JACK SHEPPARD, PENNY GAFFS, AND JUVENILE DEPRAVITY –

♠— by John Adcock —♠

The amusements of these youths are the low theatres, the dancing saloons, and entertainments of a like description. Many of the penny theatres are frequented only by boys and girls who are already thieves and prostitutes. “Jack Sheppard,” “Dick Turpin,” “Claude Duval,” and other exhibitions of dexterous and daring crimes attract the attention and ambition of these boys, and each one endeavours to emulate the conduct of his favourite hero. — An Inquiry into the Extents and Causes of Juvenile Depravity, Thomas Beggs, 3 Mar 1849

Thomas Begg’s inquiry into juvenile delinquency, and numerous other statistical inquiries undertaken throughout Britain by clergymen and missionaries, regarded destitute, homeless, juvenile boys and girls as heathens, lost in depravity, and in dire need of religion. “Heathenism is the poor man’s religion in the metropolis,” wrote R.W. Vanderkiste, a London City Missionary, in 1852. Vanderkiste took seriously his forays into Clerkenwell to save its children from “the heathen darkness.” Missionaries and Ragged School employees, armed with religious tracts, also targeted the slums of Spitalfields, Bethnal Green, and Whitechapel Road. Even the title to Vanderkiste’s travelogue sounds as foreboding as a trip to Darkest Africa; Notes and Narratives of a Six Year’s Mission, Principally Among the Dens of London. As to the efficacy of religious tracts G.W.M. Reynolds, in his Political Instructor, had this to say in 1850.

Those who talk so much about religious education, and deprecate secular education, have for many years been in the habit of circulating tracts, small pious stories about deathbed repentance, and such like, which tracts are seldom read. They contain no healthy nutriment for the minds of up-grown men, and are taken in and returned by the cottagers to the tract distributors as part of their duties. These tracts are seldom read, and when read are so silly and uninteresting, as to render a re-perusal impossible. Sir Harry Inglis and the sanctified Mr. Plumptre, as well as all pious rectors, curates, and others who feel an interest in such matters, may rest assured that such religious teaching is a waste of time and money, and that it would be of service to the state that their pious intentions received a more healthy direction.[i]

Reynolds, at least, proposed more useful ways to combat poverty — in his opinion secular education and a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work were preferable to pious homilies. The Chartists maintained that “to secure to labour all its just reward, is to increase in the same proportion the ability to purchase, and to lessen the weight of pauperism and crime.” Walter Cooper, on behalf of the Associative Tailors, addressed their brother toilers of all trades in 1850. “You will not pay living wages? Look to see your poor rates increase, and your streets swarm with prostitutes and beggars!” Reynolds did not romanticize the lower classes in his novels but he understood their vice, criminality, and degradation as the inevitable result of extreme poverty. To Reynolds the law was a system designed for the rich, intended to keep down the poor. Justice was a façade. As for the poor, it was their own damned fault.[ii]

And this is the prospect for the poor of England who live in great towns and cities. Prospect! did we say? It is the actual reality. It is here where the impulses which all men and women – even the worst of them – to do good, if it be but for once in the course of a feverish life, are strangled! It is here that honesty goes forth shame-stricken, and bold, brazen dishonesty flaunts it and is applauded. It is in these terrible lazar spots that the pure are polluted and the chaste are compelled to sell their innocence for bread! It is from homes skulking in the forbidden corners in these localities that mothers come forth and sell their bodies in order that their children shall live, and hence it is that the widows of labourers and artisans are forced to surrender every vestige of matronly dignity, to traverse the streets with drunken and delirious steps, and maddened with the remorse of a crime for which they should surely remain guiltless (…)[iii]

The selling of children for sex was rife in the slums. One prostitute related her story to Henry Mayhew for a series of articles in the Morning Chronicle. She was an orphan who could neither read nor write, placed in a small tradesman’s family, where her mistress beat her black and blue with hands and sticks. She ran away and took up residence in low penny or two penny lodging-houses filled with children. “During this time, I used to see boys and girls from ten to twelve years old sleeping together (…) I saw things between almost children that I cannot describe to you – very often I saw them and that shocked me.” At twelve she lived with a fifteen-year-old boy as husband and wife. She soon turned to prostitution. She described accommodations in a low lodging-house in Kent Street where no adults were present.

