INTRODUCTION
I see Jonathan Wild and Jack Sheppard on several levels. In the first place, and perhaps most important for the purposes of this book, their lives were full of excitement and adventure -- a great story to tell. As much as possible, I have quoted from original sources to allow the story and the characters to speak for themselves.
Secondly, they were a means through which I could explore and discuss aspects of the society in which they lived -- its rituals and mores as well as the day-to-day details of living and surviving. Structurally, I have tried to insert my digressions, for example on hanging or prison life, where they seemed most relevant to the story; they do interrupt the narrative, but I hope the information they provide overrides the inconvenience.
The fictionalized accounts of Wild's and Sheppard's lives, most notably The Beggars' Opera and Jonathan Wild the Great, gave their lives an additional resonance: they became literary figures as well as mere historical ones. Dickens based aspects of Fagin on Wild, and the Artful Dodger is not wholly unlike Jack Sheppard. Later in the nineteenth century, Sherlock Holmes compared his arch-enemy, Moriarty, to Wild.
Wild's story is particularly relevant to criminal history. Fielding's Bow Street Runners used techniques employed by Wild in his self-created role as Thief-taker General. The techniques of interrogation that Wild perfected -- dividing suspects to elicit confessions, promising pardons in return for information -- are still used by policemen today. On the other hand, his criminal empire can be seen as the prototype of modern criminal organizations, including the American Mafia and East End gangs like those of the Kray brothers.
In a sense, they are archetypal figures, too: Wild, the criminal bureaucrat who appears to conform in order to achieve his ambitions; and Sheppard, the individualist for whom freedom is the only aim, the original, uncontainable rebellious youth.
I would like to thank Georgina Capel; Robin Birley and Andrew Roberts for introducing me to her; Peter Carson, Andrew Kidd, Keith Taylor, Richard Duguid and Jessica Brooks at Penguin; Bela Cunha; and Clare Paterson and Jonathan Burnham for their initial encouragement.
This book is dedicated to my grandparents.
TOM CLINCH
As clever Tom Clinch, while the rabble was bawling,
Rode stately through Holborn to die in his calling,
He stopt at the George for a bottle of sack,
And promised to pay for it when he came back.
His waistcoat, and stockings, and breeches, were white;
His cap had a new cherry ribbon to tie't.
The maids to the doors and the balconies ran,
And said, `Lack-a-day, he's a proper young man!'
But, as from the windows the ladies he spied,
Like a beau in his box, he bow'd low on each side!
And when his last speech the loud hawkers did cry
He swore from his cart, `It was all a damn'd lie!'
The hangman for pardon fell down on his knee;
Tom gave him a kick in the guts for his fee:
Then said, `I must speak to the people a little,
But I'll sec you all damn'd before I will whittle!
My honest friend Wild (may he long hold his place)
He lengthen'd my life with a whole year of grace.
Take courage, dear comrades, and be not afraid,
Nor slip this occasion to follow your trade;
My conscience is dear, and my spirits are calm,
And thus I go off without prayer-book or psalm;
Then follow the practice of clever Tom Clinch,
Who hung like a hero and never would flinch.
JONATHAN SWIFT, 1726/7
CHAPTER ONE
PART ONE
London is their scene of action; and to live in any other
place is living like fishes out of water.
G. E.,
Authentic Memoirs of the
Life and Surprising Adventures of John Sheppard by Way of
Familiar Letters from a Gentleman in Town,
1724
London
In 1708, when Jonathan Wild arrived in London from the Midlands town of Wolverhampton, it was `undoubtedly the largest and most populous city in the whole of Europe'. The city boasted a population of over 600,000, more than a hundred times that of Wolverhampton and twenty times larger than that of Norwich, the second-largest city in Britain. London's circumference, encompassing its many fast-growing suburbs like Chelsea, Hampstead and Camberwell, as well as the city proper from the Tower of London to Westminster, was estimated in 1725 to be thirty-six miles.
Much of the centre of the city had been destroyed in the Great Fire in 1666, and the old timber buildings had been replaced hurriedly and cheaply in the rush to rehouse London's new homeless. The cobbled streets were full of mud and dust because of the building work that was constantly under way, which combined with the clouds of sooty smoke that hung over the city to coat its buildings and inhabitants with a layer of dusty grime. The new houses were made of brick or stone, rather than wood, for obvious reasons, and on the whole were more hygienic, healthier places in which to live; but the haste with which they had been constructed made them unstable. It was not uncommon to hear the loud crash of masonry tumbling or even to see a whole building collapsing, as the house in the background of Hogarth's Gin Lane is doing (illustration 14, page 94). Dr Johnson described the London of his youth as a place where `falling houses thunder on your head'.
