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The Escape, No. 2
George Cruikshank
December 1839
Four Etchings each 5.0 cm square
11 x 10 cm
"Epoch the Third, 1724. The Prison Breaker," Vol. 3, for Chapter 19, "The Chapel" in William Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard. A Romance, facing page 167.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Completely overcome by fatigue, with strained muscles, and bruised hands; streaming with perspiration, and with lips so parched that he would gladly have parted with a treasure if he had possessed it for a draught of water; he sank against the wall, and while in this state was seized with, a sudden and strange alarm. He fancied that the turnkeys had discovered his flight and were in pursuit of him, — that they had climbed up the chimney, — entered the Red Room, — tracked him from door to door, and were now only detained by the gate which he had left unbroken in the chapel. He even thought he could detect the voice of Jonathan, urging and directing them.
So strongly was he impressed with this idea, that grasping the iron bar with both hands, he dashed it furiously against the door, making the passage echo with the blows.
By degrees, his fears vanished, and hearing nothing, he grew calmer. His spirits revived, and encouraging himself with the idea that the present impediment, though the greatest, was the last, he set himself seriously to consider how it might best be overcome.
On reflection, it occurred to him that he might, perhaps, be able to loosen the iron fillet; a notion no sooner conceived than executed. With incredible labour, and by the aid of both spike and nail, he succeeded in getting the point of the bar beneath the fillet. Exerting all his energies, and using the bar as a lever, he forced off the iron band, which was full seven feet high, seven inches wide, and two thick, and which brought with it in its fall the box of the lock and the socket of the bolt, leaving no further hinderance.
Overjoyed beyond measure at having vanquished this apparently-insurmountable obstacle, Jack darted through the door. — Chapter XIX, "The Chapel," p. 166-167.
A short flight of steps brought him to a dark passage, into which he plunged. Here he found another strong door, making the fifth he had encountered. Well aware that the doors in this passage were much stronger than those in the entry he had just quitted he was neither surprised nor dismayed to find it fastened by a lock of unusual size. After repeatedly trying to remove the plate, which was so firmly screwed down that it resisted all his efforts, and vainly attempting to pick it with the spike and nail; he, at length, after half an hour's ineffectual labour, wrenched off the box by means of the iron bar, and the door, as he laughingly expressed it, "became his humble servant." — Chapter XIX, "The Chapel," p. 163-164.
But this difficulty was only overcome to be succeeded by one still greater. Hastening along the passage he came to the sixth door. For this he was prepared; but he was not prepared for the almost insurmountable obstacles which it presented. Running his hand hastily over it, he was startled to find it one complicated mass of bolts and bars. It seemed as if all the precautions previously taken were here accumulated. Any one less courageous than himself would have abandoned the attempt from a conviction of its utter hopelessness; but, though it might for a moment damp his ardour, it could not deter him.
Once again, he passed his hand over the surface and carefully noted all the obstacles. There was a lock, apparently more than a foot wide, strongly plated, and girded to the door with thick iron hoops. Below it a prodigiously large bolt was shot into the socket, and, in order to keep it there, was fastened by a hasp, and further protected by an immense padlock. Besides this, the door was crossed and recrossed by iron bars, clenched by broad-headed nails. An iron fillet secured the socket of the bolt and the box of the lock to the main post of the doorway. — Chapter XIX, "The Chapel," p. 164-165.
Nothing disheartened by this survey, Jack set to work upon the lock, which he attacked with all his implements; — now attempting to pick it with the nail; — now to wrench it off with the bar: but all without effect. He not only failed in making any impression, but seemed to increase the difficulties, for after an hour's toil he had broken the nail and slightly bent the iron bar. — Chapter XIX, "The Chapel," p. 165.
On reflection, it occurred to him that he might, perhaps, be able to loosen the iron fillet; a notion no sooner conceived than executed. With incredible labour, and by the aid of both spike and nail, he succeeded in getting the point of the bar beneath the fillet. Exerting all his energies, and using the bar as a lever, he forced off the iron band, which was full seven feet high, seven inches wide, and two thick, and which brought with it in its fall the box of the lock and the socket of the bolt, leaving no further hinderance. — Chapter XIX, "The Chapel," p. 167.