They were all thieves and bad girls. I have known between three or four dozen boys and girls sleep in one room. The beds were horrid filthy and full of vermin. There was very wicked carryings on. The boys, if any difference, was the worst. We lay packed on a full night, a dozen boys and girls squeezed into one bed. That was very often the case – some at the foot and some at the top – boys and girls all mixed. I can’t go into all the particulars, but whatever could take place in words or acts between boys and girls did take place, and in the midst of the others. I am sorry to say that I took part in these bad ways myself, but I wasn’t so bad as all the others. There was only a candle burning all night, but in summer it was light a great part of the night. Some boys and girls slept without any clothes, and would dance about the room that way. I have seen two dozen capering about the room that way; some mere children – the boys generally the youngest.

The boys in the lodging-house sent the girls out on the streets to engage in prostitution. If this proved unsuccessful the girls would steal something rather than return empty-handed and face a brutal beating.

I have seen them beaten, often kicked and beaten until they were blind from bloodshot, and their teeth knocked out with kicks from boots as the girl lays upon the ground. The boys, in their turn, are out thieving all day, and the lodging-house keeper will buy any stolen provisions of them, and sell them to the lodgers.[iv]

As early as 1841 the Sixth Report of the Inspector of Prisons in England found that a “vast number of boy malefactors, when examined, were found to have been misled by witnessing the performance of such plays as Jack Sheppard.” Chamber’s Edinburgh Journal covered the report under the title Felon Literature and quotes numerous boy’s testimony to their influence. An eighteen-year-old said “I have seen Jack Sheppard performed; I thought he was a capital example for those who followed the trade.” A fourteen-year-old thought Jack Sheppard was “very nice, and if I was only as clever I would be thought the very best of thieves.” Another; “I had his life, some boy took it from me; most boys have his life.” A twenty-one-year-old said “(…) I noticed them picking one another’s pockets on the stage; it gave everyone a great insight how to do it. If I did not know how to do such tricks when I went into the theatre, I am sure I could when I came out.”

One eighteen-year-old identified as J. H. had just entered the fifth year of his apprenticeship when he came across a “Life” of Jack Sheppard. He then saw the play, probably in a penny gaff. It “excited in my mind an inclination to imitate him; the part was well acted at the play. I read how he got into places; and I had a wish to try if I could do the same. The play made the greatest impression on my mind. A few weeks after I saw the play, I committed the first robbery. When the scene is hoisted, he is carving his name upon a beam which goes across the shop. I wrote ‘Jack Sheppard’ on the shop-beam, just as it was in the play. It occurred to my mind that this trade was like my own –  a carpenter. I often thought about it when I was at work.”

There is no reason to doubt the boy’s testimony. On the other hand, James Greenwood, “The Amateur Casual,” writing in 1869 in The Seven Curses of London, cautions against taking juvenile prisoner’s tales at face value. “A talent for gammoning “Lady Green,” as the prison chaplain is irreverently styled, is highly appreciated among the thieving fraternity.” Greenwood toured the boys’ wing of the gaol with a governor known by the boys to blame penny dreadfuls for their pernicious influence. All boys when asked would say “It was them there penny numbers what I used to take in, sir,” and receive a pat on the head and a homily for his troubles. Considering the terrible lives they led boys really had no reason to blame the penny dreadfuls. The Bee-Hive, a working man’s newspaper reported the following sad story in 1870.

BOW-STREET. James Anderson, a ragged little urchin, of about eight years of age, was charged with stealing money from a till. A corn chandler disposed that he saw the prisoner crawl into his shop and creep behind the counter. He put his hand into the till and went out of the shop. Prosecutor followed, and ultimately captured the prisoner, who by this time had thrown the money away. Prosecutor lost altogether about four shillings. Some of the money was picked up by the boys in the street. – The father of the prisoner here stepped forward, and said that his boy had become corrupted by bad companions amongst whom he had fallen, and who frequently enticed him into a “Penny Gaff” in the Euston-Road. The money was doubtless stolen on purpose to visit that place. He (the father) had often beaten his boy with a strap for going to the place, which was the resort of thieves and bad girls. – Mr. Vaughan said, that a similar case to the one now before him, the “Penny Gaff” in the Euston-Road, had been alluded to. He should request Mr. Balding (the inspector on duty at the court), to report the frequent complaints that had been made concerning the latter place to the Chief Commissioner of Police immediately. – Mr. Vaughan (to the prisoner): Who told you to go to that place? – The prisoner: No one, Sir, I went with another boy, a cripple. I have been there about six times. – Mr. Vaughan: Were there many people there when you went? – The prisoner: Yes, Sir, it was always crowded. –  Mr. Vaughan: And what do you see there, little boy? –The prisoner: “Oh, they give us about three songs; then there’s some actin’, then they puts down the blind, and that’s all you see.” (Laughter.) – Mr. Vaughan: What kind of acting was it? – The prisoner: Eh? – Mr. Vaughan: What kind of acting was it?  –The prisoner: Oh; murdering and that. – Mr. Vaughan at this stage remanded the prisoner for a week.

