Jack Sheppard [Laws L6]

DESCRIPTION: Jack Sheppard, the apprentice of carpenter William Woods, is scorned by his master's daughter. After marrying two (!) women, he seeks to rob Woods, is captured, but is freed by an accomplice. Imprisoned, he escapes again, but is at last taken and hanged
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1928 (Mackenzie-BalladsAndSeaSongsFromNovaScotia)
KEYWORDS: courting robbery outlaw execution apprentice
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1724 - execution of Jack Sheppard
FOUND IN: Canada(Mar)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Laws L6, "Jack Sheppard"
Mackenzie-BalladsAndSeaSongsFromNovaScotia 127, "Jack Sheppard" (1 text)
DT 568, JCKSHEPP
Roud #1903
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Nix My Dolly Pals Fake Away" (subject)
NOTES [374 words]: There are a number of Jack Sheppard broadsides, including song collections, in the Bodleian catalog, but I don't find this song; see, for example, the eight songs headed "Jack Sheppard's Songs" [Bodleian, Harding B 11(1841),..., unknown, n.d.]. There is no question, though, that Mackenzie-BalladsAndSeaSongsFromNovaScotia 127 is Laws L6: it is Laws's only reference. - BS
Nor does it seem to have turned up in tradition anywhere else; one wonders why Laws listed it as a current traditional song rather than relegating it to the list of doubtful songs.
Sheppard was a real person; according to Benet, p. 1023, he was born c. 1701 to a carpenter in Smithfield. He turned highwayman at a young age.
By 1724 he was captured; he twice escaped from Newgate, but was caught again and executed in that year. Such was his fame that, according to Sharpe, p. 84, his gaolers earned hundreds of pounds by granting admission to see him.
Daniel Defoe wrote a romance about him (titled, naturally, Jack Sheppard) in the year of his execution, and W. H. Ainsworth -- the man who created the legend of Dick Turpin and Black Bess (see the notes to "My Bonny Black Bess (II) (Poor Black Bess; Dick Turpin's Ride)" [Laws L9]) -- also wrote about him in 1839 (Sharpe, p. 161). This book was very successful, and spawned a flurry of Sheppard publications and plays (Sharpe, p. 162).
Even more notably, according to Brumwell/Speck, p. 149, the character Macheath in Gay's "Beggar's Opera" is a "thinly veiled portrait" of Sheppard. Which means (according to Wikipedia) that Sheppard is the ultimate inspiration for Brecht and Weill's Macheath, or "Mackie Messer"/"Mack the Knife."
W. Harrison Ainsworth, the historical falsifier responsible for giving us Black Bess and Turpin's Ride, also cranked out a book, "Jack Sheppard: A Romance." Those looking for something which might have a scintilla of truth in it might be interested rather in Christopher Hibbert's "The road to Tyburn: the story of Jack Sheppard and the eighteenth-century London underworld."
Anderson, p. 75, prints a piece. "Jack Sheppard the Second or the Sweep's Escape from Newgate." Obviously it was inspired by the historical Sheppard, but I have no idea if the songs have any relation. - RBW
Bibliography

Anderson: Hugh Anderson, Farewell to Judges and Juries: The Broadside Ballad and Convict Transportation to Australia, 1788-1868, Red Rooster Press, 2000
Benet: William Rose Benet, editor, The Reader's Encyclopdedia, first edition, 1948 (I use the four-volume Crowell edition but usually check it against the single volume fourth edition edited by Bruce Murphy and published 1996 by Harper-Collins)
Brumwell/Speck: Stephen Brumwell and W. A. Speck, Cassell's Companion to Eighteenth-Century Britain, Cassell & Co., 2001
Sharpe: James Sharpe, Dick Turpin: The Myth of the English Highwayman, Profile Books, 2004 (I use the 2005 paperback edition)

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File: LL06

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