Jack Sheppard became the most famous criminal in early 18th Century England. Born to poor parents in 1702, he was apprenticed to a carpenter. After five years, he was one year away from completing his training, but that’s when he discovered the joys of drinking and whoring. Soon he was in need of more funds to keep partying. He fell in with a bad crowd and took up with a prostitute named Edgworth Bess. He started robbing houses and picking pockets. He was twenty years old and a charming rogue. Called “Honest Jack” by the clientele of the various taverns he frequented, his popularity boomed through a series of escapes from prison. In 1723, he was arrested for shoplifting. He broke through the ceiling of the jail and lowered himself to the ground using a rope made from his clothes. His second arrest got him imprisoned with Bess. He filed off the chains, burrowed through the cell wall, lowered himself and Bess with another clothes rope, and they climbed a 22-foot wall to freedom. The third time, he was sentenced to death. He filed off a bar and then when Bess and another prostitute named Moll Maggot distracted the guards, he slipped out. The women smuggled him out of the prison dressed in women’s clothes. His fourth escape was the one that made him famous. In 1724, he was arrested a put in prison again. He picked the handcuffs and the padlock that kept him chained to the floor. He broke through several doors and scaled a wall to reach the roof of the prison. Using his blanket, he slid down the roof onto a nearby rooftop. He exited through the front door. Unfortunately, he was caught two weeks later drunk. This time there would be no escaping the death sentence. Before the appointed day, Daniel Dafoe ghost-wrote his autobiography which greatly enhanced his celebrity status. It was estimated that 200,000 Londoners lined the streets to see him go to the gallows. Women dressed in white and threw flowers. Supposedly, Dafoe and his publisher hatched a plan to take Sheppard’s body and get a doctor to revive him. However, the crowd swarmed the gallows and pulled on his hanging body to hasten his death, out of mercy.
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/The-Amazing-Escapes-of-Jack-Sheppard/
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