Читать книгу Defoe on Sheppard and Wild: The True and Genuine Account of the Life and Actions of the Late Jonathan Wild by Daniel Defoe - Даниэль Дефо, Данієль Дефо, Даниэль Дефо - Страница 5

With his recapture by an armed posse on Finchley Common on 10 September, Sheppard’s news value doubled. A new trial had to be arranged, ironically in order to fulfill identification formalities. Was it the same Sheppard? He was transferred to the top security cell in the third floor of the notorious Stone Castle of Newgate, where he was handcuffed and fettered, then padlocked to irons, and finally chained to the floor - a triple measure of security in a room that was also barred and locked.

Unbelievably, Jack escaped from the death cell for a second time (his fourth evasion) on 15 October, 1724, with an fantastic ingenuity and courage that quickly became legendary. Jailors, clairvoyants and journalists vied to explain his escape methods. He remained at liberty for a further fortnight, wearing several disguises, carousing with his mistress, Elizabeth Lyon, but was finally recaptured (while buying everyone drinks) at midnight in a tavern in Clare Market.

Jack was now the most celebrated criminal in England. One journalist wrote: ‘the three great Curiosities in Town at present are the young Lions stuffed in the Tower, the Ostrich on Ludgate Hill, and the famous John Sheppard in Newgate.’ He was visited in his cell by hundreds of sightseers and well-wishers (they paid four shillings a time). The champion bare-knuckle boxer Figg came and proposed a match - a drinking one. The official Court painter Sir James Thornhill made sketches of Jack in chains, which were turned into prints and paintings. King George ordered one for himself. However there was no reprieve, no royal pardon and no further escape. Amidst unparalleled scenes of popular grief and mayhem, Sheppard was executed at Tyburn on 16 November, 1724.

This brief but sensational London news story of autumn 1724, with its strong romantic overtones, also had a much darker background. Each time Sheppard had escaped, he (or his mistress Elizabeth Lyon) had been recaptured by the famous Newgate thief-catcher, Jonathan Wild. Wild was an older, hard-bitten figure who dominated the London underworld from his offices opposite Newgate Prison. He already had a fearful reputation as a law-enforcer, built up over a decade. He was personally responsible for the capture and execution of over 120 criminals since he began his operations in 1714, and had amassed a fortune in reward money. It was said that Wild’s networks of spies, narks, grasses, and bounty-hunters stretched all over London and much of the home counties. He also ran a quite extraordinarily effective organisation for tracking and recovering stolen property. It was said that Wild could recover anything, from a single diamond ring to an entire consignment of Flanders lace, within a week. But it was best not to enquire how he achieved this.

Unlike the handsome, stammering, boyish Sheppard, Wild was a heavily built and glowering figure. He carried pistols wherever he went, had scars on his face and a silver plate in his skull from sabre wounds received in the line of duty. He limped from gout, drank heavily and (like Henry VIII) had six wives. He was however renowned for his courage, his cool head, his icy good manners and his graveyard humour. His jokes were so savage that one condemned prisoner (Sheppard’s friend Blueskins) was once provoked to fly at Wild’s throat with a penknife, and afterwards confessed on the scaffold that it was the one action of his life that he did not regret.

Thus there was a natural and dramatic rivalry between Sheppard and Wild, which quickly caught the popular imagination. Here was an intense clash of personalities and life-principles: the incorrigible young escapist pitted against the grim relentless thief-taker. It could be seen as a duel between crime and justice, rebellion and authority, youth and age, or freedom and oppression, depending on one’s point of view.

Nor was the ultimate outcome clear. For although Sheppard was finally caught and executed, he was to achieve the posthumous status of a people’s hero, a cockney pocket-Hercules. While no less melodramatically, Jonathan Wild was himself to be executed the following May 1725, having been arrested on charges of corruption, gang-running and receiving stolen goods. Henceforth he too, like Sheppard, entered urban folklore, but as one of the great villains of the London underworld. Altogether it was a story just waiting for any journalist, novelist, playwright - or biographer - to seize.

In fact over thirty ballads, plays, pamphlets and short lives of Sheppard and Wild appeared over the next two years. But it was John Applebee, an enterprising editor based in Blackfriars and specialising in crime publishing, who commissioned the three best early biographies, which are here reprinted. They consist of two short pamphlets on the life of Jack Sheppard published in October and November 1724, and a longer life of Jonathan Wild published in the following June 1725. All were bestsellers, the second pamphlet running to eight editions in a few weeks. But all were anonymous.