It seems that penny bloods and penny dramas did encourage the homeless, impoverished, and children of the honest working classes to crime. The sensational texts provided would-be boy-burglars, boy-pirates, and boy highwaymen with the appropriate chap-book heroes to emulate. Oscar Wilde said “The boy-burglar is simply the inevitable result of life’s imitative instinct. He is Fact, occupied as Fact usually is, with trying to reproduce Fiction, and what we see in him is repeated on an extended scale throughout the whole of life.”[v] 

Poverty, drink and fractured family life were a more direct cause of juvenile crime. A report in The Times of December 30, 1847 is a startling example of the fatalistic attitudes carried about London by neglected children:

Mansion House. – A boy of about twelve years of age named William Lipley, was brought before the Lord mayor on the charge of stealing a piece of beef. From the statement of the officer it appeared that the prisoner belonged to a most dangerous gang of little boys, who were very much practised in robbing women in Bishopsgate-street and Leadenhall-market, and whose diminutive size gave them facilities unknown to children of larger growth. The charge was proved.

The Lord Mayor.  – Do you say that this boy is an old hand at thieving?

The Officer. – Certainly, my lord. He has been often in custody. When I caught him, I asked him where he supposed he should at last get to?

“Go to,” said he, “why to the gallows, to be sure.”

The Lord Mayor. – Did you say so, prisoner?

The Boy. – Yes; the man’s right enough. I did say so.

The prisoner was then committed to trial.

The strongest street Arabs tormented the weakest — small children, drunks, cripples, and imbeciles. One tiny girl was arrested carrying a baby which she had been tormenting by cutting its flesh with a blade, a pitiful public cry for help. Accidents, fires, and public hangings attracted riotous mobs of swearing children of “tender years.” The publisher Charles Gilpin spoke to a group engaged in lewd, obscene, and filthy conversation outside the Debtor’s door. The juveniles had spent the night in the street to secure a good view of the morning’s hanging. Young people were “children in years, but old in vice profligacy and debauchery.” Mr. Roberts of Bristol visited 167 prisoners awaiting sentence of death, of that number he claimed 165 had attended previous executions.

Not only the children. G. W. M. Reynolds wrote in his Political Instructor, under the heading A LESSON FOR THE PEOPLE,[vi] “Then what of the aristocracy? Why, at the public strangulation of the Mannings, there were present numerous scions of that oligarchical class. One “noble lord” paid ten guineas for a seat and drove down in his cab at six o’clock on the fatal morning, alighting in great Suffolk-street and repairing on foot to the house where “a window” was reserved for his special behoof (…) “gentlemen of fashion” were as plentiful on the occasion as ‘gentleman of the swell mob.”[vii]

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[i] Reynolds’s Political Instructor, Vol 1, No. 20, March 23, 1850, p.159

[ii] Reynolds’s Political Instructor, Vol 1, No. 21, March 30, 1850, p.168

[iii] The Rookeries, Reynolds’s Political Instructor, Vol 1, No. 21, March 30, 1850, p.162

[iv] The Confessions of an Unfortunate Girl, Reynolds’s Political Instructor, Vol 1, No. 16, February 23, 1850, p.122

[v] The Decay of Lying, Oscar Wilde, The Nineteenth Century, January 1889

[vi] Dec 8, 1849

[vii] In Dec 1849 The Trial of the Mannings, with their portraits was published, price three pence, “but you must ask for “Lloyd’s Edition,” as all the other editions are not sold under sixpence.”

Top of the page image is from The Street Waif by E. Harcourt Burrage, woodcut illustration by Harry Maguire, c.1884

—♠—

Jack Sheppard

William Harrison Ainsworth’s “Jack Sheppard” commenced serialization in Bentley’s Miscellany in January 1839 and came to a conclusion in February 1840. Bentley’s then re-issued the romance in fifteen monthly parts in 1840 with plates by George Cruikshank.

