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As soon as he was certain he should be disturbed no more, Jack set to work, and with the aid of the file in less than an hour had freed himself from his fetters. With Bess's assistance he then climbed up to the window, which, as has just been stated, was secured by iron bars of great thickness crossed by a stout beam of oak. The very sight of these impediments, would have appalled a less courageous spirit than Sheppard's — but nothing could daunt him. To work then he went, and with wonderful industry filed off two of the iron bars. Just as he completed this operation, the file broke. The oaken beam, nine inches in thickness, was now the sole but most formidable obstacle to his flight. With his gimblet he contrived to bore a number of holes so close together that at last one end of the bar, being completely pierced through, yielded; and pursuing the same with the other extremity, it fell out altogether.

This last operation was so fatiguing, that for a short time he was obliged to pause to recover the use of his fingers. He then descended; and having induced Bess to take off some part of her clothing, he tore the gown and petticoat into shreds and twisted them into a sort of rope which he fastened to the lower bars of the window. With some difficulty he contrived to raise her to the window, and with still greater difficulty to squeeze her through it​— her bulk being much greater than his own. He then made a sort of running noose, passed it over her body, and taking firmly hold of the bars, prepared to guide her descent. But Bess could scarcely summon resolution enough to hazard the experiment; and it was only on Jack's urgent intreaties, and even threats, that she could be prevailed on to trust herself to the frail tenure of the rope he had prepared. At length, however, she threw herself off; and Jack carefully guiding the rope she landed in safety.

The next moment he was by her side.

But the great point was still unaccomplished. They had escaped from the New Prison, it is true; but the of Clerkenwell Bridewell, by which that jail was formerly surrounded, and which was more than twenty feet high, and protected by formidable and bristling chevaux de frise, remained to be scaled. Jack, however, had an expedient for mastering this difficulty. He ventured to the great gates, and by inserting his gimblets into the wood at intervals, so as to form points upon which he could rest his foot, he contrived, to ascend them; and when at the top, having fastened a portion of his dress to the spikes, he managed, not without considerable risk, to draw up his female companion. Once over the iron spikes, Bess exhibited no reluctance to be let down on the other side of the wall. Having seen his mistress safe down, Jack instantly descended, leaving the best part of his clothes, as a memorial of his flight, to the jailor.

And thus he effected his escape from the New Prison.​— Vol. 2, "Epoch the Third, 1724. The Prison Breaker," Chapter 4, "Jack Sheppard's Escape from the New Prison," pp. 163-165.

Commentary

The printer — Samuel Bentley (1785–1868), the publisher's brother — seems to have placed this illustration in the wrong chapter. The prison break depicted in the illustration has a caption clearly stating that Jack Sheppard and Edgeworth Bess are escaping from Clerkenwell Prison, and the and nasty-looking spikes (the chevaux de frise)​at the bottom of the illustration do sit atop the twenty-foot wall of the Clerkenwell Bridewell. Nonetheless, the second volume of the 1839 triple-decker placed this engraving near Ainsworth's description of Old Newgate in Chapter 10 of​"Epoch the Third, 1724. The Prison Breaker."​In theory, this should have been juxtaposed against p. 164 as it was the second illustration for the July 1839 instalment of the novel in Bentley's Miscellany. Consequently, it would appear that the printer simply inserted the engraving in the wrong place in the second volume, even though the list of illustrations in the first volume correctly stipulated where the illustration should appear in Volume 2. The error was corrected in the 1854 Routledge edition of the novel, in which the appropriate passage faces the plate.

In the sequence of events in the first four chapters in "Epoch the Third," Jack is so appalled by Blueskin's murdering Mrs. Wood that he announces in turning the swag over to Jonathan Wild that he intends to emigrate and renounce his life of crime. When Wild vetoes this notion, asserting that Jack is his slave, Jack defies him. However, he and Blueskin have barely begun to drink at the Crossed Shovels in the Mint before a posse of constables led by Wild's confederates Quilt Arnold and Abraham Mendez arrest Jack and his doxy, Edgeworth Bess, and incarcerate the couple in one of the strongest cells of Clerkenwell Prison — significantly, Blueskin successfully eludes Wild's minions. Undeterred by the difficulties that his cell presents, Jack determines to escape, and, utilizing the tools smuggled in by Blueskin disguised as a curious old man, does so.

