Yet Newgate was then presumably an orderly and decent place by comparison with the Newgate of its hero in chief, Jack Sheppard, whose short but colourful life extended from 1702 to 1724. Great escaper though he was, it is hard to believe that he could have achieved what he did unless the prison had been in a monstrous state of licence and misrule.
However, his fame has now been firmly established, not only by the chapmen of his own day, but by later artists as diverse as Harrison Ainsworth and Nellie Farren. A memoria technica of all the different stages of his escape is to be found in a sermon supposed to have been preached about him.
The preacher exhorted his hearers to:
"Open the locks of your hearts with the nail of repentance; burst asunder the fetters of your beloved lusts; mount the chimney of hope, take from thence the bar of good resolution; break through the stone wall of despair, and all the strongholds in the dark entry of the valley of the shadow of death; raise yourselves to the leads of divine meditation; fix the blanket of faith with the spike of the Church; let yourselves down to the turner's house of resignation and descend the stairs of humility."