The basis for the "legend" of Jack Sheppard is the celebrated and previously thought impossible escape from the Castle, the strongest cell in the prison-fortress of Newgate in central London. Ainsworth utilized sources that lend his thrilling limited omniscient a high degree of verisimilitude: Langley's An Accurate Description of Newgate . . . Written for the Publick Good. By B. L. of Twickenham (London: T. Warner, 1724), Daniel Defoe's first-person account The History of the remarkable Life of John Sheppard, Containing A Particular Account of his Many Robberies and Escapes (London: Applebee, 19 October 1724) and Defoe's A Narrative of all the Robberies, Escapes, &C. of John Sheppard: Giving an Exact Description of the manner of his wonderful Escape from the CASTLE in Newgate, and of the Methods he took afterwards for his Security (London: Applebee, 1724). The ten Cruikshank miniatures constitute a visual re-telling of Jack's ingenious escape rather than a mere visual accompaniment to Ainsworth's text. For Cruikshank, the climax is not the hanging of Jack Sheppard, but his re-capture in the churchyard at Willesden by Jack's nemesis, Jonathan Wild and his agents, in Jonathan Wild seizing Jack Sheppard at his Mother's Grave in Chapter XXVI, "Mrs. Sheppard's Funeral" in the January 1840 instalment in Bentley's Miscellany.
This series of short chapters (17-23) illustrated constitutes what was the December 1839 instalment in Bentley's Miscellany, accompanied by the three Escape from Newgate illustrations already published in the November triple-decker. Mirroring Ainsworth's innovative documentary re-telling of the celebrated escape, Cruikshank presents the same material visually, in a series of vignettes that demonstrate each of the challenges that Jack confronted and his growing confidence as he breaks out of eighteenth-century England's stoutest prison-fortress. Armed with only his indefatigable resourcefulness and an iron bar torn from the chimney of his cell, Jack accomplishes the seemingly impossible through his understanding of locks, building construction, and the layout of the prison, all of which dictate that his pathway to freedom lies upward, towards the roof. The illustrations, unfortunately, lack the intense suspense of Ainsworth's third-person, limited omniscient narrative. Unusually, the entire sequence, "Escapes, 1 through 3," appeared in the December 1839 issue of Bentley's Miscellany, as the third, showing Jack approaching freedom on the prison roof, is a necessary climax to the visual sequence. However, in the third volume, although associated with the conclusion of Chapter XX and given in the index for the first volume as facing p. 174, the third escape engraving does not occur until p. 222, that is, inside Chapter XXV, the second chapter of the January 1840 instalment.
Concerned with authenticity in this most historical segment of Ainsworth's novel, designer George Cruikshank breaks down the heroic escape from the strongest cell in Newgate into ten components, the first two of which composite engravings are composed of four interior miniatures, and the last of which are two horizontal rectangles showing Jack on the prison roof, making his way to freedom by an open garret doorway. In this first stage of the escape, Cruikshank's thumbnails are each 5.0 cm high by 5.0 cm wide, with a left to right movement, above and below as he enters to Chapel. In this second sequence, again, all set inside Newgate Prison, trusting that the gaoler, Austin, having made his final check on the prisoner at 3:00 P. M., will not return to check on him until the following day, Jack uses the time to make his way out of the prison at 8:00 P. M., just as dusk is setting in, and his presence in the street, manacled and disheveled, will not elicit attention.
Throughout these escape vignettes, one has the sense that one could step into these realistically rendered spaces which include only those features which Ainsworth has specified. For a caricatural and satirical illustrator such as Cruikshank, these are unusually "minimalist" settings. Since an iron bar in the flue had blocked his way on the first attempt, Jack dismantles the chimney, and uses the iron bar (seen clearly in all four frames of this second composite illustration) as a tool during his escape, and as a weapon thereafter. Again, Cruikshank shows Jack as small in the first two miniatures (above), dwarfed by the grating of the Chapel, but larger in the lower two, as he destroys the massive, iron-studded door and its enormous lock. The overall effect of the four miniatures again is of a stop-action film, a medium of course with which Cruikshank would have been utterly familiar; however, the repetition of a key figure in different backdrops had long been a visual artist's way of conveying a narrative, as in the Legend of St. Francis by Giotto di Bondone in the Basilica of St. Francis at Assisi (circa 1300) in twenty-eight frames, and by Sassetta of Sienna (in the altarpiece for San Francesco in Borgo Sansepolcro, 1437-44) in seven frames.
The illustration is juxtaposed against the final paragraphs of Chapter 19, when Jack escapes from the interior of the prison, darting through the door just as the reader quickly turns the page to encounter the momentary freedom of the roof (the leads) in the twentieth chapter, the central chapter of the December 1839 instalment. Only two instalments, each with two illustrations, remained, forcing Cruikshank do adopt the strategy of the composite engraving again in two complementary composites, The procession of Jack Sheppard from Newgate to Tyburn and The Last Scene, to which for the volume edition he added a tailpiece, the wooden grave-marker of the eighteenth-century's greatest escape artist.
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 24 December 2016