The improbabilities of the escape, particularly the disguised Blueskin's bringing in the necessary tools and Bess's being able to hide them from the turnkey (to say nothing of Bess's having been jailed with Jack), the reader tends to overlook as he or she admires Jack's determination to thwart Jonathan Wild. Since he profited from the expedition to the Woods' house and is as complicit in Mrs. Wood's murder as Jack, the reader is prepared to interpret Jack's breaking out of the New Prison as escaping injustice rather than cheating the law. The presence of Bess in the cell and the necessity of effecting her release, too, renders Jack's escape more challenging and his ultimate success all the more remarkable. In the Cruikshank illustration, Jack is lowering Bess down to the yard of the bridewell (poorhouse), having destroyed the wooden brace in the window.

One-third of the illustration, the right-hand register, is not occupied by buildings or the prison, but a largely natural environment, with a spire indicating the presence of a country church. The tranquil countryside, over which clouds race, contrasts the bristling iron spikes designed to frustrate prison escapes. The lithesome figure of Edgeworth Bess is highlighted as if a halo surrounds her body as she descends by means of a rope made from her own gown. She looks down, towards the ground some twenty feet below her (the very height of the wall that she has yet to climb) while Jack regards her, determinedly releasing slowly the makeshift rope that Bess is holding. Half of the escape still lies ahead in the Cruikshank illustration, but freedom (as exemplified by the countryside in the right-hand margin) lies before them. Once out of the prison, Jack must return to the corrupt world of the metropolis and confront the satanic Jonathan Wild.

Although earlier sources do not mention the Cheveaux de frise on top of the wall, the anonymous The Life of Jack Sheppard (circa 1830) specifically shows a row of bristling spikes in one of its illustrations (Jacobs and Mourao, 286), and this would seem to have influenced both Ainsworth's description and Cruikshank's realisation. Although Cruikshank's illustration implies that the Bridwell and New Prison were located south of the Thames, adjacent to open country, the seventeenth-century prison was in fact in the County of Middlesex, in central London. Listed by journalist and novelist Daniel Defoe as one of London's twenty-two prisons and gaols in A Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-26), the Clerkenwell Prison had a "Bridewell" or house of correction and detention facility for those who had committed petty crimes or were simply poor and unemployed. Jack Sheppard and Edgeworth Bess have been incarcerated in the New Prison, a facility designed to hold those awaiting trial. Since only Ainsworth's 1830 source mentions the Cheveaux de frise, it is quite possible that such a design feature was not present when the action occurs, in 1724, but that his readers would have expected a reference to so obvious an impediment to Jack's escaping with his mistress. Since the sixteenth-century prison was rebuilt many times before its final demolition in 1902, it is likely that the edifice of the 1720s did not much resemble that with which Ainsworth and Cruikshank would have been familiar.

Bibliography

Ainsworth, William Harrison. Jack Sheppard. A Romance. With 28 illustrations by George Cruikshank. In three volumes. London: Richard Bentley, 1839.

Ainsworth, William Harrison. Jack Sheppard. A Romance. With 28 illustrations by George Cruikshank. (in a single volume). London: Routledge, 1854.

Ainsworth, William Harrison. Jack Sheppard. Edited by Edward Jacobs and Manuela Mourao. With 31 illustrations. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2007.

Clark, Kenneth. Chapter 10, "The Smile of Reason." Civilisation. London: BBC and John Murray, 1969, rpt. 1975. Pp. 244-267.

Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Bradbury and Evans; Chapman and Hall, 1846.

Forster, John. "Review." The Examiner, 1657 (3 November 1839): 691-693; rpt., William Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard, ed. Edward Jacobs and Manuela Mourao. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2007, pp. 509-519.

Meisel, Martin. Chapter 13, "Novels in Epitome." Realizations: Narrative, Pictorial, and Theatrical Arts in Nineteenth-Century England. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Pp. 247-282.

Sutherland, John. "Jack Sheppard" in The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 19893. Pp. 323-324.

Vann, J. Don. "Jack Sheppard in Bentley's Miscellany, January 1839 — February 1840." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. Page 19.

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