[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> George Cruikshank —> Next]
Jack Sheppard committing the Robbery in Willesden Church
George Cruikshank
May 1839
Etching
11.7 x 9.8 cm
"Epoch the Second, 1715. Thames Darrell," Vol. 2, Ch. 15, "The Robbery at Willesden Church," in William Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard. A Romance, Volume II, facing the title-page.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
[You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Every old country church is beautiful, but Willesden is the most beautiful country church we know; and in Mrs. Sheppard's time it was even more beautiful than at present, when the hand of improvement has proceeded a little too rashly with alterations and repairs. With one or two exceptions, there were no pews; and, as the intercourse with London was then but slight, the seats were occupied almost exclusively by the villagers. In one of these seats, at the end of the aisle farthest removed from the chancel, the widow took her place, and addressed herself fervently to her devotions.
The service had not proceeded far, when she was greatly disturbed by the entrance of a person who placed himself opposite her, and sought to attract her attention by a number of little arts, surveying her, as he did so, with a very impudent and offensive stare. With this person — who was no other than Mr. Kneebone — she was too well acquainted; having, more than once, been obliged to repel his advances; and, though his impertinence would have given her little concern at another season, it now added considerably to her distraction. But a far greater affliction was in store for her.
Just as the clergyman approached the altar, she perceived a boy steal quickly into the church, and ensconce himself behind the woollen-draper, who, in order to carry on his amatory pursuits with greater convenience, and at the same time display his figure (of which he was not a little vain) to the utmost advantage, preferred a standing to a sitting posture. Of this boy she had only caught a glimpse; — but that glimpse was sufficient to satisfy her it was her son, — and, if she could have questioned her own instinctive love, she could not question her antipathy, when she beheld, partly concealed by a pillar immediately in the rear of the woollen-draper, the dark figure and truculent features of Jonathan Wild. As she looked in this direction, the thief-taker raised his eyes — those gray, blood-thirsty eyes! — their glare froze the life-blood in her veins.
As she averted her gaze, a terrible idea crossed her. Why was he there? why did the tempter dare to invade that sacred spot! She could not answer her own questions, but vague fearful suspicions passed through her mind. Meanwhile, the service proceeded; and the awful command, "Thou shalt not steal!" was solemnly uttered by the preacher, when Mrs. Sheppard, who had again looked round towards her son, beheld a hand glance along the side of the woollen-draper. She could not see what occurred, though she guessed it; but she saw Jonathan's devilish triumphing glance, and read in it, — "Your son has committed a robbery — here — in these holy walls — he is mine — mine for ever!"
She uttered a loud scream, and fainted. — Vol. 2, Ch. 15, "The Robbery at Willesden Church," pp. 48-50.
Having supported Jonathan Wild's false accusation of Thames Darrell about the theft of Lady Trafford's miniature, the anti-hero, Jack Sheppard, now embarks upon a life of crime by committing a robbery during a church service in the little village of Willesden, where his mother is now living. The scene should, in theory, owe something to William Hogarth's The Sleeping Congregation, but in fact owes rather more to an earlier Cruikshank engraving for Oliver Twist, Oliver amazed at the Dodger's mode of going to work (July 1837), in which the protagonist is shocked to discover the real meaning of Fagin's pickpocketing game with the boys. Here, however, the protagonist is hardly the blameless onlooker, but the conscious malefactor. The moral observer in this case is equally shocked, but Mrs. Sheppard is not the only one who observes the robbery in progress, for the malevolent Jonathan Wild (right) seems to be behind her son's crime. Whereas the victim in perusing a book at the stall in the Dickens illustration, Mr. Brownlow, is oblivious to the Dodger's slight of hand, here the fashionably attired gentleman, Mr. Kneebone, attending to the divine service, is utterly unaware of Jack's picking his pocket.
Having been ejected from The Crossed Shovels in the Mint, where Blueskin has initiated her son into debauchery with the local prostitutes Edgeworth Bess and Poll Maggot, Mrs. Sheppard reluctantly returns to the picturesque, little village of Willesden without knowing Jack's fate. He seems bent on taking up a life of crime as he vows to turn "cracksman" and burgle the house of his stepfather. Ainsworth describes the idyllic scene that Jack and the master criminal, Jonathan Wild, are about to violate, their victim being none other than "Captain" Kneebone, who is displaying his figure and lavishing his unwonted attention on Mrs. Sheppard in the back of the country church, in the tranquil village desribed briefly by Ainsworth:
What a contrast did the lovely scene she now gazed upon present to the squalid neighbourhood she had recently quitted! On all sides, expanded prospects of country the most exquisite and most varied. Immediately beneath her lay Willesden, — the most charming and secluded village in the neighbourhood of the metropolis — with its scattered farm-houses, its noble granges, and its old grey church-tower just peeping above a grove of rook-haunted trees. — Vol. 2, Chapter 15, p. 47.
The theatrical presenter of Jack Sheppard's initiation as a criminal is the smirking Jonathan Wild, gloating behind his hat as he regards the viewer. For the sake of effectiveness in the composition, Cruikshank has eliminated the pillar which partially obscures Mrs. Sheppard's view of Jonathan Wild. Perhaps because the scene would suggest pews to the average reader, Cruikshank has deviated from the text, which describes the parishioners as seated in chairs. As in the text, however, there is no internal conflict here, no attempt on the part of the illustrator to probe Jack Sheppard's consciousness or imply a crisis of conscience at his first criminal act. Whereas the text presents the scene from the shocked perspective of Jack's mother, Cruikshank records the visible and concretedetails of the church interior, with the leering Jonathan Wild is the master of ceremonies, shadowing Jack's movements from this point onward — for example, "peering around the curtain unobserved" (Meisel, 269) in Mrs. Sheppard expostulating with her Son (June 1839), closing out "Epoch the Second."
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. Edited by Edward Jacobs and Manuela Mourao. With 31 illustrations. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2007.
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Bradbury and Evans; Chapman and Hall, 1846.
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.
Last modified 22 December 2016