TO THE CITIZENS OF LONDON AND WESTMINSTER
Gentlemen, — Experience has confirmed you in that everlasting maxim, that there is no other way to protect the innocent but by punishing the guilty.
Crimes ever were, and ever must be, unavoidably frequent in such populous cities as yours are, being the necessary consequences either of the wants or the depravity of the lowest part of the human species.
At this time the most flagrant offences, as burning of dwellings, burglaries, and highway robberies, abound; and frauds, common felonies, and forgeries are practised without number; thus not only your properties, but even your very lives, are every way struck at.
The legislative power has not been wanting in providing necessary and wholesome laws against the evils, the executive part whereof (according to your great privileges) is lodged in your own hands. And the administration hath at all times applied proper remedies and regulations to the defects which have happened in the magistracy more immediately under their jurisdiction.
Through the just and salutary severities of the magistrates, public excessive gaming has been in a manner suppressed, and some late examples of divine vengeance have overtaken certain of the most notorious lewd prostitutes of the town, which, together with the laudable endeavours of the great and worthy societies, has given no small check to that enormous and spreading vice.
But here’s a criminal bids defiance to your laws and justice, who declared and has manifested that the bars are not made that can either keep him out or keep him in, and accordingly hath a second time fled from the very bosom of death.
His history will astonish; and is not composed of fiction, fable, or stories placed at York, Rome, or Jamaica, but facts done at your doors, facts unheard of, altogether new, incredible, and yet uncontestable.
He is gone once more upon his wicked range in the world. Restless vengeance is pursuing; and, gentlemen, ‘t is to be hoped that she will be assisted by your endeavours to bring to justice this notorious offender.
THE LIFE OF JOHN SHEPPARD, &c.
This John Sheppard, a youth both in age and person, though an old man in sin, was born in the parish of Stepney, near London, in the year 1702, a son, grandson, and great-grandson of a carpenter. His father died when he was so very young that he could not recollect that ever he saw him. Thus the burden of his maintenance, together with his brother’s and sister’s, lay upon the shoulders of the widow mother, who soon procured an admittance of her son John into the workhouse in Bishopsgate Street, where he continued for the space of a year and a half, and in that time received an education sufficient to qualify him for the trade his mother designed him, viz., a carpenter. Accordingly, she was recommended to Mr Wood, in Wych Street, near Drury Lane, as a master capable of entertaining and instructing her son. They agreed, and bound he was for the space of seven years. The lad proved an early proficient, had a ready and ingenious hand, and soon became master of his business, and gave entire satisfaction to his master’s customers, and had the character of a very sober and orderly boy. But, alas, unhappy youth! before he had completed six years of his apprenticeship he commenced a fatal acquaintance with one Elizabeth Lyon, otherwise called Edgworth Bess, from a town of that name in Middlesex, where she was born, the reputed wife of a foot-soldier, and who lived a wicked and debauched life; and our young carpenter became enamoured of her, and they must cohabit together as man and wile.
Now was laid the foundation of his ruin. Sheppard grows weary of the yoke of servitude, and began to dispute with his master, telling him that his way of jobbing from house to house was not sufficient to furnish him with a due experience in his trade, and that if he would not set out to undertake some buildings, he would step into the world for better information. Mr Wood, a mild, sober, honest man, indulged him; and Mrs Wood with tears exhorted him against the company of this lewd prostitute. But her man, prompted and hardened by his harlot, d—n’d her blood, and threw a stick at his mistress, and beat her to the ground. And being with his master at work at Mr Britt’s, the Sun Ale-house, near Islington, upon a very trivial occasion fell upon his master, and beat and bruised him in a most barbarous and shameful manner. Such a sudden and deplorable change was there in the behaviour of this promising young man. Next ensued a neglect of duty, both to God and his master, lying out of nights, perpetual jarrings, and animosities; these and such like were the consequences of his intimacy with this she-lion, who by the sequel will appear to have been a main loadstone in attracting him up to this eminence of guilt.
Mr Wood having reason to suspect that Sheppard had robbed a neighbour, began to be in great fear and terror for himself, and when his man came not home in due season at nights, barred him out; but he made a mere jest of the locks and bolts, and entered in and out at pleasure; and when Mr Wood and his wife have had all the reason in the world to believe him locked out, they have found him very quiet in his bed the next morning, such was the power of his early magic.
Edgworth Bess having stolen a gold ring from a gentleman whom she had picked up in the streets, was sent to St Giles’s round-house. Sheppard went immediately to his consort, and after a short discourse with Mr Brown, the beadle, and his wife, who had the care of the place, he fell upon the poor old couple, took the keys from them, and let his lady out at the door, in spite of all the outcries and opposition they were capable of making.
About July 1723, he was, by his master, sent to perform a repair at the house of Mr Bains, a piece-broker in Whitehorse Yard; he from thence stole a roll of fustian, containing twenty-four yards, which was afterwards found in his trunk. This is supposed to be the first robbery he ever committed; and it was not long ere he repeated another upon this same Mr Bains by breaking into his house in the night time, and taking out of the till seven pounds in money, and goods to the value of fourteen pounds more. How he entered this house was a secret till his being last committed to Newgate, when he confessed that he took up the iron bars at the cellar window, and after he had done his business he nailed them down again, so that Mr Bains never believed his house had been broke; and an innocent woman, a lodger in the house, lay all the while under the weight of a suspicion of committing the robbery.
Sheppard and his master had now parted, ten months before the expiration of his apprenticeship - a woeful parting to the former. He was gone from a good and careful patronage, and lay exposed to, and complied with, the temptations of the most wicked wretches this town could afford, as Joseph Blake, alias Blueskin, William Field, Doleing, James Sykes, alias Hell and Fury, which last was the first that betrayed and put him into the hands of justice, as will presently appear.
Having deserted his master’s service, he took shelter in the house of Mr Charles, in Mayfair, near Piccadilly, and his landlord having a necessity for some repairs in his house, engaged one Mr Panton, a carpenter, to undertake them, and Sheppard to assist him as a journeyman; but on the 23rd of October 1723, ere the work was complete, Sheppard took occasion to rob the people of the effects following - viz., seven pounds ten shillings in specie, five large silver spoons, six plain forks ditto, four tea-spoons, six plain gold rings and a cipher ring, four suits of wearing apparel, besides linen to a considerable value. This fact he confessed to the Rev. Mr Wagstaff before his escape from the condemned hold of Newgate.
Sheppard had a brother named Thomas, a carpenter by profession, though a notorious thief and house-breaker by practice. This Thomas being committed to Newgate for breaking the house of Mrs Mary Cook, a linen-draper in Clare Market, on the 5th of February last, and stealing goods to the value of between fifty and sixty pounds, he impeached his brother, John Sheppard, and Edgworth Bess as being concerned with him in the fact; and these three were also charged with being concerned together in breaking the house of
