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"Confusion!" muttered Jack, suddenly pausing in his task, "the saw has broken just as I am through the spike."

"Can't we break it off?" replied Mrs. Maggot.

"I fear not," replied Jack, despondingly.

"Let's try, at all events," returned the Amazon.

And grasping the thick iron rod, she pushed with all her force against it, while Jack seconded her efforts from within. After great exertions on both parts, the spike yielded to their combined strength, and snapped suddenly off.

"Holloa — what's that?" cried Austin, starting up.

"Only my darbies," returned Jack, clinking his chains.

"Oh! that was all, was it?" said the turnkey, quietly reseating himself.

"Now, give me the woollen cloth to tie round my fetters," whispered Sheppard. "Quick."

"Here it is," replied Edgeworth Bess.

"Give me your hand, Poll, to help me through," cried Jack, as he accomplished the operation. "Keep a sharp look out, Bess."

"Stop!" interposed Edgeworth Bess; "Mr. Langley is getting up, and coming this way. We're lost."

"Help me through at all hazards, Poll," cried Jack, straining towards the opening.

"The danger's past," whispered Bess. "Mrs. Spurling has induced him to sit down again. Ah! she looks this way, and puts her finger to her lips. She comprehends what we're about. We're all safe!"

"Don't lose a moment then," cried Jack, forcing himself into the aperture, while the Amazon, assisted by Bess, pulled him through it.

"There!" cried Mrs. Maggot, as she placed him without noise upon the ground; "you're safe so far."

"Come, my disconsolate darlings," cried Austin, "it only wants five minutes to six. I expect Mr. Wild here presently. Cut it as short as you can."

"Only two minutes more, Sir," intreated Edgeworth Bess, advancing towards him in such a manner as to screen Jack, who crept into the farthest part of the angle, — "only two minutes, and we've done."

"Well, well, I'm not within a minute," rejoined the turnkey.

"We shall never be able to get you out unseen, Jack," whispered Poll Maggot. "You must make a bold push."

"Impossible," replied Sheppard, in the same tone. "That would be certain destruction. I can't run in these heavy fetters. No: I must face it out. Tell Bess to slip out, and I'll put on her cloak and hood."

Meanwhile, the party at the table continued drinking and chatting as merrily as before. — "Epoch the Second, The Prison Breaker, 1715," Chapter 10, "How Jack Sheppard got out of the Condemned Hold," p. 280-282.

Commentary

The artist's rendering of the escape scene depends heavily on linear perspective to translate Ainsworth's narrative, closely based (according to Meisel) on a contemporary account often attributed to novelist/journalist Daniel Defoe, A Narrative of all the Robberies, Escapes, & c. of John Sheppard (London, 1724), an obvious demonstration not merely of Ainsworth's antiquarian interests, but also of his striving for authenticity. This same concern is evident in Cruikshank's realisation of the scene of Jack's escape in Newgate, assisted by his common-law wives, the Amazonian Poll Maggot (right) and Edgeworth Bess (left), under the very noses, so to speak, of the four turnkeys enjoying flagons of punch (right rear). The episode, which concludes with Jonathan Wild's arriving to discover that Jack has just escaped disguised as Edgeworth Bess, winds up the second volume, on a highly specific date and time: 31 August 1724, just after 6:00 P. M. Matching Ainsworth's specificity of description in setting the scene of this daring and difficult escape is Cruikshank's striving for visual authenticity in his

plate of Jack Sheppard escaping from the condemned hold in Newgate, drawn through the bars by his two doxies in the presence of his jailers, [which] is a direct transcription of the frontispiece of Sheppard's Narrative, purportedly "written by himself during his Confinement" in the year of his execution. — Martin Meisel, p. 269.

Indeed, in reproducing the original 1724 illustration The manner of John Sheppard's Escape out of the Condemn'd Hole in Newgate (p. 271), Meisel demonstrsates how Cruikshank transformed the century-old composition by moving in for a closeup, eliminating some of the drinkers to the rear, shortening the distance between the roistering turnkeys and the chief action, and displaying the women's figures by showing their cloaks on the floor rather than around them. He retains the ponderous shadow cast by the pike-topped gate (lower right) since it imparts a suggestion of the sentence of death which Jack must certainly face if he cannot in these few minutes before the cessation of visiting hours effect his escape.

Conspicuously missing from Cruikshank's group down the hall (although present in miniature in the 1724 frontispiece) is the sympathetic tapstress or purveyor of alcoholic beverages, Mrs. Spurling, whose assistance in inducing Langley to sit down again proves vital to the success of Jack's scheme. Rather than having to break through bars or wooden beams as in Jack Sheppard in company with Edgeworth Bess escaping from Clerkenwell Prison, Jack here merely has to saw through a single iron spike in the viewing window of the Lodge in order to squeeze through and make his escape in disguise — but he has to do so without being seen by any of the gaolers nearby. The gaolers themselves are not individually distinguished by either Ainsworth or Cruikshank, except for the West Indian, Caliban (who is not present in the 1839 illustration); the others in the text are Ireton (the chief turnkey or upper gaoler), Austin and Langley (the under-turnkeys), Marvel (the ill-looking public executioner), the aptly-named Shotbolt (the head turnkey of Clerkenwell Prison), and Griffin (head turnkey at the Westminster Gatehouse). In other words, possibly to avoid crowding at the back of the composition, Cruikshank has deviated from Ainsworth's text and rendered only four of the eight characters whom the novelist mentions, perhaps reducing somewhat the difficulty attached to this escape, for so many turnkeys should have noticed what was transpiring only a few feet away. The illustrator does not show the ponderous door, plated with iron and secured by huge bolts, but positions conspicuously in the right foreground the "second door, or rather wicket, lower than the first, but of equal strength, and surmounted by a row of sharp spikes" (267). Rather, Cruikshank has position his principal figures well forward, in front of the partition in the hallway:

Not far from the entrance [presumably immediately behind Poll Maggot], was a sort of screen, or partition-wall, reaching from the floor to the ceiling, formed of thick oaken planks riveted together by iron bolts, and studded with broad-headed nails. In this screen, which masked the entrance of a dark passage communicating with the Condemned Hold, about five feet from the ground, was a hatch, protected by long spikes set six inches apart, and each of the thickness of an elephant's tusk. The spikes almost touched the upper part of the hatch: scarcely space enough for the passage of a hand being left between their points and the beam. Here, as has already been observed, condemned malefactors were allowed to converse with such of their guests as had not interest or money enough to procure admission to them in the hold. Beyond the hatch, an angle, formed by a projection in the wall of some three or four feet, served to hide a door conducting to the interior of the prison. At the farther end of the Lodge, the floor was raised to the height of a couple of steps; whence the whole place, with the exception of the remotest corner of the angle before-mentioned, could be commanded at a single glance. On this elevation a table was now placed, around which sat the turnkeys and their guests, regaling themselves on the fragrant beverage provided by the prisoner. [207-208].

Ending the volume with the hairbreadth escape of the plucky protagonist, publisher Richard Bentley has had to divide the ninth (September 1839) instalment between the second and third volumes, placing over five months' instalments in the final, 312-page volume (shorter than no. 1, 352 pages, but longer than no. 2, 292 pages), but anticipating the conclusion of the serial by four months for those readers prepared to expend the considerable selling price of the triple-decker rather than await the February 1840 final instalment in Bentley's Miscellany.

Bibliography

Ainsworth, William Harrison. Jack Sheppard. A Romance. With 28 illustrations by George Cruikshank. In three volumes. London: Richard Bentley, 1839.

Ainsworth, William Harrison. Jack Sheppard. Edited by Edward Jacobs and Manuela Mourao. With 31 illustrations. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2007.

Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Bradbury and Evans; Chapman and Hall, 1846.

Meisel, Martin. Chapter 13, "Novels in Epitome." Realizations: Narrative, Pictorial, and Theatrical Arts in Nineteenth-Century England. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Pp. 247-282.

Sutherland, John. "Jack Sheppard" in The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 19893. Pp. 323-324.

Vann, J. Don. "Jack Sheppard in Bentley's Miscellany, January 1839 — February 1840." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. Page 19.

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Last modified 24 December 2016