In George Augustus Sala’s description:

“In “Jack Sheppard” he out-Newgated Bulwer’s Newgate epics. Every student of criminal annals knows that John Sheppard, footpad and housebreaker, was a vulgar, squalid, illiterate, drunken scamp, whose only talent was one for breaking out of gaol. Ainsworth made him a dashing young blood of illicitly noble descent, who dressed sumptuously and lived luxuriously ; but even had the novelist refrained from converting this vulgar gaol-bird into a hero of romance, there was quite enough in the vigorous description of his escapes from Newgate, and the extraordinarily able illustrations thereof by George Cruikshank, to delight and enchant a public which had already been captivated by the murder and housebreaking scenes in “Oliver Twist”, and especially by George’s etchings of the death of Sikes and Fagin in the condemned cell. Harrison Ainsworth, as is well known, assumed the editorship of Bentley’s Miscellany, when the post was relinquished by Dickens, and “Jack Sheppard” followed “Oliver Twist.””

At first the book was well received, Ainsworth wrote in a letter; “Jack has made a most successful launch. Bentley is in tip-top spirits.” Within five months the critics were nipping at Ainsworth’s heels.

In Fraser’s Thackeray wrote;

“The public wanted something more extravagant still, more sympathy for thieves, and so Jack Sheppard makes his appearance. Jack and his two wives, and his faithful Blueskin, and his gin-drinking mother, that sweet Magdalen! -- with what a wonderful gravity are all their adventures related, with what an honest simplicity and vigour does Jack’s biographer record his actions and virtues.”

Ainsworth had planned a third criminal “biography,” this time with Claud Duvall as the hero, but his reputation as the “Tyburn Plutarch” led to his abandoning the Newgate romances. Claud Duvall would eventually figure in the novel “Talbot Harland.”

Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard were melodramatically staged in penny gaffs and theatres utilizing real horses in the part of Black Bess. Thomas Beggs , investigating juvenile depravity in 1849 wrote;

“The amusements of these youths are the low theatres, the dancing saloons, and entertainments of a like description. Many of the penny theatres are frequented only by boys and girls who are already thieves and prostitutes. “Jack Sheppard,” “Dick Turpin,” “Claude Duval,” and other exhibitions of dexterous and daring crimes attract the attention and ambition of these boys, and each one endeavours to emulate the conduct of his favourite hero.”

Melodramatist Chance Newton understood the appeal of the penny dreadful romance.

“I have a suspicion that, whether we confess it to ourselves or others, my otherwise gentle readers, like myself, have a special fondness for dabbling in crime stories both printed or play acted. Also that we are especially moved by the lives and adventures of the Knights of the Road, or “High Toby Merchants,” as they were wont to be called. And even the more romantic housebreakers, or crib-crackers, from Jack Sheppard downwards, we study with especial interest.”

“Moreover, that species of murderers and desperadoes known as Burkers, who gleefully slew unoffending citizens for the sake of selling their corpses to surgeons for anatomical vivisection, have also thrilled us, have they not? Far into the night have we panted with secret excitement as the Bow Street Runners gained nearer and nearer on their prey, or were spoofed from time to time by such great criminal heroes as the aforesaid Jack or his terrible traitorous companion, Jonathan Wild. And with what smothered joy have we read of such still more romantic criers of “Stand and deliver!” and “Your money or your life!” as Claude Duval, Paul Clifford, Tom King, Dick Turpin, Nick Nevison, the Golden Farmer, Jerry Abershaw, George Barrington, Old Mop, Sixteen String Jack, Springheel Jack, Scarlet Dick, and so on and so forth.”

Walter Goodman described the original version ending of Jack Sheppard as performed on the Adelphi stage in 1839.

“But this highly respectable moral speech is not quite the end of the drama, as in the next and last scene of all we are shown the exterior of Newgate in the Old Bailey, with Jonathan Wild’s house occupying most of the stage. The thief-taker has been imprisoned in his own house for some days, along with his accomplice, Mendez, and Blueskin has sworn to make them pay dearly for their various acts of villainy, should Jack Sheppard be captured and taken to the gallows. So, finding that their beloved Captain has been run to earth and is already on his way to Tyburn, Blueskin and his pals carry out their threat by setting fire to Wild’s domicile. this being done, the wretched inmates of the burning house meet with a fate which completely satisfies the audience, who have all along been thirsting for their blood; for Wild and Mendez are buried alive in the smouldering ruins when the interior of the house falls, and this last episode, of course, brings down the other house and the curtain.”

Ainsworth's Blueskin was a brutal villain -- in later penny dreadfuls he was more often depicted as a hero:

“I won’t leave go!” screamed Mrs. Wood. “Fire! -- murder! -- thieves! -- I’ve got one of them!”

“Come along,” cried Jack.

“I can’t,” answered Blueskin, “this she-devil has got hold of the sack. Leave go I tell you!” and he forced open the knife with his teeth.

“Help! - murder! - thieves! ,” screamed Mrs. Wood. “Owen -- Owen! -- Thames, help!”

