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The Escape, No. 1
George Cruikshank
December 1839
Four Etchings each 5.0 cm square
11.1 x 10 cm
"Epoch the Third, 1724. The Prison Breaker," Vol. 3, for Ch. 17, "The Iron Bar," Ch. 18, "The Red Room," and Chapter 19, "The Chapel" in William Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard. A Romance, facing page 159.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Jack Sheppard's first object was to free himself from his handcuffs. This he accomplished by holding the chain that connected them firmly between his teeth, and squeezing his fingers as closely together as possible, succeeded in drawing his wrists through the manacles. He next twisted the heavy gyves round and round, and partly by main strength, partly by a dexterous and well-applied jerk, sapped asunder the central link by which they were attached to the padlock. Taking off his stockings, he then drew up the basils as far as he was able, and tied the fragments of the broken chain to his legs, to prevent them from clanking, and impeding his future exertions.
Jack's former attempt to pass up the chimney, it may be remembered, was obstructed by an iron bar. To remove this obstacle it was necessary make an extensive breach in the wall. With the broken links of the chain, which served him in lieu of more efficient implements, he commenced operations just above the chimney-piece, and soon contrived to pick a hole in the plaster.
He found the wall, as he suspected, solidly constructed of brick and stone; and with the slight and inadequate tools which he possessed, it was a work of infinite labour and skill to get out a single brick. That done, however, he was well aware the rest would be comparatively easy, and as he threw the brick to the ground, he exclaimed triumphantly, "The first step is taken— the main difficulty is overcome."— Chapter 17, "The Iron Bar," p. 151-152.
Before proceeding with his task, he considered whether it would be possible to barricade the door; but, reflecting that the bar would be an indispensable assistant in his further efforts, he abandoned the idea, and determined to rely implicitly on that good fortune which had hitherto attended him on similar occasions.
Having once more got into the chimney, he climbed to a level with the ward above, and recommenced operations as vigorously as before. He was now aided with a powerful implement, with which he soon contrived to make a hole in the wall.
"Every brick I take out," cried Jack, as fresh rubbish clattered down the chimney, "brings me nearer my mother." — Chapter 17, ""The Iron Bar," p. 156.
The ward into which Jack was endeavouring to break was called the Red Room, from the circumstance of its walls having once been painted in that colour; all traces of which had, however, long since disappeared. Like the Castle, which it resembled in all respects except that it was destitute even of a barrack-bedstead, the Red Room was reserved for state-prisoners, and had not been occupied since the year 1716, when the jail, as has before been mentioned, was crowded by the Preston rebels.
Having made a hole in the wall sufficiently large to pass through, Jack first tossed the bar into the room and then crept after it. As soon as he had gained his feet, he glanced round the bare blank walls of the cell, and, oppressed by the musty, close atmosphere, exclaimed, "I'll let a little fresh air into this dungeon. They say it hasn't been opened for eight years — but I won't be eight years in getting out of it. — Chapter 18, "The Red Room," p. 157.
On examining the door, he found it secured by a large rusty lock, which he endeavoured to pick with the nail he had just acquired; but all his efforts proving ineffectual, he removed the plate that covered it with the bar, and with his fingers contrived to draw back the bolt.
Opening the door he then stepped into a dark narrow passage leading, as he was well aware, to the chapel. On the left there were doors communicating with the King's Bench Ward and the Stone Ward, two large holds on the Master Debtors' side. But Jack was too well versed in the geography of the place to attempt either of them. Indeed, if he had been ignorant of it, the sound of voices which he could faintly distinguish, would have served as a caution to him. — Chapter 18, "The Red Room," p. 158-159.
Situated at the upper part of the south-east angle of the jail, the chapel of Old Newgate was divided on the north side into three grated compartments, or pens as they were termed, allotted to the common debtors and felons. In the north-west angle, there was a small pen for female offenders, and, on the south, a more commodious enclosure appropriated to the master-debtors and strangers. Immediately beneath the pulpit stood a large circular pew where malefactors under sentence of death sat to hear the condemned sermon delivered to them, and where they formed a public spectacle to the crowds, which curiosity generally attracted on those occasions.
To return. Jack had got into one of the pens at the north side of the chapel. The enclosure by which it was surrounded was about twelve feet high; the under part being composed of taken planks, the upper of a strong iron grating, surmounted by sharp iron spikes. In the middle there was a gate. It was locked. But Jack speedily burst it open with the iron bar. — Chapter 19, "The Chapel," p. 161-162.
This series of short chapters illustrated constitutes the first half of the December 1839 instalment in Bentley's Miscellany, accompanied by the Escape from Newgate illustrations already published in the November triple-decker. Mirroring Ainsworth's innovative textual construction, Cruikshank presents the material visually, in a series of vignettes that demonstrate each of the challenges that Jack confronts and surmounts in his celebrated escape from 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 and building construction, as well as through his understanding of the layout of the prison. The small-scale 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 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 XXIV, the first 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 first sequence, all set inside Newgate Prison, trusting that the gaoler, Austin, having made his final check on the prisoner at 3:00 P. M., after the departure of Jack's distinguished visitors, will not return to check on him until the following day, Jack makes a second attempt to go up the old chimney in his spartan cell the Castle.
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 from the second frame through the fourth) as a tool during his escape, and as a weapon thereafter. Cruikshank shows Jack as small in the first two miniatures (above), but shows him in closeup in the lower two, once he has surmounted the considerable difficulties posed by the chimney of the Castle and the massive, plated lock on the door of the Red Room. In other words, as he gains confidence in his success and builds his identity as the ingenious felon who escaped from Newgate, Jack Sheppard approaches the reader, developing from an embryonic to a fully-developed figure. As he enters the Chapel in the fourth frame, his body prevents the viewer from seeing the hole that Jack made in the wall in order to open the door from the other side. The text, in other words, informs the image, just as the image clarifies the text. The overall effect of the four miniatures 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 environments 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.
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