Thief-Taker Hangings by Aaron Skirboll

Author:Aaron Skirboll
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2014-09-01T16:00:00+00:00

XIV

The Trial of Jack Sheppard

Sheppard, the notorious housebreaker, who lately escaped from the New Prison and was retaken by Jonathan Wild and committed to Newgate, attempted to escape from the gaol a day or two ago; several saws and instruments proper for such a design being found about his bed, he is since confined in an apartment called the Stone Room, kept close and sufficiently loaded with irons to prevent his designs for the future.

—attributed to Defoe, Applebee’s Original Weekly Journal, August 1, 1724

Newgate was one of the two western gates in the walls that encircled the Roman settlement of Londinium. In time, its gatehouse became Newgate Prison, a jail for felons and debtors. The Old Bailey (from the Old French baille, meaning “defensive wall”) emerged from a medieval expansion of the prison, but burned down in the Great Fire. It was rebuilt in 1673, tall and foreboding in unadorned brick. The courthouse building connected to the southern end of Newgate Prison by a tunnel, which ran past the old Roman wall.

Sir Peter Delmé, the distinguished lord mayor of London, sat at the bench along with the aldermen, all elegantly bedecked. Sir William Thompson, the recorder, ran the show. Sheppard sat in the large room with dignitaries behind him and accuser and witnesses facing him. A mirror placed above the dock—to allow light from the windows to illuminate the scene—reflected Sheppard’s pug face to the spectators of the court. Thompson announced the three indictments against young Sheppard: the Cook, Phillips, and Kneebone robberies. The first and second were dismissed quickly for lack of evidence.

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