“Coming!” cried Mr. Wood, leaping from the bed, “Where are you?”

“Here,” replied Mrs. Wood. “Help - I’ll hold him.”

“Leave her,” cried Jack,” darting downstairs, amid a furious ringing of bells, “the house is alarmed -- follow me!”

“Curses light on you!” cried Blueskin, savagely; “since you won’t be advised, take your fate.”

And seizing her by the hair, he pulled back her head, and drew the knife with all his force across her throat. There was a dreadful stifled groan, and she fell heavily upon the landing.

A review in The Athenaeum, Saturday, October 26, 1839 criticized George Cruikshank's illustrations:

“Jack Sheppard, then, is a bad book, and what is worse, it is of a class of bad books, got up for a bad public; and it is on this last account that we select it for observation, as a specimen of one of those literary peculiarities, which we consider to be signs of the times. If we had the means of addressing our readers with the volumes in their hands, the shortest and perhaps the best means of conveying our estimate of their contents, would be by a reference to the engraved illustrations, -- “look upon this picture and on this.”

In these graphic representations are embodied all the inherent coarseness and vulgarity of the subject; and all the horrible and (if it is not too strong to say) unnatural excitement, which a public, too prudish to relish humour, and too blasé to endure true pathos, requires to keep alive attention and to awaken a sensation. The engravings are, in fact, an epitome of the letterpress, and they seem to bear the same proportion to the entire work, that Mr. Stanfield’s beautiful scenery does to a picturesque melodrama; leaving it doubtful whether the plates were etched for the book, or the book written to illustrate the plates. Perhaps it were a better comparison to say, that the plates perform the same part in these volumes, that “the real gig” of Thurtell did on the Surrey stage; and that the authors in both cases have trusted to the oculis fidelibus, for producing that “elevation and surprise,” which their pens could not elicit from such a theme. These faithful images of “what you shall see,” beaming from the windows of booksellers shops like the baked meats and sausages depicted on the outsides of cookshops in Italy, are appeals ad hominem, not to be resisted ; and if they are signs of “that within which passeth show,” are not less so, of the tastes and appetites of those whose custom they solicit.”

The Examiner, Nov. 3, 1839, was also critical:

“We notice this “romance” with very great reluctance, because we have thought the author capable of better things. It is however in every sense of the word, so bad, and has been recommended to circulation by such disreputable means, that the silence that we meant to preserve upon the subject would be almost as great a compromise with truth as the morals of the book or the puffs of the bookseller.

Bad as we think the morals, we think the puffs more dangerous. Our silence would never have been broken if the book had been suffered to rest on its own merits. Little danger might then have been anticipated. Poisonous work is done by means of more cunning doses, nor are the ways of licentiousness, for those classes into whose hands such a book was in that case likely to fall, paved with such broad stones.

The danger is in the resources that have been called in aid; in the paragraphs that with such nauseous repetition have drugged every town and country paper; and in the adaptations of the “romance” that are alike rife in the low smoking-rooms, the common barber’s shops, the cheap reading places, the private booksellers’, and the minor theatres.

Jack Sheppard is the attraction at the Adelphi; Jack Sheppard is the bill of fare at the Surrey; Jack Sheppard is the choice example of morals and conduct held forth to the young citizens at the City of London; Jack Sheppard reigns over the Victoria; Jack Sheppard rejoices crowds in the Pavilion; Jack Sheppard is the favourite at the Queen’s; and at Sadler’s Wells there is no profit but of Jack Sheppard. In every one of these places the worst passages of a book whose spirit and tendency we are about to describe to our readers, are served up in the most attractive form to all the candidates for hulks or rope - and especially the youthful ones - that infest this vast city. Mr. Ainsworth superintends “rehearsals” in person, and Mr. Cruikshank in person assists the arrangement of “pictures.” Mr. Ainsworth also travels about with assistance for the various adapters; honours Mr. Moncrieff with visits to supply materials for his closing scenes, and has his visits duly chronicled; and writes to Mr. Davidge a public approval, which is advertised every morning in the Times and Chronicle and Post , of the very worst specimen of rank garbage thus stewed up at these places of amusement. In this we see danger. We should say, indeed, that since Tom and Jerry crowded the theatres with thieves and the streets with brawlers, or since the doings and the histories of Messrs. Moffat and Haggard hurried their various victims to the gallows, public morality and public decency have rarely been more endangered than by the trumpeted exploits of Jack Sheppard. All the original insignificance of the thing is lost, in the pernicious influences that are set at work around it.”