Although efforts were made in some areas to rebuild London on modern lines, with wide pavements and stately houses, these kinds of improvements were expensive and time-consuming, and were largely restricted to the new residential area of Mayfair, which was patronized almost exclusively by the gentry and aristocracy. Most streets in central London, stretching from Cheapside down along the Thames past Blackfriars and along the Strand, were still narrow and ramshackle, laid out largely as they had been before the fire. Gutters ran down the centre of them, filled with refuse that would be washed away by the rain. At intervals, `causeways' allowed people to cross the road on broader stones. The streets were overhung with painted signs marking shops, taverns and businesses. `Our streets are filled with blue boars, and black swans, and red lions; not to mention flying pigs, and hogs in armour, and many other creatures more extraordinary than any in the deserts of Africa.' These signs might be so `large, and jut out so far, that in some narrow streets they touch one another; nay, and run across almost quite to the other side', wrote Cesar de Saussure, a Swiss visitor to London whose letters home were circulated throughout Europe but not published in England until 1902. Every shop had 'a sign of copper, pewter, or wood painted and gilt' suspended over the street on iron or gilt branches and could cost up to 100 [pound sterling] to make.
Houses were not numbered, and directions were commonly given by descriptions of prominent shop signs and landmarks -- making London's maze of streets almost indecipherable to a newcomer like Jonathan Wild. A toy shop advertising in the Female Tatler was `at the sign of the Griffiin, at the corner of Bucklersbury in the Poultry' -- impossible to find if one did not know the city well. To make matters even more complicated, many businesses operated under signs that had been erected for previous proprietors and did not relate to their work at all. `What can be more inconsistent,' complained Joseph Addison in the Spectator in 1711, 'than to see a bawd at the sign of the Angel?'
London's street names, like its signs, were exuberantly colourful: in Southwark alone there were streets with names like Melancholy Walk, Dead Man's Place, Love Lane, Bear Garden and Maid Lane. Others elsewhere included Dog and Bitch Yard, Labour in Vain Hill, Flying Horse Yard, Soldier and Trumpet Alley, Pelican Stairs and Dancing Bridge. Street names often indicated the character of a place, like the physiognomy of a face, or recalled a local landmark: thus one would look for a prostitute in Maiden Lane, or find Newgate Gaol (actually housed in an old, but once new, gatehouse) in Newgate Street. Hogarth's Idle Apprentice (illustration 20, page 111) is arrested in Plate IX of the series at Blood Bowl House, in Hanging Sword Alley, off Fleet Street -- an area notorious as a hiding-place for violent criminals and used deliberately by Hogarth to indicate the depths to which Tom Idle has sunk.
The streets were filled with as much bustling activity as their names often indicated. The provincial Jonathan Wild, his eyes accustomed to the slow pace of life in a small Midlands town, would have been amazed by the city's energy and excitement. This description of Fleet Street was written in the 1770s by a German visitor to London, but still conjures up what must have been the atmosphere of the city streets the incredulous Jonathan first gazed on at the start of the century:
In the road itself chaise after chaise, coach after coach, cart after cart. Through all of this din and clamour, and the noise of thousands of tongues and feet, you hear the bells from the church-steeples, postmen's bells, the street-organs, fiddles and tambourines of itinerant musicians, and the cries of the vendors of hot and cold food at the street corners. A rocket blazes up storeys high amidst a yelling crowd of beggars, sailors and urchins. Someone shouts `Stop, thief,' his handkerchief is gone. Everyone runs and presses forward, some less concerned to catch the thief than to steal a watch or a purse for themselves. Before you are aware of it a young, well-dressed girl has seized your hand. `Come, my lord, come along, let us drink a glass together,' or `I'll go with you if you please.' An accident happens not forty paces away. `God bless me,' calls one. `Poor fellow,' cries another. A stoppage ensues and you look to your pockets. Everyone is intent on helping the victim. There is laughter again: someone has fallen into the gutter. `Look there, damn me,' cries a third, and the crowd passes on. Next comes a yell from a hundred throats as if a fire had broken out, or a house were falling, or a patriot had looked out of a window. In Gottingen you can go anywhere and get within forty paces to see what is happening. Here, that is at night and in the City, you are lucky to escape with a whole skin down a side alley until the tumult is over. Even in the wilder streets all the world rushes headlong, as if summoned to the bedside of the dying. That is Cheapside and Fleet Street on a December evening.
Continues...
Excerpted from The Thieves' Opera by Lucy Moore Copyright © 2000 by Lucy Moore. Excerpted by permission.
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