom of the streets. It was a short life, if a desperate and at times a merry one. Of all the famous highwaymen who dangled on Tyburn gibbet, one finds few who lived to see the age of thirty.
Jack Sheppard, though not the romantic figure of the moonlit heath, but a meaner thief, must, I suppose, take pride of place. Never was there a more dare-devil character hanged at Hyde Park. Fielding and Harrison Ainsworth have glorified his career, and some of the facts of his life are told in a pamphlet published by Daniel Defoe at the request of Sheppard himself, containing a Narrative of all the Robberies, Escapes, etc., of John Sheppard. This, he declares, was “written by himselfe during his confinement in the Middle Stone Room” at Newgate. Says Jack:
“I was born in Stepney Parish, the Year Queen Anne came to the Crown; my Father a Carpenter by Trade, and an honest industrious character, and my Mother bore and deserved the same. She being left a Widow in the early Part of my Life, continued the Business, and kept myselfe, together with another unfortunate son, and a daughter at Mr. Garrett’s School near Great St. Hellen’s in Bishopsgate Parish, till Mr. Kneebone, a Woollen draper in the Strand, an Acquaintance ... being desirous to settle me to a Trade, ... agreed with Mr. Owen Wood a Carpenter of Drury-Lane to take me an Apprentice for Seven Years.”
JACK SHEPPARD.
From an Old Print.
Sheppard describes Mr. and Mrs. Wood as “strict observers of the Sabbath,” which he thought fit to spend in his own manner, and he fell into evil ways. For this he blamed Joseph Hind, who kept the “Black Lyon Alehouse in Drury-Lane.” Here he met Bess Lyon, who was his ruin, and for whose benefit most of his robberies were committed.
He asserts that his first crime was stealing two silver spoons from the Rummer Tavern in Charing Cross. In 1723 he describes being sent to the house of a Mr. Bains to do some carpentering, where he stole a roll of fustian (24 yards) from amongst others, and offered it for sale at 12d. per yard, but having no offers, he concealed it in his master’s house. In the following August he was making some shutters for Mr. Bains, and in the night entered by the cellar window, taking £14 worth of goods, and £7 in money. When he went next day he found the shop shut, and the Bains family in much trouble, in which he greatly sympathised. A fellow apprentice saw the fustian and told Mr. Wood, so Sheppard broke into Wood’s house in the night and took it away again, but the Bains family followed him up, and in spite of his own and his brother’s assertions of innocence, he was compelled to restore what remained.
From that time such a number of thefts and burglaries were committed that Jack Sheppard soon made a reputation. The Tyburn Chronicle, writing of this part of his life, says: