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The Last Scene
George Cruikshank
February 1840
Three Etchings each 4.4 by 9.8 cm
14.4 x 9.8 cm
"Epoch the Third, 1724. The Prison Breaker," Vol. 3, for Chapter 32, "The Closing Scene" in William Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard. A Romance, facing page 311.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Tyburn was now at hand. Over the sea of heads arose a black and dismal object. It was the gallows. Jack, whose back was towards it, did not see it; but he heard, from the pitying exclamations of the crowd, that it was in view. This circumstance produced no further alteration in his demeanour except that he endeavoured to abstract himself from the surrounding scene, and bend his attention to the prayers which the ordinary was reciting. — Chapter 32, "The Closing Scene," p. 307.
Just as he had succeeded in fixing his attention, it was again shaken, and he was almost unnerved by the sight of Mr. Wood, who was standing at the edge of a raised platform, anxiously waving his hand to him.
Jack instantly sprang to his feet, and as his guards construed the motion into an attempt to escape, several of them drew their swords and motioned to him to sit down. But Jack did not heed them. His looks were fixed on his old benefactor.
"God in Heaven bless you, unhappy boy!" cried. Wood, bursting into tears, "God bless you!"
Jack extended his hand towards him, and looked anxiously for Thames; but he was nowhere to be seen. A severe pang shot through Jack's heart, and he would have given worlds if he possessed them to have seen his friend once more. The wish was vain: and, endeavouring to banish every earthly thought, he addressed himself deeply and sincerely to prayer. — Chapter XXXII, "The Closing Scene," p. 307-308.
At this terrible juncture, Jack maintained his composure, — a smile played upon his face before the cap was drawn over it,— and the last words he uttered were, "My poor mother! I shall soon join her!" The rope was then adjusted, and the cart began to move.
The next instant, he was launched into eternity!
Scarcely had he been turned off a moment, when a man with swarthy features leapt into the cart with an open clasp-knife in his hand, and, before he could be prevented, severed the rope, and cut down the body. It was Blueskin. His assistance came too late. A ball from Wild's pistol passed through his heart, and a volley of musketry poured from the guards lodged several balls in the yet breathing body of his leader.
Blueskin, however, was not unattended. A thousand eager assistants pressed behind him. Jack's body was caught, and passed from hand to hand over a thousand heads, till it was far from the fatal tree.
The shouts of indignation — the frightful yells now raised baffle description. A furious attack was made on Jonathan, who, though he defended himself like a lion, was desperately wounded, and would inevitably have perished if he had not been protected by the guards, who were obliged to use both swords and fire-arms upon the mob in his defence. He was at length rescued from his assailants, — rescued to perish, seven months afterwards, with every ignominy, at the very gibbet to which he had brought his victim. — Chapter XXXII, "The Closing Scene," p. 309-311.
The body of Jack Sheppard, meanwhile, was borne along by that tremendous host, which rose and fell like the waves of the ocean, until it approached the termination of the Edgeware Road.
At this point a carriage with servants in sumptuous liveries was stationed. At the open door stood a young man in a rich garb with a mask on his face, who was encouraging the mob by words and gestures. At length, the body was brought towards him. Instantly seizing it, the young man placed it in the carriage, shut the door, and commanded his servants to drive off. The order was promptly obeyed, and the horses proceeded at a furious pace along the Edgeware Road.
Half an hour afterwards the body of Jack was carefully examined. It had been cut down before life was extinct, but a ball from one of the soldiers had pierced his heart.
Thus died Jack Sheppard. — Chapter XXXII, "The Closing Scene," p. 311.
The dénouement of the narrative takes the form of yet another tryptych in which Blueskin reaches Jack too late to save him, although the three panels do not clarify that Jack is already dead as the crowd attempts to convey his body to the waiting coach. Again, one recalls John Sutherland's assessment that "Cruikshank's triptych of this episode is probably the best fiction illustration he did" (p. 324). The extent of the detail and the compositional balances are impressive in such small engravings, which must be examined by a magnifying glass to be appreciated fully. The antiquarian aspects of the book here coincide with Ainsworth's transforming Jack Sheppard the highwayman and house-breaker into Jack Sheppard the working class hero and proletarian martyr.
A detailed examination of the three panels in the "triptych" (organised vertically rather than, in the traditional form of a Christian altar-piece) reveals George Cruikshank's painstaking labour in incorporating as many elements of Ainsworth's text as possible, with a fine sense of compositional balance. For example, those barely outlined fourteen figures watching the execution from the roof of the public house (upper left) balance the much more precisely drawn figures in the foreground, with the executioner, Marvel, exchanging pleasantries with Jonathan Wild (readily identifiable by the bandaging around his throat) in front of the triple-gallows (right). For the sake of continuity and ready identification, Cruikshank has given Marvel the long-stemmed pipe seen in the previous tryptych. Jack and the ordinary dominate the centre of the composition as Jack gestures to Owen Wood in the cart (left). Presumably the long-haired youth beside Owen Wood is Thames Darrell. Whereas in the previous panel musket-bayonets and spears had dominated, here uniformed cavalry with drawn swords ensure that the mob does not attempt to effect Sheppard's release. The heart-felt emotion of the prisoner in the quadrant left of centre is contrasted with the attempt at humour by Marvel and the serious instructions that he is receiving from Wild, right of centre. The faceless crowd is not so numerous as the armed guard, suggesting that Jack's execution will take place as planned.
In the central panel, violence breaks out in the lower register, where the mob seems to be taking control, even as the dragoons advance against a generally weaponless crowd (right). In the centre, Blueskin drops his case-knife, just having severed the noose. The rope dangles above the pair as members of the mob attempt to retrieve Jack's body, centre. Clouds of gunpowder smoke to the left suggest that soldiers are firing on the mob, although in fact Cruikshank has sketched in only a single grenadier doing so (lower left corner). The illustration now minimizes the spectators on the tavern-roof (upper left) to focus on the spectators in the public galleries (upper right), the animated mounted troops on this side balancing the nebulous cloud of smoke to the left of the triple-gallows. The effect from frame one to frame two is of moving in for a close-up in which we see a child caught up in the melee. Hogarthian bully-boys reminiscent of those in The Chairing of the Candidate content with makeshift weapons agains a well-disciplined soldiery, leaving the reader in doubt as to whether Bluesckin's effort will succeed in time. The musket of the soldier (lower left) is aimed directly at Jack's apparently lifeless body.
In the final frame, Jack's outstretched corpse, down centre, is balanced by the dramatic billowing clouds of smoke (left of centre) and the strong vertical of the gallows, now receding in importance (right of centre) as Thames in his carriage to the very right seems to reach out to his friend, and the turbulent movement of the mob sways from left and right towards the lifeless hero. The viewers in the gallery (upper right) are still, but those on the tavern roof appear to be descending, as if they are about to join the rescue effort. The action between the grenadiers and the mob (left rear) and between the dragoons and the mob (right rear) has lessened in intensity as Cruikshank directs the viewer's gaze towards the masked nobleman's carriage, to which Jack's body is being lifted.
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.
Last modified 1 January 2017